Viral Marketing and Public Relations

By: Leslie Koch

With the internet seemingly taking over the world, it is no surprise that most public relations practitioners are turning to the “world wide web” for campaign strategies. Websites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the popularity of blogs have helped PR campaigns all over the world reach an entirely new spectrum of target audiences. These new campaign tactics are commonly referred to as viral marketing.

YouTube, a website that features millions of different videos from as many users all over the world, was created by employees of PayPal and bought out by Google in 2006. The website was originally launched in 2005 and the website’s popularity took off in the next few years. The website has been successful because users can create, upload, view and respond to different videos. YouTube has created thousands of “YouTube celebrities” and even caused controversies because of its high-paced messaging. Because of this, YouTube is a great way to use for messaging and to spread messages easily. Even one of our current class clients, Big Brothers Big Sisters, utilizes YouTube in its current PR campaign. An Oklahoma public relations firm recently used YouTube to publicize a job opening with the firm, the agency is looking for a new social media director. The video currently has 884 hits and it has been up for around five weeks.

Another new fad in viral marketing is the website Twitter. Twitter has gained lots of popularity in the past few months and especially in early 2009. Numerous celebrities use twitter and now it has become a great way for companies to send short messages to their followers. The University of Wisconsin has started utilizing a Twitter account to promote the university’s different sports teams and athletics events.

I think it is extremely important for PR agencies and teams to utilize these various types of viral marketing, because it reaches a wide range of people and is extremely time efficient. However, I think campaigns should mix these “modern” strategies with more “traditional” strategies, because it could be difficult to reach a specific target audience through the internet.