Progress I n Science and Engineering Research J ournal I SSN 2347-6680 (E)

2014 PISER J ournal http://.piserjournal.org/

PI SER 13, Vol.02, I ssue: 03/06 May- J une; Bimonthly International J ournal
Page(s) 186-192
A Conceptual Study on Diffusion Process of Viral Idea
Anuja Shukla* and Ankur Shukla**
*Asst. Professor ,I.T.S Engineering College, Greater Noida.
**ASR, Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages Pvt Ltd.

Abstract: Seth Godin, Father of Permission Marketing has
opened new doors for marketing on Social Media. Social
Networking has now taken a larger than life shape. I t is an
indispensable part of our online personality voluntarily
created by us. LinkedI n, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace to
name a few, are few of Social networking websites that have
revolutionized the way Marketing Communications are
carried out. The companies have already entered the
boundary less world of Social media for promotion of their
products. I t has become an important area of research for
understanding the impact of using social media for
promotional activity.
According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of I ndia (TRAI ),
there are approx 83 million internet users in I ndia.
Marketing Research Company Neilson further did a stud to
find out that 70% of all internet users in I ndia access a
social networking site everyday. Facebooking is the new
tool of spreading a message today for the consumer under 25
( Nitin Khanapurkar, executive director,KPMG).

Keywords: Social Media Marketing, Applied Memetics,
Brand Led Marketing, Viral Marketing

Research Objective
This research is focused on understanding the various
efforts that go through in creating a viral advertisement.
The research includes various aspects important in
designing and selection of Meme that makes it
powerful. The research focuses on new ideologies
designed and developed in Viral Marketing. The
Analysis is based on Secondary collected data from
different reliable sources like newspapers, research
papers, websites, Social media magazines etc.

Corresponding Author: Ms. Ankur Shukla, ASR, Hindustan Coca
Cola Beverages Pvt Ltd.

Email I d: ankur.gshukla@gmail.com,
This paper tries to assemble the various theories and
create new ideology in th field of Social Networking for
using it as a promotional tool and analyze it for creating
new Marketing strategies. It is focused on Using
Applied memetics in spreading the marketing
communication through of Social Media Advertising.

I. INTODUCTION
In Year 2013, the world saw first ever Viral Summit
held at Las Vegas. The summit attempted to identify
trends in viral marketing methods for various media.
Viral marketing is an emerging Communication tool for
Companies that can promote their products in LCMS
(lower the cost and multiply the speed.) In order to
understand the strategies involved in meme designing,
we need to understand various terms associated to Viral
Marketing.

Viral Marketing
Word of Mouth (WoM) Marketing is of two types
a) Buzz Marketing
b) Viral marketing

Viral Marketing is basically Word of mouth marketing
which is one of the traditional methods of spreading the
word. The word of mouth has been now replaced by
word of Mouse. When compared with conventional
WoM, digital WoM has 2 key benefits.
Diffusion speed is very high.
Large size of social network.

Viral marketing is a powerful means for both marketers
and recipients to benefit from the innate helpfulness of
individuals in social networks. However, success hinges
upon the recognition of the strong need for influencers
Progress I n Science and Engineering Research J ournal I SSN 2347-6680 (E)
2014 PISER J ournal http://.piserjournal.org/
PI SER 13, Vol.02, I ssue: 03/06 May- J une; Bimonthly International J ournal
Page(s) 186-192
to be viewed as knowledgeable helpers in the social
network rather than as agents of the marketer. Schemes
that make overt attempts to co-opt users to promote
products and services are likely to upset the balance and
reduce the effectiveness of the approach to the detriment
of both the marketer and users who may have benefited
from the knowledge-sharing acts of influencers. Firms
would do well to reflect on this very carefully in
planning viral marketing efforts.
Word of
Mouth










+
Exponential
Growth










=
Viral
Marketing
The sharing
of
information
about a
product,
promotion
etc between a
consumer
and a friend,
colleague, or
other
acquaintance.
A group of
Internet based
applications
that build on
the ideological
and
technological
foundations of
Web 2.0 and
that allows the
creation and
exchange of
User
Generated
Content.
Electronic
Word of
Mouth in
which some
form of
marketing
message
related to
company,
brand or
product is
transmitted in
an
exponentially
growing way,
often through
the use of
social media
applications.

