Entertainment Marketing, Viral Marketing & Advergames

Santa Age (unknown) pleaded guilty to Public Disorder Act and was given an ASBO for being drunk and urinating in a public place. He was fined 6 months community service in the stables and barred from drinking during the festive season.

“It was terrible! I didn’t know at first what he was doing until I could see that he had written rude words in the snow whilst relieving himself.” Said Granny Nosy.

It seems Santa had one too many drinks of Champagne and proceeded to relieve himself in a park on his way to the North Pole.

Unfortunately for him, he was spotted by Granny Nosy as she was walking her dog. She immediately alerted the authorities, who were able to apprehend the perpetrator without incident.

In his defence Santa claimed. “I only wanted to leave a message to all the naughty people out there not on my nice list.”

The Ecard Animated Greeting can be found here. www.DrunkSantaMail.com

Here’s an interesting viral marketing story that recently happened when Off licence Chain The Thresher Group sent a powerful offer to their suppliers.

This is one of those classic stories of viral marketing. The offer of 40% off Wines & Champagnes was sent to suppliers and quickly placed on their website for immediate friends.

This then spread to other friends & colleagues who in turn placed it on their blogs, websites and sent it via email.

The key here from viral marketing point of view is “The Offer” which is one of 3 key motivators in making something viral.

Further more the offer correctly answers the “what’s in it for me question” that many viral campaigns lack.

At writing the BBC, Daily Mirror, The Times and Many other websites and blogs have featured the coupons, not to mention users sending them to friends and colleagues.

The original website it was posted on reports over 800,000 downloads and counting. This doesn’t include the websites and other sources above so the real count is much more and all in a matter of weeks.

At the moment Thresher are holding their breath to see what the damage is as this was completely unintentional.

My bet is that even if they only break even it will be well worth while.

Why?

Because the coupon requires a sign up and thresher will now have the details of thousands of new customers eagerly waiting for the next offer.

The only question mark is if Thresher will run with it and capitalize on this to its fullest extent.

Until next time…

PS: For a plug & play viral game guaranteed to drive traffic to your brands check out ViralGameInABox.

Using entertainment to build brands and market products has been fairly common with mass medias such as TV.

The internet has been more the realm of short viral clips that spread through social groups and even other experiments in short films, animations and clips.

Games or advergames have been very hot in engaging an audience and with more people now spending time online than watching TV, the increase of broadband and the growing appeal of social groups, video and games online, branded entertainment looks like a great avenue online.

Here are 11 reasons why branded entertainment could help your brands and products reach a larger audience.

• Helps you create stronger and more loyal communities that keep coming back for more, time after time.

• Because by increasing addictiveness of your site, you keep your visitors hooked many times longer than the average site.

• You can boost your brand building by developing a strong positive association with branded entertainment.

• Helps you increase website traffic by viral marketing, word of mouth and placements on co-operative websites.

• Enables you to develop groups of advocates that actually promote your brand on their own accord.

• Because appealing branded entertainment helps with search engine optimisation if planned well as you get more inbound links from external sites.

• It can provide you with an additional means of added revenue using premium content or advertising or even as an add-on to something else.

• It helps you delivers higher brand exposure through prolonged and increased stay when users interact with your branded entertainment content.

• Allows for promotional tie ins with other parts of your company and marketing initiatives.

• Assists in collecting large user lists you can use to reconnect with your audience repeatedly.

• Because you can cut through the clutter and get your message seen as users actively seek out your branded entertainment.

Like any other piece of entertainment the creative aspect is very important but the internet allows us to add measurable data to get near instant ROI.

You’ll need to be very intimate with your target market and their tastes but the rewards could be exponential if done well.

For full details and a comprehensive whitepaper report please visit Branded Entertainment Whitepaper.

Using online games or games in general to promote your products and services is commonly referred to as advergames.

Advergames or advergaming is the use of games, most commonly web based games, to promote a product, brand, service or in some cases even an opinion, social viewpoint or political aim.

Why Use Advergames To Help Promote Your Brand, Product or Service?

Advergaming is rapidly gaining favour as an advertising tool due its ability to develop long lasting relationships with customers and capability to capture a user’s attention for an extended period. The “addictiveness” of advergaming makes it a very effective method of advertising and can produce a high return on your advertising dollar if done correctly.

Another advantage is that the games can be very viral in the sense that users will pass it along and recommend it to friends. Additionally players are actively interested in playing games so are more willing to give things a try.

Producing a successful advergame can be quite tricky as you need to find a good balance between the marketing message and the game. To intrusive and you’ll find yourself putting users off, not enough and you message may get lost.

Some of the benefits of games as a marketing tool are many and some core advantages are:

• Addictiveness: Good games can keep the user hooked for long periods of time and gives advertisers the opportunity to deliver their message.
• Brand Building: By offering a compelling and addictive experience the advertiser can build strong positive association to a brand.
• Traffic Increase: Games are extremely good at creating a traffic increase as more customers are made aware of its existence.
• Search Engine Optimisation: If done well a game can help increase search engine rankings as many sites, blogs and portals will link to your game.

Advergames allows a real positive value exchange that results in a win-win situation with your consumers as they get a free enjoyable game they can share with friends and on the other hand the brand then has a prolonged period to communicate with the user.

For full details and a comprehensive whitepaper report please visit http://www.azacreations.com/specialreport/

Author Bio
We specialise in creating online games to help promote your brands, advergames, and viral marketing entertainment that pulls in traffic and builds relationships with your customers.

