Advertising Age reported about a company called Competitrack that tracks the success of viral marketing campaigns. I believe that Competitrack is the only company doing this so I was curious to see what who they consider to be the most viral brands.
According to their web site Competitrack classifies viral marketing as:
We look for online messages that are aimed primarily at attracting and engaging an audience, and secondarily at supporting a brand or product. The brand or product message is often quite subtle-sometimes even indiscernible. We also seek out negative messages that are circulating virally-user generated spoofs, parodies or satires which poke fun, or are critical of a brand.
Its database now contains over 4,000 ads and over 1,000 advertisers and:
The spectrum of brand names doing this may surprise you. Our archive contains pharmaceutical firms, insurance companies, appliance manufacturers, telecommunications providers, packaged goods companies-a who’s who of mainstream and emerging brands, some leading the way, and others experimenting for the first time. We bring viral advertising into perspective with a team of full-time viral advertising analysts.
So who are the 10 champs of viral marketing? Well they are:
- Nike
- Anheuser-Busch
- Microsoft
- Volkswagen
- Axe
- Apple
- Coca-Cola
- Adidas
- PepsiCo
- McDonald’s
I find it interesting that these are all consumer brands, leaders in their own industry, and who have very large offline and online marketing budgets. The only surprise name is probably Axe, which is believe is part of The Axe Effect campaign.
But the question I have from looking at this list is; Are these really the 10 biggest viral brands? They might be some of the biggest brands, but I am not sure about most viral. What do you think? How do you think are the most viral brands?
Look at Nike’s soccer commercials – they’re popular, cool, frequently downloaded on P2P networks …
Axe keeps coming up with brilliant campaigns. After the viral videos, it was the Gamekillers site. Now, they’ve got a co-promotion with collegehumor.com.
Apple … well, Digg loves em. Nuf said.