Individual research into viral advertising

Viral marketing is the process by which the a product is marketed by being spread like a virus in a repetitive manner. It is linked to the hypodermic needle theory in that if a person is a witness to an advertisement that is intended to be a viral ad they take in the message and pass it on, if they pass it on to at least one person the advertisement, over time, will have been a success. Tradition viral marketing was spread by word of mouth and was less prominent. However, the inception of social media networks has made viral marketing a prominent feature of advertising. The growth of social networks significantly contributed to the effectiveness of viral marketing. As of 2009, two thirds of the world's Internet population visits a social networking service or blog site at least every week. Facebook alone has over 1 billion active users. In 2009, time spent visiting social media sites began to exceed time spent emailing. A 2010 study found that 52% of people who view news online forward it on through social networks, email, or posts. An example of this can be the Dark Knight Rises (Batman) film who effective reached and engaged their target audience whilst also attracting a wider demographic from the publicity they received from the viral marketing campaign. Warner Brothers, the producers of the film, sprayed the batman iconography in 300 locations across the world. They released the address' of these locations so people could find them. People had to take a photo of the batman iconography, post it on the social networking site Twitter with the hashtag #TDKR07202012 and upload it to the website tdkr07202012.com. For every piece of bat iconography that was found a still from the film was released on the trailer culminating in a teaser trailer.

The Dark Knight Rises trailer

An example of successful viral marketing for an advert is LG's elevator prank and meteor strike prank. Promoting how ‘lifelike’ its new IPS monitors, LG pulled this stunt replacing an elevator floor with the monitors to make it look like the floor was falling away while unsuspecting people were in the lift to hilarious reactions. The original video has over 22.9M YouTube viewers.

LG elevator prank

Another example promoting their IPS monitors is their fake meteor strike prank. Both viral advertisements were successful due to their shock factor.

LG meteor strike prank