With viral marketing, consumers bear part of the cost of propagating a marketing message. But the message must provide value, be cool and avoid reading like an ad.

Say the word “viral” to people in the marketing business these days, and they’re probably more likely to think of SARS than an effective digital marketing tactic. But that’s only because much of the hype surrounding viral marketing has died down.

You might remember the viral marketing craze of the late 1990s. It started with free e-mail services like Hotmail using their own products to self-promote, in the hopes that consumers would see their promotional text messages in forwarded e-mails. It ended with a lot of head scratching on the part of online strategy folks at interactive shops, who couldn’t understand why the presence of a “Send to a Friend” link on their e-mail message hadn’t succeeded at setting the world aflame.

Viral Appeal – It’s About the Value Proposition

Truth be told, very few people understood that viral marketing is something more than adding the obligatory “Send to a Friend” link to a commercial e-mail and blasting it out to a seed list. It involves an exchange of value. A marketer extends a special offer, informational resource, or something with entertainment value in exchange for consumer advocacy -- the free publicity generated by consumers forwarding the message to friends, family and acquaintances.

The value exchange part is the thing that marketers seem to have a problem with. No one gets terribly excited about information on the latest calling plan from a mobile phone company or the debut of a new dishwashing detergent – at least not excited enough to want to tell their friends about it. But if you nail the value proposition, the sky is the limit.

“In 2000, we launched a viral coupon-greeting campaign for a major convenience chain and beverage company,” says Yahoo’s Chief Solutions Officer Tim Sanders. “This program allowed you to forward or send a branded ‘buy one drink get one free’ coupon to a friend. This program produced five coupon impressions through viral means for every coupon that was downloaded as a result of media advertising and links.”

Adds Earthquake Media CEO Robert Davidman: “It harkens back to the messaging. If the message makes sense then the target group will hopefully propagate the message for us. There also needs to be a way to create some value exchange -- give them something for their efforts.”

The Cool Factor

One of the toughest aspects of implementing a viral campaign is gauging whether or not a given message is “cool” enough to prompt Internet users to pass it along. Most consumers can smell an ad a mile away, and they’re less apt to pass something along if it’s flagrantly commercial. It’s no surprise that many of the Internet phenomena that have been passed from peer to peer are decidedly non-commercial in nature, from All Your Base to Mahir to that little squirrel that goes “wheeeee!”

“The idea is fundamental: Create a message that strikes the right chord and people will react,” says Davidman.

The best laid plans for viral marketing campaigns balance value and “cool factor” for the maximum viral impact.

Familiarity = Credibility

In most viral marketing programs that are deployed on the Internet, the marketers hope that the ease of information-sharing that is germane to digital media will help their advertising campaigns take on a life of their own. Driven by a combination of brand advocacy and ‘cool factor,’ Internet users pass along commercial messages, typically via e-mail. Not only does this generate free publicity for the marketer, but it also enhances the message by leveraging the credibility inherent in receiving e-mail from a friend or family member.

“We used the viral components to leverage the mass media messaging in a more one-to-one fashion,” says Davidman, “but making it viral in a peer-to-peer environment versus ‘mass’ gives the message a bit more credibility. Success has been noteworthy to date.”

“I’ve Created a Monster!”

Sounds great, right? It almost makes you want to add a viral component to every digital message your company deploys. But it’s important to note that not every communications effort is well-suited to viral marketing. Remember, once a viral marketing campaign takes on a life of its own, it may be incredibly difficult to control or stop.

One marketer learning this the hard way is Puma. In March, a couple racy images began circulating around the Internet. These images depicted two people wearing Puma sneakers in a sexual situation. As the images were passed virally around the Internet, the owners of several Weblogs posted the images, speculating as to whether or not they were genuine ads from Puma. (Have a look at this Slate article for an overview of how this unfolded.)

Puma denied the ads were genuine, and even issued cease and desist letters to several of the bloggers who had posted the images. The tactic backfired, with one Website owner posting the cease and desist letter and roasting the company for mobilizing its lawyers. (As an aside, there has even been some speculation that Puma masterminded the whole debacle, using the legal threats as a way to perpetuate buzz.)

Point: A successful viral marketing campaign can be hard to control. Once something is passed from person to person digitally, the control over messaging and dissemination is effectively out of the marketer’s hands. So if you’re considering a viral marketing effort, you must first gauge how important that control is to your company.

“Viral marketing, like any other successful execution, is planned and anticipated,” says Sanders. “Enabling peer-to-peer marketing requires giving customers and users tools, incentives and rewards to ‘spread the virus’ of the marketer. When it happens by accident, it is hard to duplicate and difficult to measure.”

Viral Marketing – It’s Not Just for the Internet Anymore

Other digital media can offer the ease of message propagation necessary to implement a successful viral marketing campaign. Brian Hill and Rouben Haroutoonian of Mobliss, a wireless information and entertainment company, shed some light for us on executing viral campaigns using SMS messaging on mobile phones. According to Mobliss, there are 140 million handsets in North America that are capable of receiving short text messages (SMS), and 70 million capable of sending them. Think of the possibilities – marketers could use SMS to reach young people who are light consumers of other media, and have them pass messages to one another, increasing the credibility of the message. Haroutoonian mentioned a campaign for American Idol II in which AT&T Wireless offered subscribers with SMS-enabled phones the ability to engage in a number of text-based activities that tied in with the show, including games, gossip, polls and real-time chat.

“The program created and stimulated a viral effect among the community that watches the show,” he said.

As new messaging platforms emerge, marketers can apply the principles and best practices they’ve learned executing viral campaigns on the Internet to achieve success with alternative platforms.

The New Need for Viral Marketing

In today’s cost-conscious economy, the idea of consumers bearing part of the cost of propagating a marketing message is an attractive one. If a brand has tolerance for the notion of keeping the brand top of mind, even when its parent company cannot necessarily control the avalanche of publicity, then viral marketing can be a consideration. Almost any brand can leverage this marketing strategy.

“This has worked from low involvement (think soda) to high involvement (think cars or houses),” says Sanders. “It is a question of customer evangelism and strength of brand. If there is either one, the message has a reason to spread.”