II. Importance of SOCIAL MEDIA

Sohaib Athar, a.k.a.@ReallyVirtual, became famous
after he live-tweeted the raid in which terrorist Osama
bins Laden was killed on 2 May 2011, Sunday, at
Abottabad, Pakistan.

Today people are sharing their lives online with each
other. Social Media is no more only a tool of
communicating with each other but also influencing the
pals.
48% of 18 to 34 year olds check Facebook right when
they wake up.

Successful Viral Marketing
According to marketing professors Andreas Kaplan and
Michael Haenlein, a viral marketing can work when the
three basic criteria are met, i.e.
Giving the right message to the right messengers in the
right environment
1. Messenger: Three specific types of messengers
are required to ensure the transformation of an
ordinary message into a viral one: market mavens,
social hubs, and salespeople.
a) Market mavens are individuals who are
continuously on the pulse of things
(information specialists); they are usually
among the first to get exposed to the message
and who transmit it to their immediate social
network.
b) Social hubs are people with an exceptionally
large number of social connections; they often
know hundreds of different people and have
the ability to serve as connectors or bridges
between different subcultures.
c) Salespeople might be needed who receive the
message from the market maven, amplify it by
making it more relevant and persuasive, and
then transmit it to the social hub for further
distribution. Market mavens may not be
particularly convincing in transmitting the
information.
2. Message: Only messages that are both memorable
and sufficiently interesting to be passed on to
others have the potential to spur a viral marketing
phenomenon. Making a message more memorable
and interesting or simply more infectious, is often
not a matter of major changes but minor
adjustments.
Progress I n Science and Engineering Research J ournal I SSN 2347-6680 (E)
2014 PISER J ournal http://.piserjournal.org/
PI SER 13, Vol.02, I ssue: 03/06 May- J une; Bimonthly International J ournal
Page(s) 186-192
3. Environment: The environment is crucial in the
rise of successful viral marketing small changes
in the environment lead to huge results, and
people are much more sensitive to environment.
The timing and context of the campaign launch
must be right.
Viral target marketing is based on three important
principles-
1. Social profile gathering
2. Proximity market analysis
3. Real-time key word density analysis
The key to effective viral: Create and execute an idea
that's intriguing enough to get consumers to interact.



III. MEME

A meme is "an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from
person to person within a culture.

Memetics is an approach to evolutionary models of
information transfer based on the concept of the meme.
Just as memes are analogous to genes, memetics is
analogous to genetics.

Applied memetics is the science of understanding what
makes a meme successful, which is the core problem
of viral marketing. The most prolific researcher of
applied memetics is Francis Heylighen who, in 1998,
published a paper titled What makes a meme
successful?

Selection criteria for cultural evolution where the details
graphs stages and criteria are responsible for a memes
successfulness which are summarized here.
Action Objective Subjecti
ve
Inter-
Subjecti
ve
Meme-
Centered
Assimila
tion
Distinctiven
ess
Novelty,
Simplicit
y,
Coheren
ce
Authority
,
Formalit
y
Self-
Justificatio
n
Retentio
n
Invariance,
Controllabil
ity
Coheren
ce,
Utility
Conformi
ty
Self-
Reinforcem
ent,
Intolerance
Expressi
on
Expressi
vity
Proselytism
Transmis
sion
Publicity Proselytism
Stages of Message Transmission
Assimilation Retention Expression Transmission
A successful
virus must
be able to
infect a
new host,
that is, enter
into its
memory.
The
second
stage of
memetic
replication
is the
retention
of the
meme in
memory.
To be
communica
ted to other
individuals,
a meme
must
emerge
from its
storage as
memory
pattern and
enter into a
physical
shape that
can be
perceived
by others.
To reach
another
individual, an
expression
needs a
physical
carrier or
medium
which is
sufficiently
stable to
transmit the
expression
without too
much loss or
deformation.

