Viral Marketing

Wikipedia describes viral marketing: "The buzzwords viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses."

I hadn't heard this term at all until I saw Bill Davidson, the Senior Vice President of Global Marketing and Investor Relations for Qualcomm speak last week at an intern event. The idea is crazy and cool: release videos or other ads that appear to be fake and are funny. With any luck, they will spread throughout the web on youtube and facebook and myspace as interesting things are prone to do. The result is free advertising. The cost of obtaining the medium is removed and the only cost is production. The two Qualcomm videos are great examples. The second one especially is really funny.

HandSolo Mobile
Qualcomm Convergence

It's so brilliant to use this immense network that already exists to spread the word about your company. You can see that the only end goal is for the watcher to remember the name Qualcomm, associate it with wireless technology, and maybe get some views on their website. This is almost gaurenteed to work as the younger generation stops watching TV altogether. Why would you when all of your shows are available on-demand and mostly commericial-free online?