Viral Marketing using blogs is becoming more common - but it’s still a very underutilized marketing approach that has many, many opportunities. 

"When Nokia Corp. released its camera smartphone last fall, the marketing campaign cut back on news releases and flashy ads. Instead, the company sent sample products to 50 tech-savvy amateur bloggers with a passion for mobile phones."

"The tactic paid off, as word spread online about the N-series phone, driving up sales and contributing to a 43 percent profit boost for Nokia last quarter."

I think Jason Dowdell wrote about a Samsung A920 phone that was "given" to him (no strings attached).

"So I received the Samsung A920 cell phone last week. This is the same phone Sprint has offered up to a few bloggers as part of their Ambassador program. Shortly after receiving the phone I came down with a terrible flu-like virus and was unable to work much less play with a new cell phone, even if it was free."

Sprint sent him the phone to play with - with 6 months of free service - hoping, but not requiring him to blog about it.  I don’t know how they chose Jason’s blog, MarketingShift.com, my guess is they did some research on Technorati first then came up with the top 50 bloggers for a certain category, contacted them, and after all the legal formalities - essentially gave away 50 phones with 6 months of free service - and hoped reach a huge windfall in advertising they’d save.

" highly doubt Sprint really knew much about me when they filled out the contact form here on Marketing Shift. They probably just knew that I dominated the search results for anything and everything I post about and some other bloggers talk about mshift every so often.

Add to that the fact that I put up the banner on top of mshift saying we’re looking for some good sponsors and it’s a done deal.

However, they got really lucky, in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, I fell privileged to be able to get free cell phone service for 6 months and get to keep the phone at the end of the period. But I doubt they knew how much I could use the free internet access their new phone offers… when you’re traveling it hurts to pay that extra $10 a day at the already overpriced hotel for internet access and now I don’t have to.

I also doubt they had any clue I was looking at some of the new micro cell phone service providers that cater to niche markets. And that this phone has pretty much everything I want and a ton of stuff I don’t need but don’t mind having since it doesn’t seem to have an effect on the batter life of the phone.

All in all I’m quite pleased with the Sprint Power Vision Phone and Networks, especially since they’re free. There are several points I’m going to save and let simmer regarding the viral marketing campaign Sprint’s put together. They’ve done a lot of things right and (at least right now) there’s only one thing they did wrong. I’ll let you in on that little secret next week. "

Things can happen like that - need to find the right list of bloggers and make the right offer and believe in your product or service.  B.L. Ochman is a master at this - there are a couple of people out there like this, most don’t know how to do it.  Certainly, B.L. has opened up my eyes to things like the Brawny Academy, Canadian College of English and a campaign for Stormhoek (see below)

"Gapingvoid’s Hugh Macleod created the blog-based marketing campaign for South African winery Stormhoek that involved sending wine to other bloggers and holding 100 wine tasting dinners. The campaign has bested the big guys including Chivas Regal, Campari and Mateus Rose to win "The Best Consumer Campaign" by the 2006 "The Drinks Business Awards" at the London Wine and Spirits Fair.

This proves once again that when a good product engages consumers in conversation and creates community, the result is the de-commodification of the product and the creation of a global microbrand."

Get that!  "De -COMMODIFICATION"!  How often does that happen?  Usually it’s the other way around - where everything valuable ends up becoming a commodity.

Getting back to the Nokia phones that were given to 50 bloggers - no strings attached:

""So many blogs picked it up that it blew out our server twice," said Andy Abramson of Comunicano Inc., who developed the blogging program for Nokia. "We were getting thousands of hits per second. When you look at the body of information that was generated around this, we knew we had something very special."

"Companies are increasingly partnering with hobby bloggers to harness the burgeoning influence of online buzz. Through the digital grapevine, companies reap the marketing rewards of free publicity, higher rankings on search engines and immediate access to conversations with consumers."

This technique would have worked with Juan Enriquez’s Untied States of America; Juan Enriquez  hired me to do a little research into Blog Buzz last December - the problem in his case, he did not have a blog.  When I ran into B.L. Ochman last Feburary, at SES, I asked her about this.  It seems like most PR companies don’t really know how to do it either - nor do they have a good idea about how to use Search Engines to drive traffic and Buzz.

But now I’m ready to say that I’m thinking along the lines of Buzz that was generated by Nokia when it gave away the 50 phones.   In reality, that strategy, were it played out correctly would have yield one of my former architect consortium clients far more traffic than all the PPC traffic, most which never converted anyway, got them - that traffic burnt a deep hole in their operating expenses and yet added nothing.   What if they just did something like the Nokia project - but with what they sell?

I’m not saying this approach is right for everyone - but I am saying - you need to think differently if your going to make the best use of the Internet, Bloggers, Web 2.0 and all the new stuff coming out.