Lately we have seen a lot of companys & brands in India  exploring avenues in online marketing  beyond conventional channels like  banners & text ads. Their latest fascination is to promote themselves on the so called “ social media platform ” and use the offerings of Web 2.0 to the hilt. In fact one gets to hear new terms and definations everyday, some call it  social media marketing others call it conversational marketing and the latest one is social media optimization .

Now the latest buzz is on “Viral marketing“, gawd of all the names why called it ” V..I..R..A..L ” .Had someone asked me 2-3 years back as to what do i understand by the word Viral and I would have replied with a defination of the dreaded water borne disease. Now suddenly  the same word brings in recall for a funny video/e-mail/pic that we would like to forward to our friends and they to their and so on….triggering the so-called viral effect.On the internet , viral marketing is fasting emerging as a tool for advertisers to promote their brands in a subtle but smart manner.

In India too the phenomenon of viral video marketing has caught up and brand names -big & small, all want to take the social media route into their consumers minds through animated viral videos.In the past one year or so virals(as they’re called) are part of any interactive agency’s plan when they’re planning online marketing campaigns for their clients.

Creative directors have been working over-time, on concepts that are “funny & catchy” (the essence of a viral video) to create a connect with the consumer.So much work to make him laugh on a 30-45 second video, he views on a video sharing portal like youtube or metacafe and forwards it to his friends on orkut, facebook, desimartini,……(there are now zillions of these “me too” social networks).

So we have seen some good viral videos and some bad ones-but one thing has been common in most of them which is the concept relying on a bollywood blockbustor(read Sholay/Deewar/DDLJ) and animated characters of Jay,Veeru, SRK.If is not Bollywood then it has to be cricket .

One acknowledges the logic behind this, considering our obsession with both bollywood and cricket , but then where is the innovation that we talk about all the time  in internet space ? ?

Can we please have some new creative ideas which give some much needed rest to dialogues such as “Mere paas ma hai” and characters such as “Gabbar” & “Thakur” which have been used a zillion times across print/radio/TV/internet.

De-war viral

Kahaani mein twist viral