Get a free whitepaper on How To Use Online Games To Promote Your Brand, Build Relationships & Drive Massive Traffic To Your Website. Click here for viral marketing success.

Email is a great tool to promote your viral marketing campaigns and if used correctly has the ability to exponentially grow your website traffic and potentially business.

Unfortunately due to bad practices and SPAM, email has been getting a lot of bad press. This makes viral marketing even more useful as the endorsed nature of it caused by friends sending to each other bypasses the usual negative associations with email.

In order to tap into this for your email viral marketing, here are a few tips.

1. Target Market

Define your target market and make sure you are in tune with their tastes and dislikes. Your viral campaigns, copy, look and feel needs to be in tune with their tastes and appeal to them. Really get into their heads so you know what makes them tick and what current events, news or other developments happening now would be of interest.

2. Incentive

Once you've defined your market you'll have a better idea of what kinds of incentives or content would motivate them to pass the email on to their friends, colleagues or other members in their community.

3. Identify Core or Power Users

To maximize your viral marketing efforts and also give it more credibility, having it trickle down from the respected or power users of a community with the capability to reach huge numbers in a short period can really help boost your viral marketing efforts.

You'll need to find these advocates and core users and have compelling enough content that makes it worth their while to spread.

4. Additional Email List Sources

In addition to identifying the core users, here are some other channels you can use to communicate your viral marketing content to.

In house List: Even small lists will do. You can actually grow your list as your current users encourage other to join.

Rented & Purchased Lists: Use lists that fit your target audience and power users.

Discussion lists/groups: Announce your viral content to discussion lists and groups that would genuinely find these interesting.

5. Other Peoples Email List

Affiliate Partnerships: If you have affiliates in your network then leverage these and their lists.

Comparative Industries: Find related industries, companies and services that are not direct competitors. Perhaps you can work on a simple joint venture with incentives that benefit both. Don't be shy in offering incentives to them and making worthwhile.

6. Technical Issues

In addition to spreading your message you'll need to look into any technical issues that might cause emails not to be readable or formatted correctly.

Test this first to make sure everything works fine.

Check your email doesn't raise any SPAM filtering flags, there are a number of solutions on the web that scan your emails and flag anything that could potentially be caught by SPAM filters.

7. Copy

This goes back to knowing your target market. The copy you use will be very important to ensure the emails get opened and that the specific action is taken. I.e. link clicked, email forwarded or whatever your end goals are.

Be specific in the call to action and ensure the first action is very simple as you can add steps later down the line.

Author Bio

Learn How to get an army of adoring fans to promote your products...eagerly & for free using Entertainment Marketing, Branded Entertainment & Viral Marketing. http://www.azacreations.com/specialreport/

Copyright © 2006 AzACreations

Get a free whitepaper on the Top 10 Viral Marketing Mistakes That Could Sink Your Campaign & How To Set Yourself Up For Viral Marketing Success. For viral marketing success click here or visit http://www.azacreations.com

You are granted permission to reprint/republish this article on your own Web Site, in your own ezine, autoresponder series, online as long as it is not altered in any way and the link and link anchors as well as Author Bio is kept intact and unaltered.

Top 10 Viral Marketing Tips

Using viral marketing online can give you a significant advantage due to the exponential growth possible. Used properly you can build brands, increase traffic, build lists and create a huge amount of good will towards your product or service.

Used incorrectly and you could be perceived to be spamming your users or get less that optimal results from your campaigns.

The article will cover some basic tips to help you ensure you have a checklist to work with.

Clear goals of the campaign. Make sure you have specific goals with you campaign this will affect the type of viral marketing you may want to pursue.

Stay in tune with your target audience. The type of viral marketing activities you do will greatly depend on your consumers taste so make sure you are aligned with these.

Show your brand. This may be the first contact you make with a prospect so make sure what you are promoting is clear and visible.

Measure your results. If you don't track the results then there is no way of knowing how successful this is. Define your success criteria and track accordingly.

Promote your campaigns. You may need to promote the viral campaign a bit just to get it started and there are many free ways you can do this. (See our Viral Marketing Mini Course for more information on this.)

Ask them to take action. Forward on the content, subscribe buy or whatever goals youv'e set.
Be explicit in your request for action. Don't just say forward this on. Spell it out with "Click here to recommend this to others you think would find it useful."

Keep testing campaigns and keeping tabs on the results so you know what works for you.
Viral marketing is not simply adding a "send to friend button" or similar so take some time to plan out your strategy and ensure it fits with your entire marketing mix.

Provide fun, entertaining, good quality content that is genuinely appealing to your target group. It's natural to want to share good content.

Author Bio

AzACreations, an authority on Entertainment Marketing & creating online games to help promote your brands, advergames, and viral marketing entertainment that pulls in traffic and builds relationships with your customers.

Copyright © 2006 AzACreations

Get a free whitepaper on the Top 10 Viral Marketing Mistakes That Could Sink Your Campaign & How To Set Yourself Up For Viral Marketing Success. For viral marketing success click here or visit http://www.azacreations.com

You are granted permission to reprint/republish this article on your own Web Site, in your own ezine, autoresponder series, product, bonus items, or any other format online as long as it is not altered in any way and the link and link anchors as well as Author Bio is kept intact and unaltered.

Welcome to the AzACreations.com weblog. We'll be posting regular thoughts, insights results and news on our Entertainment Marketing system as well as viral marketing, advergames and anything related that we have found useful.

Please explore our site for more information on using branded entertainment for you marketing purposes.

Warm Regards