viral marketing
Marketers create programs that are "not interruptive or [about] sneaking an ad in, but part of an overall self-expression experience.
Marketing is increasingly about self-expression, and social networking and virtual worlds and embellishing their pages. This is accomplished by using tools, characters, and icons designed to promote empowerment and self-expression.
Cross-device integration: mobile gadgets, IM, and online sites are not separate channels it will all occur seamlessly over multiple devices.
Engagement marketing and Participatory Advertising Advertisers sponsor home pages, skins, and other branded content so kids who are attracted to a sponsor will make it their own, and spread it virally, becoming brand advocates.
Brand integration is absolutely a way to fit in and stand out as part of a social network. But as online consumers become more sophisticated. The sponsor must be brought into the community beyond 'click me, touch me, view me.
Parents may want to know what "brand integration" means. It's the buzzword social-networking companies use when they talk about how they're going to make money on the millions of profiles and blogs on their sites.
The kid version of "brand integration," is also called "immersive advertising," and finds sponsors like Lucky Charms cereal. Two clever examples in teen social networking are Tagged.com's advertiser-sponsored "tags," which described as graphic icons that kids can trade with online friendship bracelets.
Advertisers sponsor home pages' 'skins' [such as a Web page's "wallpaper" and other elements that give it a certain look and feel] and other branded content so kids who are attracted to a sponsor 'will make it their own, and spread it virally, becoming brand advocates.
VIRAL VIDEO"S
Social Networking [1] Getting Integrated
"Social networking is plainly the future of media," says Greg Tseng, co-founder and CEO of San Francisco-based Tagged.com. A key trend in OSN for 2007 is a heightened focus on integrated brand engagement. Teens constitute Tagged's target audience. Tagged relies on advertiser-sponsored "tags" - graphic icons that kids can trade à la online friendship bracelets. The tags "automatically imply endorsement for a product [and] allow for significant brand engagement integrated into the fabric of the site. But they're less intrusive than regular advertising."In terms of revenue-generating business models, OSN sites remain in an embryonic state. Some, such as MySpace, have turned to music-downloading services and real-life events to boost their bottom lines; Facebook this fall introduced a low-cost, self-service marketing component, and several corporations have launched their own branded social networking sites and channels. In an effort to appeal to its target's passion for self-expression.
