Media Strategies Editor Jim Meskauskas lays out the history of viral marketing, from nascent pathogen to full-fledged epidemic.

One of the biggest influences that the evolution of the internet and digital media and marketing has had on the rest of the advertising industry is on the language we use to talk about it. The industry is replete with words and acronyms that before it came to be were only a twinkle in a lexicographer’s eye.

Online advertising and marketing has given rise to an entire cottage industry of business endeavors based on explicating advertising and marketing with new language. Many of these are based solely on wrapping old concepts with new jargon and representing them to the marketplace as wholly new. Entire careers have been made on making what is old new again, using new words and phrases to describe old phenomena.

Among the most pervasive new labels that have been applied to marketing and advertising activity is viral marketing.

In December of 1998, the erstwhile must-read online advertising industry newsletter ICONOCAST read "the award for internet marketing buzzword of the year goes to 'viral marketing.'”

Viral marketing has been with us for quite some time now, and is really a take on a much older form of marketing known as word of mouth. Word-of-mouth advertising is itself a member of these words and phrases used today to describe older forms of marketing in new ways. In reality, word of mouth, or WOM as it is often referred to, has been around since lingual upright bipeds have been exchanging objects of perceived value for goods and services that did not already belong to the tribe.

Viral marketing is much the same, only there is the added component of a shareable asset that can be easily passed from person to person using media that facilitates alternative means of communicative action.

Online viral marketing: a history

It seemed that over several years during the dotcom heyday, wherever one went in online advertising and marketing circles, it was impossible to have a conversation or attend a conference without someone bringing up viral marketing. Since the notion of viral marketing was really formalized as a viable, intentional marketing device in 1999, everyone in the marketing departments of nearly every advertiser has been looking for a viral marketing solution.

One could reasonably argue that the very first online viral marketing piece was the very first marketing email sent by DEC (eventually part of Compaq, now HP) in 1978. DEC announced a new DEC-20 machine by sending an invite to all ARPANET addresses on the west coast, using the ARPANET directory, inviting people to receptions in California. Though at the time, the community chastised DEC for breaking the ARPANET appropriate use policy, it served as a marketing message that could be passed along to those within one’s community that might have interest in its content.

It was a long time before email would become the recognized progenitor of viral marketing with Hotmail’s use of a “tell a friend” link (“Get your free private email at http://www.hotmail.com”) automatically appended to the end of emails sent by users of the free email service. In fact, the term “viral marketing” was coined by Steve Jurvetson and Tim Draper of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which invested in Hotmail in the early days.

Remember the Mahir Cagri “I kiss you!!” craze that ran rampant during late 1999 and the first half of 2000? The guy was on all manner of talk shows, and his site is in the 2001 Guinness Book of World Records for receiving the most visits to a personal homepage, with an estimated 12 million “hits.”

To capitalize on this “viral” phenomenon, eTour joined forces with Mahir, sponsoring a U.S. Tour. At WebAttack 2000 at the Roseland in Manhattan, Jim Lanzone, vice president, marketing of eTour, came out to give a speech wearing red Speedos, a la Mahir, to discuss the power of viral marketing.

Then there was the Superfriends Budweiser email, with Batman, Robin, Superman and Aquaman saying “Wazz Up?!,” to one another.

We had the BMW Films series about which there was much talk within the advertising community.

Other “spread the word” campaigns have included Suburban’s Trunk Monkey and the Sportka of Ford’s European division.

Tomorrow: What it takes to become viral.

Jim Meskauskas is the media strategies editor for iMedia Connection.