Viral Marketing or Is It Publicity?

Getting visual with publicity

The popular term in today’s marketing on the web is Viral. This is becoming a hot subject as well as a new marketing tool that advertisers, not all, are embracing. Getting in on a new technology is sometimes a good thing. But not knowing how it will fair out can be risky business.

viral videos and publicityRecently, a viral campaign was put to the test. A viral video was created using mentos and Diet Coke. The visual showed a geyser being created when mentos was put into the 2-liter bottle.

The video was viewed 600,000 times on such web sites as YouTube. This can be a great number when shown to potential advertisers. As with all new publicity and marketing tactics, there are the pros and cons of this new media.

One the good note, you can get your message, or visual of the product viewed by hundreds of thousands quickly. The negative, you cannot control how and when or where the video is viewed. It’s possible that your video is sent to a bunch of people who want to alter it, or place it near a porn video. No to do anything intentional, but again, no control on where it is viewed.

Another point, it is difficult to really track the effectiveness and direst sales results. Although the people at Mentos believe it worked well that they created a web site to encourage viewers to create their own videos.

This story about Mentos, and viral videos is getting a lot of media attention. In turn it is now part of the publicity phenomenon. Good or bad, a company needs to deal with the new media and be prepared to handle the direction it takes–good or bad.

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Publicity and Email

One is a series

Email marketing isn’t new, but how we use this tool for marketing, shows that it is now making positive advances in using email for publicity. To make any publicity campaign successful you need to make sure that all your options of marketing tools and resources are in place. This is not saying to use email to contact reporters, editors or the media. That should be part of your normal activity.

A Study Reveals Reasons To Use Email Marketing
There is a lot of discussion about how email has helped different companies gain recognition and increase sales. Not through spamming, but through controlled distribution. Several new studies show that a majority (out of 259 companies surveyed), 93% use email to reach consumers. This and other studies are important to pr professionals, because it clearly indicates how people rely on email and how they are thinking and how they can be reached.

If you have a pr client and they want to gain awareness, then it is your responsibility to examine the options of email marketing. The study I read, called "Email Goes Viral" shows the marketing tactics of manufacturing companies will increase their spending on email marketing, direct sales and even publicity. As much as a 42% increase on publicity alone! Another Internet activity is Webinars, a 35% increase for next year.

Publicity Agencies and PR Professional Need To Act Now
This should give reason for publicity firms to act upon and use other marketing sources like email. As I have said many times, publicity needs to interact with the IT departments and Marketing departments of a company in order to develop successful campaigns.

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