viral marketing research

Viral marketing campaigns are an amazing way to generate a huge amount of buzz and brand awareness whether they are carried out online or offline.  the main aim of viral marketing is to increase brand awareness, increase web traffic, better brand visibility and to potentially achieve greater sales and revenue
An easy way think of a viral campaign is to imagine it as a computer virus the more it spreads the more people become aware of its existence and the more people share there knowledge with one another.  The main difference between viral marketing and regular marketing is that viral tends to be online and digitally based in the forms such as youtube videos, text messages and interactive games. Social media plays an important role in the spread of viral advertising as it helps spread them the most successfully. The quicker a viral advert spreads the more successful  it is  an example of this is the Cadburys eyebrow advert in 2009 witch received over seven million views in a matter of months. below are other examples of campaigns.

Compare the market/Meerkat 

alexander orlov is a fictional CGI character created by the british price comparison website compare the market.  alexander is the main marketing character for the company and since his introduction in 2009 the BGL's comparethemarket.com website is now ranked as the 4th most visited insurance website in the UK – up from 16th in January 2008; and overall sales have more than doubled year on year as a result of the TV ‘meerkat campaign As of August 2009, Aleksandr had more than 700,000 Facebook fans and 22,000 followers on Twitter, while on photo-sharing site Flickr there is a popular gallery of Aleksandr's family, described as 'a marker of the tragic state of humanity. The character remains extremely popular and a record company has expressed an interest in releasing a single featuring Aleksandr. 

The original theme to the adverts was to vent alexanders frustration that people keep coming to his website looking for car insurance, not meerkats, due to the similarity between the words 'Market' and 'Meerkat'. The TV campaign, featuring Aleksandr, was created by the VCCP Agency on behalf of BGL Group. The website – which is a real website created by the advertising agency – does indeed allow visitors to compare meerkats, and has more than 2 million hits per month. 
over the years lots of merchandise hes been released to further back up the companies viral campaign 

Book

Orlov's "autobiography" was released on 28 October 2010, entitled "A Simples Life: The Life and Times of Aleksandr Orlov". The book generated more pre-orders than that of other books released at the same time including Tony Blair's memoirs and more than double the pre-orders of Cheryl Cole's, Russell Brand's and Dannii Minogue's autobiographies. The book was published by Ebury Publishing and the autobiography reached #2 on the Amazon UK website on its first week of sale in October 2010.

Downloads

There are several downloads available on the website such as wallpapers, ringtones, text alerts, voicemail messages and some commercial videos. A branded iPhone application is also available for iPhone users, containing background information, an extensive database of English phrases in "meerkat" pronunciation (created from audio clips from the TV Ads), a mongoose "detector", and a collection of some of the videos produced by Aleksandr

Cuddly Toys

Cuddly toy versions of each of the meercat characters have been produced. From July 2011, any customer purchasing car, home or pet insurance via Compare the Market receives a cuddly toy.[15] Customers will receive one out of six meerkat characters: Aleksandr, Sergei, Vassily, Maiya, Yakov and Bogdan have 

company website