The power of Viral Marketing

 

When social media is a big tool for promotion: Examples from airline industry

 Marjorie GARCON

Jonathan SARPAUX

“Did you see this video? It’s amazing!” Nowadays the viral marketing is certainly the best way to promote the tourism industry. And the airline brands know well about that.

***************************************************************************

Before to start: a presentation of what we are talking about

WOW Air is a low cost airline of Iceland.

Snapchat is a mobile messaging application used to share photos, videos, text, and drawings. There is one feature that makes Snapchat different from other forms of texting and photo sharing: the messages disappear from the recipient’s phone after a few seconds.

***************************************************************************

Last summer, Wow Air launched a competition on the famous social media Snapchat. The goal? Create a maximum 2 minutes “Snapchat story” to upload on the app of the company. Why? To win airline tickets to a destination among the 28 ones the company serves. Hotels, activities and a travel allowance were all paid by WOW air. How? The participants had to prove why they should be selected, they had to be creative, dynamic and involved.

By accepting the rules of the game, the “Applicants grant WOW air the right and permission to use all photographs, video recordings and other media, which the applicant will produce during  SnapTraveler project”. This game was a very good viral marketing as the company collected all the good videos on the tourism theme they can now use to promote their brand. Actually, the expenses they had to do were very low compared to the savings they did on the future advertising campaigns!

This is a good example of how the viral marketing can be used. This is a great way to create interest in a destination or particular tourism product in a different and memorable way. Viral Marketing is so successful because it creates the curiosity and desire needed to generate the demand for a product or service.

The winner in the use of viral marketing is Air New Zealand. The brand used the film “The Hobbit” to promote the safety of their planes. The video was directed by Kiwi filmmaker Taika Waititi and included real locations of the films and some people who worked for the film itself. The ad has become the airline's most successful ever, with 16 159 909 views at the very moment we are writing this article.


If we think about it, the viral marketing is certainly the best way to promote the tourism industry: like the tourism industry, the viral marketing is used to set off emotions and memories, and create a huge community. It’s not about facts and contents but the creative way to deliver the message. So now we are aware about that, we would like to know: in ten years, who will have launched the best viral marketing video among us?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBlRbrB_Gnc