Viral gone wrong

Good news travels fast; bad news, even faster. The Internet brought companies closer to their customers, and greatly contributed to building great viral marketing initiatives. Yet, on-line social networks might also be the carriers of armful messages that might end up hurting a brand's reputation, whenever there is no proper response. Amazon and Domino's Pizza are now learning this the hard way. Follow this link to Business Week, and check how the wrong message, spread on-line, might lead to a PR crisis. (Thanks Debbie for the relevant reference!)

One of our colleagues kindly shared with us his opinion on this subject, which I believe sums up that "viral duality" pretty well! Take a look:

«One of the most fascinating characteristics of virus in general is their overwhelming capacity to adapt, not in terms of their phenotype but, more importantly, in terms of their “genetic database”. This feature presents as an advantage over the process of natural selection and the “survival of the fittest”. Just as an example, every year there’s a new flu vaccine. “New” is the keyword here. The vaccines are developed by the pharmaceutical industry taking into consideration the most prevalent strains of Influenzae virus at the time. Now to the subject of “Viral Marketing”. “Word-of-mouth” is consensually one of the most cost-effective ways of getting people to know a new or improved product, service, idea, or gossip! By choosing a number of highly-connected well known individuals to start this chain reaction is no more no less than endorsement. Its effectiveness however is most likely to come through if the intended recipients of the (marketing) message are “consumers” of the increasingly trendy social networks (like Facebook, Hi5, Startracker, Linkedin, etc…). “Viral Marketing”, however (like anything in life) doesn’t come with drawbacks (at least potential ones). In Portugal there’s a saying that goes something like this: “Who tells a tale, adds a sentence.”. Relying on an epidemic to promote something may reach disproportionate and uncontrollable dimensions in which reverting a biased message may prove to be a daunting and perhaps impossible task. In summary: use it with care!
Yours, Rui»
By: Rui Carvalho, Magellan MBA