Unintended viral marketing

[jducoeur]

Y'know, it occurs to me that the best example of viral marketing is one that few people talk about: Viagra. I mean, here's a product that scarcely needs any direct marketing at all, given that about one spam in three headlines it.

It's an interesting but little-studied effect: once a product is reasonably in the public eye, spam acts as an amplifier, constantly reminding people of its existence. Even if I had no idea what eBay was, I'd probably wind up mildly curious about it simply because of all the phishing attacks based on it...

Comments

[fairdice.livejournal.com]

This very same logic is how I ended up owning 40% of a real $10,000,000,000 (TEN BILLION U.S. DOLLARS) that had been sitting in an abandoned bank account in Nigeria...

[siderea]

That's not what "viral marketing" means. Spam is direct marketing: it's a broadcast message. "Viral marketing" refers to messages which are passed from one recipient to the next, e.g. word of mouth. Spam is not "contageous" so it's not what is meant by "viral".

(Speaking as a professioanl Speaker-to-Marketing-Departments.)

[jducoeur]

I'll admit to imprecise usage, but it's not direct marketing either. The spam is direct marketing for the (usually fraudulent) retailer, but it's far more effective as indirect marketing for the product being advertised.

Curious midpoint, anyway, sharing some notable characteristics (especially the uncontrolled and unauthorized nature) with viral...

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I think this falls under the "There's no such thing as bad publicity" rubric. Certainly once you become a household name this sort of thing is bound to happen, though I've not seen it isolated before. I wonder how many phishing scams of the previous era centered around, say, Western Union...