http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ViralMarketing

This entry is trivia, which is cool and all, but not a trope. On a work, it goes on the Trivia tab.

Cracked, " , " 5 Common Anti-Internet Arguments (That Are Statistically BS) "When done right, the Internet can break down that barrier between the creators and the audience, effectively removing the thick wall of suits in between. And make no mistake, those suits are the number one killers of creativity on this planet."

Originally, viral marketing referred to word of mouth advertising. In theory, one person tells all their friends, who in turn tell all their friends, and so on. In practice, this rarely worked out so well, because few people had enough friends to make it profitable. Ask anyone who tried to make money with Amway.

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With the advent of the Internet, however, Viral Marketing suddenly became something a great deal more viable. You don't have to know your consumer personally to reach them with a blog, video, or web page. Word of mouth can reach hundreds, perhaps thousands, the moment someone hits the post button to talk about it.

Ideally, a viral ad does not seem like an ad at all. Viral marketing techniques usually rely on making something entertaining that people will want to share and subject to Memetic Mutation. Watch It for the Meme is a desired effect. Photoshop and a sense of humour are affordable and useful enough for that task. Catch phrases and stock phrases are cheaper.

Marketers should be wary when treading into the sleeping giant of the Internet, however, as consumers despise paper-thin attempts at viral ads or ads that are demeaning to consumers, and they won't always let you sweep such mistakes under the rug, either. As a further point of advice, note that doing this relatively openly (unless it's an Alternate Reality Game, or "in universe") is less likely to arouse ire.

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The Colbert Bump is dependent on Viral Marketing.

The political equivalent is "Astro Turfing" which is a fake grass-roots movement.

See also Alternate Reality Game, Forced Meme and In-Universe Marketing.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

Elfen Lied was actually spread almost completely by word of mouth. Not intentionally, but what happened was pretty much the same.

Kyoto Animation is particularly well known for this, especially with regards to their breakout hit The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.

Comic Books

Here is a pic hilariously failed example of attempted viral marketing, where said marketer accidentally copies part of his DC Comics marketing standards into his posted messages. Or just a hard-working troll pretending to be an incompetent marketer. It's impossible to tell with 4chan.

is a pic hilariously failed example of attempted viral marketing, where said marketer accidentally copies part of his DC Comics marketing standards into his posted messages.

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Film

Literature

Victoria Hoyt set up a Save the Pearls YouTube account and put up videos in connection with her literary series of the same name.

Live-Action TV

Music

While it was arguably more a part of the album's concept than a marketing device, Nine Inch Nails' album Year Zero was preceded by a massive viral campaign. It began with a T-shirt of tour dates that had certain letters highlighted, which led to a web site about a fictional government conspiracy. Various other clues led to a larger network of web sites, phone numbers, and even USB flash drives planted in concert bathrooms which contained further clues and "leaked" songs from the upcoming album. Humorously, some web sites that posted these "leaked" songs were actually shut down, even though the whole point was to share them on the Internet. The campaign was mostly organized by Trent Reznor and 42 Entertainment, the company behind "ilovebees" and many other viral campaigns; the record label was clueless about a lot of it. (It goes without saying that Trent Reznor has not had friendly relationships with his record labels over the years.) The amount of information and popularity of the ARG was enough that a wiki was set up for it just to document it all. You can find it all summarized here . It is no surprise, considering the amount of work that went into it, that Trent Reznor once called the Year Zero album "The soundtrack for a non-existent Science Fiction movie."

Nashville chiptunes musician Makeup and Vanity Set created a thread on The Protomen forums under the Significant Anagram 'tastyvein'. It claimed to have found a tune similar to the Will of One in an old NES game, with an mp3 as proof. It took about 20 pages for the forumites to figure out that it was a plug for M&VS's chiptune version of Act I, with Protomen member Heath Who Hath No Name having to point out the anagram.

Adverts for with the slogan: "Your own personal Jesus" were placed in British newspapers, with no indication that it was a song (until a number was also printed which when dialed would let you listen to the song) to advertize the Depeche Mode single "Personal Jesus."

In the lead-up to the release of The Wall, Capitol Records painted a white-brick wall onto an enormous billboard near their Hollywood and Vine headquarters. For about a month, passersby wondered what this was about. Then, as the release date grew closer, the white brick overlay was pulled off, section by section, until there remained a gigantic replica of Gerald Scarfe's now-iconic artwork.

Video Games

Web Comics

In xkcd strip Marketing Interview , an interviewer questions Blackhat's validity in marketing business, seeing as he never led any major campaign. Then he realizes he heard about him through word of mouth, and hires him on the spot.

Web Original

Western Animation

The infamous January 31, 2007 Boston bomb scare note not to be confused with the actual Boston Marathon bombing of 2013 consisted of LED signs featuring Mooninites to advertise the upcoming Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie.

consisted of LED signs featuring Mooninites to advertise the upcoming Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. The Secret Saturdays started out as a series of advertisements that consisted of homemade videos of cryptids showing up in otherwise mundane situations, with the URL for a website entitled "Cryptids Are Real", which posed as the website for a periodical of the same name, devoted to recording sightings of cryptids around the nation. Later, a website for a show called "Weird World", which would apparently reveal "the truth about Cryptids", appeared, with corresponding ads. The main characters of the show wouldn't appear in advertisements until about a month after the campaign began. "Weird World" turned out to be the villain's Show Within a Show.

To promote The Bullwinkle Show, Jay Ward and company launched "Operation Loudmouth", a series of outlandish stunts meant to get the word out; these stunts included mailing humorous flyers, staging a mock protest in front of network NBC's headquarters, and holding a block party featuring the unveiling of a Bullwinkle statue (which stood on Sunset Boulevard until 2013). The most elaborate stunt was the "Statehood for Moosylvania" campaign, which ended prematurely when they tried to get President John F. Kennedy to sign the petition, only to discover that they had arrived at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

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