Criterias of Successful MEME
Suppose you have created a wonderful Viral campaign
but how much sure you are that it will be successful?
The important thing in Viral marketing is that carrier
propogates the message without being realising that he
is propagating an idea.
A. High Copying Fidelity
Richard Dawkins (the father of memetics) said that
memes must contain 3 traits to be successful and one of
Progress I n Science and Engineering Research J ournal I SSN 2347-6680 (E)
2014 PISER J ournal http://.piserjournal.org/
PI SER 13, Vol.02, I ssue: 03/06 May- J une; Bimonthly International J ournal
Page(s) 186-192
them is copying fidelity. The idea must be capable of
copying itself with a high degree of accuracy; otherwise
it will soon become unrecognizable. A good seeding
mechanism will allow for this and provide a way for
users to copy and spread the viral creative in or close to
its original form. Traditional offline word of mouth
tends to have lower copying fidelity than online,
because of the lack of copy-and-paste functionality, but
even among digital communications methods, some
provide greater accuracy in reproduction than others.
For instance, SMS generally requires that a person
retype the message before sending it to a new friends,
whereas email has forward button that sends verbatim
copies.

B. I ncreased Reach

Another criterion for successful memetic spread cited
by Dawkins is fecundity. That is, the faster a meme
reproduces, the more successful it will be. For seeding
this means that a worthwhile medium will expose as
large an audience as possible to the viral message.

C. Prolific Audience

Beyond simply reaching as wide an audience as
possible, the best viral seeding methods will expose as
prolific an audience as possible to the message. My
research has shown that savvy social media users tend
to share content more often and with more people than
normal web users, meaning that social media sites
attract a very prolific audience that can spread your
message further than the average audience.

D. Permanence

The third criteria mentioned by Dawkins is longevity, a
meme will be more successful the longer each copy of it
survives. A good seeding platform will provide for
some level of permanence, so that users can refer back
to the source of the message in the future
E. Trust
Individuals are exposed to countless organic memes and
intentionally viral messages every day and the web has
accelerated this trend. For a person to be attracted by a
piece of content and decide to spend some of their time
in furthering it, they must trust the source to some
degree. Francis Heylighen mentioned authority as
memetic selection criteria in his 1998 work on the
subject. Depending on the type of content, the level of
trust required varies, for purely entertainment-based
content, the trust threshold is low, it is higher for
instructional content and still highest for news-type
content. In social communications, typically trust comes
from authority (a well known news source) or social
proof, obvious signs that many of a persons peers also
trust the message. Common examples of social proof
are the huge email-forward-chains that contain hundreds
of email addresses, and the hundreds or thousands of
votes a piece of content will receive on a social voting
site.

F. Conversation

One of the motivations most oft-cited by respondents to
my survey was the desire of the sharer to start a
conversation or receive feedback about a piece of
content. Communal recreation is a reoccurring theme in
social and contagious communications, including
gossip, slang, rumors, oral tradition, and urban legends.
The best viral seeding platforms will allow for viewers
to comment on the content, adding their own take on it,
and furthering the process of communal recreation.

Criteria Levels
a. Objective Criterion: It denotes selection by
phenomena or objects independent of the hosts and
memes involved in the process.
b. Subjective Criterion: It represents selection by the
subject who assimilates the meme.
c. Inter subjective Criteria: It represents selection
Progress I n Science and Engineering Research J ournal I SSN 2347-6680 (E)
2014 PISER J ournal http://.piserjournal.org/
PI SER 13, Vol.02, I ssue: 03/06 May- J une; Bimonthly International J ournal
Page(s) 186-192
through the interactions between different subjects.
d. Meme-Centered Criteria: It represents the
internal structure of the meme.

Steps in Designing a Successful Viral marketing
Campaign
1. Setting up Goals of the company
2. Identifying the Target Audience
2. Developing Meme
3. Selecting the Carrier
4. Seeding the Idea
5. Automatic spread of Idea

As of jan 2012, Facebook and twitter combined have
over 1 billion users. With 1 in 7 people on entire
planet using facebook, and 1 in 15 using twitter.
86% of B2B firms and 82% of B2C firms are using
social media. If youre not, youre behind.
87% of businesses just starting out have absolutely no
clue where to start, what to post, how to manage their
social media accounts or even what social networks to
create accounts on.


