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

[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...