Management Communication

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Question 1

Viral marketing defined as a marketing strategy which is conduct by a marketer to spread opinions and information about a good and services from one person to another person. Viral marketing is a technique that persuades Internet, web sites, email to pass marketing messages to other people (Techopedia.com 2015).

Viral marketing has functioned incredibly well for the marketers in upgrading the growth of their online businesses. This strategy allows the marketer to strengthen their influence, which will enhance to identify ongoing opportunities and also help to sponsor the investments necessitated for development of the brand. Viral marketing is a well-organized strategy to build awareness of product in order to attract consumers. In addition, viral marketing is an easier way to spread information with lower financial cost compared to other advertising techniques. And, viral marketing strategy campaign is implemented properly and awareness will lead to augmented huge traffic. Thus, its effects individuals interested towards the brand and effectively build reputation (Anderson 2011).

According to the case study, New Zealand is one of the country ranks 16 out of 27 OECD countries in 2008 with a road user death rate of 8.6 per 100 000 person. In order to improve the safety of roads and vehicles, viral marketing method has been conducted to advertise The Legends promotional campaign in New Zealand (Chitty et al. 2015).

The advertisement of the Legend campaign was posted in the social networks such as New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) official website, YouTube and Facebook page which is help to raise public awareness and change the behavior of drink drivers. In this case, the viral marketing has been extremely effective within six days of being updated by obtaining 120 000 hits on YouTube. And, according to New Zealand’s history the Legend campaign advertisement has become one of the top educational video on YouTube. Besides, marketers use viral marketing technique to avoid the risk of death from vehicles accidents in New Zealand. This is because viral marketing is the easiest way and more effective compared to traditional media (Chitty et al. 2015).

Overall, viral marketing is the only way to advertise the Legend campaign effectively to targeted audience. There is no doubt about it. Even though viral marketing is a difficult term to define, but the result from the campaign has been successful.

Question 2

Initial seeds act as the most influential users which is targeted in viral marketing campaigns. The users are recognized according to the centrality that they have within the formation of the social connection. And, influential users also called as (“seeds”) by viral marketing in social network (Mochalova & Nanoplous 2014).

A targeted approach to viral marketing was proposed and combined the advantages of viral and traditional targeted marketing. In order to boost up effectiveness of viral marketing process, the proposed approach exploits knowledge of potential market. This happened through choosing users based on local centrality regard to the potential market. The viral perform in social networks constantly occurs once the user are closer to each other because users selected by locally central are more activate and attain in potential market. Nevertheless, if the seed is chosen by globally central, the seed is further to each other and it will stop viral method from spreading information before reaches users in potential market. Viral marketing failed to maintain its focus and become sup-optimal because of globally central seeds. Hence, users of the locally central outperforms to users of the globally central (Mochalova & Nanoplous 2014).

Effectiveness of viral marketing has improved when the knowledge of the potential market is exploited. In the case, targeted approach is the most significant when the users are negative to the viral marketing. On the other hand, the selection of seeds in global centrality according to the network structure, thus the parallel seeds are often been selected whereas the local centrality identify the seeds according to the target market, so the dissimilar seeds will be selected.

According to the case study, in New Zealand the Legend campaign has focused on male drivers aged below 24 years than any other aged group. This is because they are close to each other so that the message reach in the potential market easily. New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) stated that about 40 per cent of male youngster below 24 years engaged in drink driving problem. Thus, an advertisement has created to reduce drink driving accidents among male youngsters. The advertisement which is performed by Legend campaign has spread throughout in New Zealand only but not global because the users are further from one to another and the message may not be receive by other users (Chitty et al. 2015).

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