Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is a direct solution of product promotion and to increase brand awareness which would spread specific information from the business on the product through social media/networks. Usually, social networks in today’s society would be through word of mouth, YouTube, Smartphones, Twitter, Facebook etc. In this case, the benefit for a film organisation is that the services are free of charge. The message on these social media sites would spread very rapidly if successful where more of the target audience would become aware about the product. Recent years show that multimedia and social media have both advanced effectively to play a part in everyday life. This is where the film organisations would target most of the promotions as more and more people worldwide use technology every day. 

Viral marketing could be related back to media convergence as an organisation would use the same promotional campaign but on a variety of media platforms such as radio, TV, social network etc. This all allows the promotion for the product to gain further awareness and increase a successful in popularity for the product. Another key impact is Web 2.0. Web 2.0 which would help target the audience on a global scale through the use of the internet. Web 2.0 helps accessibility increase. I think it is crucial for business to have an online and alternative publishing method as it attracts more attention to new viewers and audiences. In any situation there will need to be more than one way to access it otherwise people wouldn’t be able to view any of the business product (in this case film) where they are which will decrease the audience population.

 

Viral Marketing Used In District 9  - D9 Website

District 9 is a sci-fi/thriller movie which was released in 2009 directed by Neill Blomkamp. A viral campaign was released in early 2008 to increase the awareness for the film itself. The promotional campaign was for ‘Humans Only’, which was by Sony Pictures. Sony Pictures designed these specifically to be put on billboards and other platforms to increase the film awareness and expectation. As the viral campaign spread rapidly, the promotional campaign became talked about a lot which was then placed in areas in the public. This was mostly in many cities benches, parks and at bus stops. The second image shows what was exactly portrayed.

The organisation than used a lot of technology to support the promotional campaigns. This involved having a website for District 9 and advertisement on billboards aswel. Other platforms were YouTube, Twitter and phones that were very significant to help generate a successful campaign. Also, the budget was of $30m, along with a new upcoming and unknown cast. This is where critics and media journalists doubted the success of District 9 itself. However, on a global scale it was identified as a huge it which earned and was nominated for several awards. District 9 became a box office hit and earned a major amount of revenue, approximately seven times of what expected. Later on that year, action figures and a PlayStation game were created which showed how beneficial the viral campaign was to bring such a success of District 9.

 This is the teaser trailer -