Viral marketing, or buzz marketing if you prefer, is by no means a new thing within the marketing scene. Ever since people became employed as marketing experts, they have been tilting their heads each and every way in order to come up with new and creative ways to get people to talk about the products they are promoting.

With the exponential growth of the Internet in the past decade and a half however, the fundamentals of communication have changed radically, and the way marketing campaigns can influence customers to spread the word about various products has all of a sudden become easier to influence and predict. Because of this, the number of viral marketing campaigns has increased substantially the past few years.

The goal of viral marketing campaigns is to utilize a creative approach in order to get people to talk about (and promote) your product, and often people will not even be fully aware of what specific product they are talking about. This article examines some of the most successful viral marketing campaigns in the past few years, and as we will see there are no ends to what lengths marketers will go to in terms of creativity in order to get people to talk about a product.

1. Coca-Cola Zero (soft drink)

In the spring of 2007 posters proclaiming that “Zero is More” and that “Zero will give you life as it should be” started to appear all over Northern Europe. These posters also contained a date, April 1st, and a link to a cryptic website hosted at zeroismore.xx (xx being the corresponding TLD of the countries the posters appeared in).

People began to wonder, and more importantly talk about what revolution it was that would be taking place, and all over the Internet you would find discussions pertaining to the meaning of “Zero“. Of course when people realized that it was simply a new flavor from Coca-Cola, they might have been a little disappointed. The guys behind the campaign however were most certainly pleased with the amount of buzz that was generated. As an example of how successful the campaign was, I can mention that at one point during the summer they were not able to meet the demands because they were short-supplied with the trademarked black bottle caps the Zero bottles feature.

2. Batman – The Dark Night (movie)

The movie might not be screening for another eight months, but the early marketing efforts Warner Bros have made to promote it already stands as a bright and shining example of just how effective a viral marketing campaign can be, even within a limited budget.

Starting out with only a simple teaser page featuring the image above, fans were ecstatic when they proceeded by clicking the image and found themselves redirected to a page that featured a District Attorney Election promotional poster for a known character from the Batman Universe named Harvey Dent. This page again sent us to the real trick of the campaign (a site which is no longer active), another promotional poster, only this one defaced and seemingly mockin Harvey Dent. This page would also let users interact with the campaign by entering the email address which would give them a code that would reveal a few pixels of an image hidden “under” the defaced campaign poster.

Of course people immediately spread the word in order to get the full image revealed, and within hours the page instantly became popular on various forms of social media, and generated a lot of interest from online publications including blogs and newspapers. Naturally it didn’t take more than a few hours before the entire image was exposed, and it contained a somewhat creepy rendering of Heath Ledger portraying The Joker, which is another character in the Batman Universe.

3. I Love Bees – Halo 2 (video game)

The I Love Bees campaign which was launched with the initial marketing efforts of the video game Halo 2 is arguably one of the most intricate and detailed viral marketing campaigns to date. Structured as an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) the whole campaign gave no obvious mentions of any game.

It started when the first Halo 2 trailers quickly flashed a link to ILoveBees.com, a site about beekeeping that had apparently been hacked and taken over by someone who couldn’t be identified. The author, known as Dana, after finding that her site had been hacked, then created a blog asking people for help in order to get her website back.

The campaign generated a lot of attention, both from existing Halo fans, as well as new ones that were intrigued by the I Love Bees ARG. It was concluded when the players of the game were invited to a “Training Exercise“, which of course was simply a chance for those following the I Love Bees game to play Halo 2 before it was released. Participants were also given a DVD which among other things included a personal thank you message from one of the fictional characters created for the ARG.

4. Radiohead – In Rainbows (music)

After dropping hints about a new record even though they weren’t attached to a record label, Radiohead shocked the entire music industry when they in the beginning of October this year announced that they were giving away their album for free through their website. While downloading the album, fans were given the option to donate any sum they felt appropriate.

A month later, we can already state that this is one of the most effective marketing moves in the history of music. Even within two weeks, they had “sold” over 1.2 million albums, and on average each buyer had paid $8. That is almost $9.6 million in gross, all from a marketing campaign without any middle men, and practically no budget at all. What can we learn from Radiohead here? Think different, be radical, and people will take notice. Especially if you are already one of the most popular bands in the world.

Could Radiohead have earned more money from their album by releasing it the traditional way? Probably, I honestly don’t know what they earn these days from direct CD sales. The fact is however that most large bands earn the really big money through concert tours and merchandising, and I can assure you that Radiohead have, with this unexpected move, gained a lot of attention, trust and goodwill that can not be bought for money, and their alternative income streams will most certainly reflect that.

5. Hotmail (email service)

One of the first marketing efforts that took full advantage of the networking powers of the Internet was Hotmail, which I’m sure everyone reading this will already know about. In December 1996 they had 500,000 registered users, and less than a year later they had over 12,000,000 users! How did they accomplish such a feat? Apart from being one of the first and most accessible free email clients online, a single stroke a genius went a long way. Each email sent from a Hotmail account included a small, subtle ad for Hotmail, and as your user-base continues to grow into the millions, this means that you get all the free ads you will ever need to succeed.

As 1998 rolled by, it was announced that software giant Microsoft had acquired Hotmail for hundreds of millions of dollars, and even though it has been challenged numerous times since then, the service still stands today as one of the world wide web’s most popular free email services. Over twelve years later, that is no small feat in the fast-paced world of the Internet, and it goes to show just how effective and powerful viral marketing can be.