Viral marketing was recognized as a full-blown phenomenon when the now-legendary Subservient Chicken advertisement created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky (see www.subservientchicken.com) in the spring of 2004 proved that consumers would forward interesting or esoteric campaigns to friends and family. The success of the Subservient Chicken and other similar campaigns has made it clear that the Internet can be used to influence trends and spread product awareness in ways far more cost-effective and exponential than traditional media.

Viral marketing campaigns can generally be lumped into four types of messages: (1) forward-to-a-friend, (2) incentivized viral, (3) stealth or guerrilla and (4) buzz or word-of-mouth. While much of the current public criticism against viral marketing involves companies who are allegedly deceiving customers by not disclosing monetary interests behind promotions, these practices are a small part of the full panoply of viral marketing techniques. Each of these different techniques can be described as follows:

• Forward-to-a-friend messages are those that attach a tag line at the end of an e-mail, or as part of a web site asking the recipient to pass the message along. Examples include chain letters, or more recently, advertisements with a tag that reads “Pass this on! It’s fun!” Since the success of viral marketing often relies upon the extent that the message will be conceived as interesting or entertaining, the rate at which the message is disseminated will be proportionate to the relevance of the message to its target.
• Incentivized viral messages are those that encourage recipients to provide a friend or family’s address in return for some reward. Examples include offering more expensive prizes upon referral of a friend, or accumulating points toward a specific prize. These are really nothing more than a subset of forward-to-a-friend e-mails, and are used widely in sweepstakes, where extra entries are given for each time an e-mail about the promotion is sent to a friend.
• Stealth or guerrilla messages consist of an e-mailed online advertisement, a news piece, or an active use of a product – without disclosure of its true form as an advertisement. The more creative and unconventional guerrilla marketing techniques have received a lot of media coverage, but have also prompted several advocate groups to criticize the techniques, particularly when directed at children. In employing guerrilla or stealth marketing, particular attention is paid to ensure that the advertisement appears to be spontaneous or natural and to feature as entertaining a message as possible.
• Buzz Marketing messages consist of advertisements or messages that create coverage by encouraging discussion, often by enlisting “normal” people to influence or create “buzz” within social networks. While similar to stealth marketing if no disclosure of compensation (be it monetary or product equivalents) is made, buzz marketing in a viral context is traditional word-of-mouth marketing enabled by technology. An example of buzz marketing is Google’s Gmail service, where the initial scarcity in receiving a Gmail account generated considerable buzz, thereby increasing desire for the service.

Regardless of what names it is given, there is one thing that is clear – viral marketing is advertising, and must be treated as such from a legal perspective.