Me and Viral Marketing

I really enjoyed Purpuro's article on Viral Marketing. The ideas the Purpuro brought up were very similar to alot of the ideas that are in the book The Tipping Point. In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell says that marketing is about creating a buzz and creating word of mouth communication that spreads quickly to the masses. Purpuro uses the same premise of creating good word of mouth marketing in order to get support and raise funds.

Although this may seem like a funny example, reading this article reminded me of a campaign that I personally was involved in as a student. When I was an undergrad at GW, I ran for student body president (this website may make its way onto the worst website ever list). When I had made the decision to run, I has just finished reading The Tipping Point and I was very intentional about doing things that were going to create a word of mouth buzz around campus. I knew that the other candidates in the race were going to ran the same types of campaigns and that I had to do something different to cut through the clutter of what are incredibly competitive elections (Yes, GW students care about politics. Go figure). The slogan of the campaign was "Say No To Politics" and the message was that this campaign was about being different, being fun and taking to overly political climate out of student government. By having a message that cut against the grain of student government hackery, we were able to get good buzz around campus and get people involved who were sick of the overly political student government and wanted to do something about it.

While I was not victorious in the end, using the viral marketing principles got people involved in the process who ordinarily wouldn't really care about such an election. Purpuro says that a compelling message will create a good word of mouth. Having an effective message certainly helped my effort in creating buzz and it certainly helps others who are running for office.