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Media Monday: Viral campaigns are least effective in India

Arun Prabhudesai — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:11:38 +0000

As per a survey by Sapient Interactive on digital media ads and their effectiveness in India, Viral campaigns are believed to be the least effective of marketing methods. This was based on the report “Digital Marketing: The CMO perspective” where Chief Marketing Officers of various sectors took the survey.

Though they all agreed that digital advertising is an integral part of any marketing campaign but creating a viral buzz doesn’t seem to be a preferred choice.

As per the survey the effectiveness score of various online methods is as follows-

Website advertising or product based microsites- Score: 100%
Search marketing campaigns-Score: 94%
E-mail marketing- Score: 90%
Banner Ads- Score: 78%
Viral Ads- 30.7%

But why Viral marketing which is seen as a very effective way to communicate over web in other countries is least effective in India?

In my opinion the main reason is using wrong products for viral campaigns. Most of the viral videos which I have seen feature products which are either already famous or don’t have any compelling value that can be related to the campaign.

Sometimes the viral takes over the brand and what we remember is only the video and not the brand!

Recently, Tata’s DoCoMo did a very good viral campaign and it was successful as it delivered a clear message about their product.

We can’t relate a DoCoMo viral with any competitive product and it stands uniquely. We should not just look for an innovative video to create a viral (I hardly remember that the famous Sholay video viral was for makemytrip or for cleartrip or Yatra?).

And moreover when Sholay videos got famous even Orbit used the same for their campaign (hardly any brand reckoning value)!

Indian companies need to understand this better and should utilize this free platform cautiously to make it more effective.

What’s your opinion ?

[This Media Monday digest has been written by Rabi Gupta, a start up enthusiast and co-founder of iDubba (Intelligent Box).]

The age of Viral Videos

Arun Prabhudesai — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 11:02:41 +0000

Today’s guest post is written by Krishnakumar – fondly called KK – CEO of one of the well known digital media agency based in Mumbai. While I was having a chat with him last week, he mentioned that most of the corporates have been requesting him to come out with viral videos, so I requested him to write a short piece on Viral Marketing through online videos and probably share some of them with our readers.

Here it is…

Viral Marketing has acquired a following of its own amongst marketers in India. This form of marketing online can be credited to the porn industry. I don’t need to elaborate on what got circulated & how popular it got. All you need to do is search for the word sex on you tube & check out how people are innovatively using that word to help popularize their content even if has nothing to do with the actual act. Interesting!

Now coming back to our subject on Viral Marketing: Branded viral films especially, have been created by several top corporates across categories, FMCG/ Travel/ Finance/ Durables – and the common link across all the viral films is spoofs/ humour. Humour plays a key role in viral marketing. Think about it – what do you forward the most? Something that’s funny, a joke, a funny pic… in order for someone to forward a brand message, it needs to be either edgy or laugh-out-loud funny or unbelievable. Given that the corporate world would not venture anywhere close to sexual connotations.

I came across a few such branded video virals recently. Lenovo has created a viral video for the ideapad based on the fact that the notebook has an anti-scratch screen. The viral has a character Swami Talon-tino & it’s about his life, with the notebook feature thrown in as part of the story. What makes for a viral as opposed to an ad film is the integration of the product with the story, something that’s not overtly branded, but subtle. That’s when the story is more important and so is the intrigue value. That’s what gives it the viral potential to be forwarded to friends.

Lenovo viral video on their anti-scratch videos

Apart from video films, the hot trend in recent times has been animated flash films – especially spoofs on Bollywood – this has been attempted by brands across categories, whether is dotcoms, banks, insurance companies or confectioneries. What makes these films a success? Whacky stories from movies we are familiar of with interesting sound effects. Here are a few examples.

The downside, after so many brands have done this, the ‘novelty’ value to flash films is wearing off; everything from Sholay to Deewar has been spoofed. So the script is now paramount and ideas need to go beyond Bollywood too.

Addictive e-parody!

Arun Prabhudesai — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:01:56 +0000

This guest post is bought to you by our regular reader and contributor Jolsna.

When we are intelligently trying to keep up with the pace of the running world, trying hard not to remain obsolete, update ourseleves with the current happenings, we see that after all being stupid ain’t a bad thing!!!

In continuation to the funny look of Microsoft Search Engine – MSDewey.com , Uncyclopedia.org is another site that has got into notice. The site looks to be a spoof of the well-contented, encyclopedia Wikepedia.org. Try opening these sites together and every word, link and tag lines of the former site seems to be a mockery of the latter.

There are many such sites that mask a non-profit look and make less of sense but keep the humor going and acts to be a relief from the regular sites. There are many YouTube videos that have a cost involved to them but expect no returns. Most of the other videos carry an advertisement which is publicity and is in a way profited but how does this work – spending quality working time to update these content sites regularly and just spread the word of fun.

I am curious to know if there are absolutely no Business intentions by running such sites unlike the well contented Blogs, Rss Feeds which assists businesses on search engine rankings, viral marketing and more.Â Is it personal interest only or are we undermining such sites? Social networking sites, once termed as fun to do sites have emerged to be Business favorites.

Will we see the same trend here?

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