Viral Marketing Case Study: HBO Blood Virus

Case Study: HBO Blood Virus

Joseph Scarimbolo

Marketing 3100

Case Study 2

04/15/2016

Professor Gannage

Communication Process for Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is a technique where interest is created in a product prior to the product being released on the market. The viral marketing approach creates brand awareness by communicating their message through social media sites and other internet sites, in order to create a buzz. For HBO, the viral marketing approach was to create a fake product and a website advertising this blood product in order to capture the attention of the consumer. The campaign began with mysterious letters in dead languages which were sent to prominent occult film bloggers and fans. The interest

By creating the letter and the webpage, Campfire Media was able to create interest in the product which caused it to go viral. A good example of a successful viral marketing campaign involved the movie the Blair Witch Project. Film makers created the film using realistic home video footage and created a webpage which was designed to convince consumers the story in the movie was real. As a result, many people believed the story was true before they went and watched the movie. The movie was a great success, despite its poor production value, creating a new marketing approach.

Conventional marketing employs the use of traditional media sources to advertise a product. Viral marketing takes a completely different approach. In this approach, the consumer is actively involved in spreading the message and creating hype about the product or service (Larson, 2009). The consumer engages in more personal interactions with the marketing message which results in the development of relationships between the consumer and the product. With True Blood, a false product was created which drew the consumer in and captured their interest in the new television series on

The pull strategy is designed to draw the consumer to the product. The push strategy is a more in your face approach while the pull strategy finds ways to get the consumer to seek out the product (Corniani, 2008). The movie Cloverfield employed a pull strategy by drawing consumer in through an unexplained clip which aired before the movie Transformers. Next Cloverfield, tied the mysterious clip in with webpages and a fake drink product called Slusho. The Dark Knight employed a pull strategy by developing a website on one of the character is the movie, Harry Dent, and then creating a second webpage where the Joker would appear and send users on joker-themed scavenger