Product marketing usually has very little to do with marcom, so the viral nature of the product and the marketing are independent. A viral product will make the marketing look viral.

Word of Mouth (WOM): Impulsively sharing a (hopefully) great product/service experience with other people. The product has to be inherently great; a purple cow (to use Seth Godin’s words) disrupting the existing market. Some great brands were built by virtually word of mouth alone. Examples:

• Google
• The Body Shop
• Yellow Tail Wines
• Pretty much any product before the advent of mass advertising

Word of mouth is inherently viral – each recipient of the communication (positive or negative) can in turn forward/tell multiple successive recipients, thus potentially resulting in exponential growth of the “infected” base.

Product Viral (Based on product exposure): The product usually allows for a 2-way (or more) interaction requiring only the sender to have the service. The recipient of that communication is exposed to the product/service and decides to adopt it as well. Examples:

• Hotmail: Receiving a free email
• GoToMeeting: Attending an online meeting
• FedEx: Receiving an overnight package
• Western Union: Receiving cash

A good product experience, especially for the recipient, is necessary to ensure that exposure to the brand evolves into adoption. The advantage lies in the reduced dependency on customers’ spontaneous WOM activities.

Social Product Viral (Need to use the same product) The product usually allows for a 2-way (or more) interaction but everybody participating in the interaction must use the same product (usually) to enjoy its benefits. Examples:

• AIM or Skype: All users need to use the same chat/voice program to interact with each other for free
• Facebook: All users need to be Facebook users to exchange and see information
• MCI Friends and Family: All subscribers had to use MCI (long-distance telephone service) in order to qualify for bigger discounts

This tactic still relies on the endorsement (WOM) from users to convince others to sign up. It has had great success with many brands, but it also carries a risk: If the value proposition is not strong enough to overcome the “sign-up inertia,” it will not be heavily adopted.

Entertainment Carrier: Something is passed along for entertainment purposes, and the brand is somehow associated with the communication piece. Examples:

• Monk-e-mail (http://www.careerbuilder.com/monk-e-mail/)
• Snakes on a plane (http://dev.snakesonaplane.varitalk.com, now offline)
• Fight for kisses TV spot (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuSBCIV1zuQ)
• Big Ad TV spot (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH3GH7Pn_eA)

Probably the riskiest strategy of all. The pass-along rate is completely dependent on the entertainment value of the item. As everybody who is involved in entertainment-content creation knows, there are many more failures than successes. Even for successful items, like the ones above, the original brand might not see any tangible benefit beyond a higher awareness of its name. Examples include Budweiser’s popular “Wassup” campaign and Carlton Draft “Big Ad” TV spot. While immensely popular, both failed to produce positive business results for their brands.

S. Evans: Thanks for the typo correction.

Alan: Very good points. Yes, this conversation’s just begun, and the definitions will continue to evolve. Always reassuring to hear from a teacher who’s not as rigid as the bloke Seth was addressing.

My issue with the story is that there are ‘professors’ [presumably in marketing?] out there who are [a] bad teachers because they try to stop students thinking for themselves, and [b] not open to what is happening in contemporary marketing. Shame on them.

As one Simpsons episode cried: ‘think of the children’. That poor student is going to come out of college ill–prepared for a contemporary working environment.

As if it really matters, I go along with Steve Jurvetson – who is attributed with coming up with the phrase – that viral marketing is ‘network-enhanced word of mouth’. I also think that everything is based on the concept of the traditional ‘word of mouth’, but viral is a more strategic concept ie a ‘message’ is deliberately conceived and put out in the public domain – WoM was always down to chance.

Disclosure : Yes, I am a lecturer in marketing.

Where did those orders come from? A fan had the idea to send nuts. Another had the idea where to order from. So the campaign took off and Jericho fans were lucky enough to sweep nutsonline into it – they embraced it and Jericho fans everywhere are grateful for it. They went above and beyond what I think most companies would do, and it paid off for them. They’re now Jericho fans themselves to boot.

During the campaign, fans networked, e-mailed, had mailing lists, had conference calls, sent bulletins, kept chatter going on fan boards on a daily/nightly basis. There were other methods to the madness. Fans paid for full page ads in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter(x2). Most nut shipments were documented via video and posted on youtube and spread throughout communities. Each new video or graphic was inspiring and created renewed energy among campaigners.

Passion. I think you’ve got it right there. A passionate and determined fan base that was unrelenting, desperate to show the network they had made a mistake by canceling Jericho. We weren’t giving up until they got the message. The campaign was very fluid. A hundred different “Save” tactics were being discussed as “the next step” but at the same time everyone in the moment moved in the same direction.

When nutsonline.com embraced the campaign, that added more fuel to the exciting journey. They blogged as they watched the first season. We were able see them “become” fans. In everything most fans do now, is stick by those businesses who were involved in the campaign. So although there is decay to some extent, it’s probably not quite as much as most main stream marketers think.

You’re absolutely right about passion. Customers are human hypocrisy detectors. Watered-down viral marketing feels store-bought, fresh from the board room. At best, customers ignore passionless viral marketing efforts. At worst, they spread negative word-of-mouth about the brand.

Yes, blogging is just one new channel — and it’s probably not the answer for every company. But what I find especially interesting about NutsOnline is that they took hold of someone else’s campaign to save this show they happened to love, and they quickly coordinated the entirety of their small company’s sales, distribution and PR efforts to show how much they supported their newfound customers. Ultimately, they were rewarded with a lot of great publicity and word-of-mouth. And, although that word-of-mouth may still be decaying, as Godin insists, there’s plenty more brand awareness than there was pre-Jericho — and the bigger customer base that goes with it.

Glad to hear that blogging has helped Lehmans.com!