Successful Viral Adverts

Adverts that are so funny or entertaining that people redistribute advertising on their own and voluntarily select to view the ads and related materials are almost always successful. Making ads that may have less to do with the product and more to do with the entertainment value of the ad can be a successful strategy but risks being completely wasteful if people do not like the ad. This type of success is difficult to predict because people like unusual and strange things.

Making games or blurring the line between real-world and virtual events can also be good strategies for creating successful viral marketing campaigns. These strategies make viewers want to look for more information about what is going on and may strike potential consumers when they do not expect advertising. Using online games provides access to more people, but using real-world meetings can be more fun for participants.

Interactive marketing schemes also have the potential to go viral. When potential consumers can interact in a very direct way with the company or the advertisement itself and understand that a human may respond to their interaction, people are more likely to pay attention. Various social networking sites provide ways in which people can interact with advertisements and also have the benefit of informing others when they do interact. This not only promotes positive feelings about a product or brand, but also spreads advertising somewhat discreetly.

In 2009, Evian released the advert of roller skating babies to promote their brand. As of now, it has over 70,000,000 views on YouTube. The idea behind the advert is that is shows the effect Evian has on your body by using extreme exaggeration. It goes with the tag line Live Young, which is suggesting that drinking Evian will make you feel younger.

In 2012, The Guardian released an advert which put a twist on the story of the three little pigs by covering it from all angles as if it were a real life case that needed solving. It is the cleverest advert I can remember ever seeing, and is, to my mind, a lot more appropriate way of humanising animals for the use of advertising than adverts such as for compare the market. Obviously people react positively to cutesy little animals, but when I see the size of the brand that compare the market have raised based on a seemingly random Russian meerkat, it annoys me.

The compare the meerkat started in 2009. Though the concept has little to do with insurance other than that meerkat sounds vaguely like market, it has become one of the most popular adverts in TV history. The campaign has helped the company go from being relatively unknown to having a website which gets over 200million hits a year, as well as the company having profited an estimated £220million. Aleksandr's (the main character in the advert) autobiography had more pre-orders Tony Blair, Cheryl Cole, Russell Brand or Dannii Minogue, and the words "simples" was added to the Collins English Dictionary.