It’s completely understandable that viral marketing has gone, well, viral. The internet is the hottest new place to share information. Why call each person on your contact list to tell them something when you can just post it on Facebook for everyone to see at once? I knew viral marketing was popular, I see it on my computer every single day. However, I didn’t know the complex logistics behind it. I thought that you could just put up any piece of information, and hope it spreads to a wide audience of consumers. When reading the Wikipedia article though, I learned about the three pieces of “basic criteria” that all of these advertisements meet. Reading through them, I quickly understood what the article was talking about when it mentioned the criteria. An advertisement must have a clear message, and it must strike its audience, and make them want to share it. Another key element is what the environment is like at the moment. By saying “the environment”, the article means that the current status of the world/what is currently going on, may affect how well a message is received, and spread around. In the end, I felt more educated about what viral marketing is, and how I’m going to use the criteria mentioned when making my three genres for project #3.