Fig 1.1
Marketing traditionally depends upon the speed of
Word of Mouth. Initially Marketing was aimed at
targeting large number of people and finally reaching to
the ultimate consumer. The Traditional Sales Funnel
and Traditional Viral Funnel are represented in given
figure.

I believe Viral Marketing is like Hour Glass. We need
to send Meme to large number of target audience. It gets
resonated by only few and out of which very few people
act as carrier to the seed. These Carriers acts as
Advocate in propagating the Idea Virus. As a marketer
we should try to create Advocates for the product
instead of propagator. An advocator amplifies the reach
of the idea by exponential growth.


Fig 1.2 Glass hour Shape of Viral Funnel

IV. Life Cycle of an Idea Virus

An Idea Virus goes through series of steps before dying.
The sequential steps travelled by an Idea Virus are listed
below.
Progress I n Science and Engineering Research J ournal I SSN 2347-6680 (E)
2014 PISER J ournal http://.piserjournal.org/
PI SER 13, Vol.02, I ssue: 03/06 May- J une; Bimonthly International J ournal
Page(s) 186-192
1. I dea Generation: First of all an Idea needs to be
generated. An idea should be such that it meets the
objective for which the idea is being propagated.
2. Seeding & I nfection: Once the idea plan has been
designed, the next step is to plant the seed into the
fertile carriers. It involves right selection of carrier
who should be able to carry forward the idea. The
aim is not to make followers but the advocates.

3. Resonation: The infected receiver is impressed
with the idea so much that the idea starts to
resonate in his mind. He cant keep away himself
from the thought of the idea.
4. Emesis: The receiver is so much obsessed with the
idea that he vomits out it with high involvement to
his peer group. The idea could generate a sense of
superiority, a sense of belongingness or even a
sense of advancement so that he feels proud in
sharing the idea. But each node cannot turn out to
be an active one. So the effect of influence goes
does with the more share.
5. Multiplication: Now the process of multiplication
starts. Each infected receiver propagates the idea to
many others and hence the idea multiplies.

6. Exponential Spread of Virus: When the
multiplication starts, the idea itself starts to grow
in exponential rate. Now this process becomes out
of control of marketer. It now completely relies on
the strength of network and authenticity of
Influencer.
7. Death-When an idea has complete its life cycle,
The idea ends up in death. The life cycle of idea is
short lived. By the time that idea is propagating, the
receiver may be affected by another
idea.
Fig 1.3 Life cycle of Idea Virus
Measuring Success of I dea Virus
An idea propagates at its speed. It is an uncontrollable
mechanism. A mechanism is designed as under to study
and evaluate that the speed of idea can be managed with
the help of catalyst:

Idea Virus Matrix Network Strength
High Low
Influencer
Authenticity
High Viral Resonance
Low Spreadable Death

Fig 1.4 Idea Virus Propagation Matrix Matrix

1. Viral: If the Network strength is high and the
Influencer authenticity is also high, then the
probability of Idea to become viral increases.
2. Resonance: If the Influencer authenticity is very
high (like celebrity) but the network strength is low,
idea will resonate in the mind of carrier but will not
be able to propagate or multiply.
3. Spreadable: If the Influencer authenticity is low but
Progress I n Science and Engineering Research J ournal I SSN 2347-6680 (E)
2014 PISER J ournal http://.piserjournal.org/
PI SER 13, Vol.02, I ssue: 03/06 May- J une; Bimonthly International J ournal
Page(s) 186-192
the network strength is high so, the chances of idea
to spread increases.
4. Death: If the Influencer authenticity is low and the
network strength is also low the idea virus is bound
to die.
V. CONCLUSION
The future of viral marketing currently remains
uncertain, although, the possibilities and potential of
this tactic of reaching and marketing to consumer
groups are endless. Moreover, as more forms of
communication are created by technology and more of
the population maintains a presence online involved in
social media interactions, so will the inventiveness of
marketers as they attempt to permeate these networks.
Furthermore, we can be certain that marketers will
continue to attempt to achieve mass marketing success
by utilizing consumers as vehicles for transmitting their
viral messages

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