"Viral marketing and viral advertising are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of virus or computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet."
Use of social networks (school mums, etc): check Use of viral technique (gossip): check Word of mouth and networks: (mumsnet etc):check Increase in product sales : check
So it looks like viral marketing, walks like viral marketing, quacks like viral marketing...by golly, Watson, could it be viral marketing?
Don't let the fact that there was also conventional advertising out there fool you. I lost track of the number of families who told me they had a 4*4 because of factors never advertised in the campaigns and factors they had heard from their friends or children and 'knew for a fact' (like the safety issue which turns out to be very debatable).
One of the biggest factors in our village was a certain TV personality whose children went to the nursery school. Clearly if she used one, then it must be worth it, no? The word soon spread.
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