Viral marketing has been around for a very long time. It is nothing more than passing information to the masses by word of mouth. The market is ripe for viral marketing during the Christmas buying season. Everyone is looking for popular gift items and there is a deadline. If you haven’t made your purchase by midnight on December 24, you are out of luck. With the internet playing a larger role in the way people purchase, viral marketing is getting more and more sophisticated. In the past, if there was a run on a specific item, the manufacturer, distributor and retailer had to work extra hard to keep up with demands for the item. Now, with the ability to shop online, the retailer is a virtual store and distributors can ship directly to the consumer. Click a mouse and it is on its way. But the internet also impacts viral marketing in other ways. Retailers can make special offers to entice online customers to buy. Sale information and great deals are much easier to distribute online and the customer pool is much bigger on the web. There is no geographical boundaries that the web cannot cross. But the biggest impact that the internet plays on viral marketing is the speed in which information is passed from one person to many. Within mere seconds, an entire social network can find out about a good deal or a hot item for sale. E-blasts can put coupons into the hands of your target market in an instant. These online coupons are passed back and forth between connected consumers. Even bricks and mortar retail stores entice customers in their doors with online specials. The internet has caused the ripple effect of word of mouth into a tidal wave.

Not all viral marketing efforts are good. Unfortunately, there are always the few that spoil things for all. There are fake coupons that get passed around the internet. You may also remember the scandal that TV talk show icon Oprah Winfrey stirred up when she announced that KFC had coupons for a free grilled chicken meal. KFC stores nationwide were inundated with customers with coupons in hand. Yum! Brands, which owns KFC, was the target of several false advertising lawsuits in the wake of the viral marketing craze gone awry.  People saturated the KFC stores with their coupons and KFC had to eventually turn customers away, in turn creating the lawsuits, some of which are still pending.

There is another problem with viral marketing that companies have to be careful to control. If you ever played the game of telephone as a child, you understand the problems viral marketing can cause. With a group of people sitting in single file, one person whispers some juicy bit of information in the ear of the person sitting next to them. The second person whispers the message into the ear of the third person and so on down the line. By the time it gets to the end of the line, many times the original message has been distorted and the story has gotten more outlandish. So what if the info at the end of the line is damaging to your company and it has no basis in the truth? This is where viral marketing can hurt you. Several years ago, Proctor and Gamble was the target of a rumor that their logo had been birthed in a satanic cult ritual. This urban legend was passed from one person to the other. The company became the target of angry customers who were ready to divest themselves of any of P&Gs products. The brand was under attack. It took a lot of effort and money (and a new logo) for P&G to counteract this bit of info. Every now and then, it resurfaces in my email inbox. Just when you think you have squelched a rumor, it pops up once again on the internet.

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KFC lawsuit over Oprah free meal coupon goes forward by Jorgen Wouters www.walletpop.com