Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is probably to most popular marketing strategy used today thanks to the epidemic of social media. I noticed while reading the Wikipedia page that viral marketing is strategy I encounter daily. As a makeup artist, I’m very involved in the Youtube beauty community. The Wikipedia article mentioned that the messengers chosen by the companies to spread their messages can be referred to as ‘gurus.’ On Youtube, these makeup artists with thousands, often millions, of followers promote products and brands in ad videos, favorites videos, first impressions videos (etc) all the time. In addition, often the ad that plays before your selected video even starts is often a cosmetic/beauty ad. It’s surprising that the first attempt at viral marketing was documented in 1995 and in only two decades it’s grown to dominate every kind of market. The explanations provided by the criticisms of Dough Rushkoff explaining the parallels of viral marketing and a biological virus shows how infectious advertising in today’s society is meant to be. In addition, my roommate is a marketing and communications major and she works as an ‘independent contractor’ running popular social media accounts and social media accounts for businesses. She uses viral marketing strategies to gain these pages popularity and/or acquire business for retailers.