How can I generate viral marketing for products/services?

Viral marketing ideas are clever ideas. A virus attacks the immune system and many people believe that consumers are now ‘immune’ to advertising. Hence, we need viral marketing to break down the body’s (mind's) defenses, and allow brands and ideas and concepts and content to form more intimate relationships with their customers.

This being the case, who wouldn’t to have a successful viral marketing campaign for their products or services? It is every marketer’s dream – to be able to create a viral marketing concept that travels the globe in a short span of time and sells their products with little or relatively low marketing & advertising costs.

You however of course know that deliberately creating a viral marketing campaign is not easy, but like deliberate creativity (which some think is a contradiction in terms), viral marketing campaigns can be created through the understanding of the basic concepts and through honing your skills & practicing it.

One excellent illustration of how a viral concept can be dissected and analysed was given in the classic book “Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell. There are other examples as well where the concept of viral marketing has been analysed and useful insights gleaned.

This section is all about viral marketing, and more important, about how to create a successful viral marketing campaign.

This page – like all the other pages at BillDoll.com, The Billion Dollar Questions Site - is a work-in-progress and stuff will get added regularly.

Web References

Memorable Ads – provides a good list of web resources and content for memorable advertisements and advertising/marketing materials.
Raising the Bar on Viral Web Ads – Business Week Article; video viral marketing
Using Viral Marketing Techniques to Promote your Small or Home-based Business – from All Freelance
AdverBlog – Advertising & Online Marketing Blog
Unleashing the Idea Virus – Seth Godin - download the PDF version free from this web page
Unleashing the Idea Virus – see a Jul 2000 article from Seth Godin here @ Fast Company
Marketing Sherpa’s Viral Marketing Hall of Fame 2006 – campaigns you should swipe ideas from
Viral Marketing via Blogging
An old (dot com era) article from Business Week – Epidemic of Viral Marketing?
Mining Knowledge-sharing Sites for Viral Marketing – a research paper, highly mathematical, but skip the math and read their inferences. Useful, though not recommended to be read at a time when you are tired or sleepy! (PDF)
Networks Work – Viral Marketing as a Tool for Launching Innovations – From Arthur D Little (PDF)
Viral Marketing – Spread a cold, catch a customer – some good ideas here, from Biz Journals
The Virus of Marketing – from Fast Company
From Spam to Viral Web Video with John Cleese – from The Manager
The Truth about Viral Marketing – Viral marketing, says the author, is like sex – everyone talks about it but very few are good at it…hmmmphhh. The author gives you three fundamentals of viral marketing in this article. As for sex, he says you are on your own.
How to Catch on to Viral Marketing – a useful article that analyses the mistakes companies make when trying to launch a viral campaign
The Power of Viral Marketing – article analyzes the different genres of viruses
Germ Warfare – How to Spawn a Marketing Virus – An old (1998) – but good – article.
Word of Mouth Marketing – Temper Your Enthusiasm? – from Clickz
43 Word of Mouth Ideas You Can Implement – from Word of Mouth Marketing Association (PDF) (see also: Word of Mouth Association Blog)
Seven Tricks to Viral Web Marketing - Baekdal
The Buzz Saw Word of Mouth Marketing Blog
If Open Source is the Future of Software, Open Source Marketing is the Future of Marketing – Ian’s Blog
Blogging Viral Network Effects – Case Study - from the Marketing Excellence Blog @ HP
Viral Marketing - By Joseph Jaffe - In this first of a two-part series, Joseph describes how word-of-mouth translates to the Web and provides some examples – from iMedia Connection
Viral Marketing or Link Baiting? – from Top Rank Blog
Viral Marketing Gone Bad - No company should ever launch a viral campaign without some plan of action for how to scale if the response is larger than you'd imagined. Apparently the team at Starbucks missed that segment of Viral Marketing 101...find out why from this blog article @ Web Analytics World blog
Interesting Viral Marketing Survey Results - summary of results of a survey on Viral Marketing Programs from MarketingSherpa - from the Affiliate Blog article
Secrets of Viral Marketing – from Ecademy
Yes, You Can Predict Viral Marketing - By Joseph Carrabis - Some marketers think that you can't control word-of-mouth marketing, but the NextStage CRO disagrees. Read the article at iMedia Connection
Social Networks and Viral Marketing - By Joseph Carrabis - The NextStage CRO talks about joke lists, your online network, and how trust powers good word of mouth @ iMedia Connection
Why Some Viral Marketing Doesn't Work - By Joseph Carrabis - The NextStage CRO explains how conveying attainability to your consumer can light up your word of mouth campaign @ iMedia Connection
The Little Bug that Could - By Jim Meskauskas - Media Strategies Editor Jim Meskauskas lays out the history of viral marketing, from nascent pathogen to full-fledged epidemic @ iMedia Connection. See also: The Little Bug that Could (Part 2) - By Jim Meskauskas - Jim Meskauskas describes what it takes for a campaign to become viral.
Viral Marketing Web Resources – from Wilson Web ( a good list of links to viral mktg articles)
Viral Marketing Gets Structured – from Clickz
Three WOM Channels You Can't Ignore - By Leah Woolford - A shift in the media landscape makes it imperative for marketers to go "beyond the browser" with marketing efforts, says this iMediaConnection article
Instant Branding: Viral E-Mail, Part 2 - By Martin Lindstrom - January, 2006 article @ Clickz - You see instant branding in email messages in particular. Because of their irresistible wit, the messages are passed on to friends to share a wry smile, regardless of the fact the senders know they're distributing advertising for free, says this article and provides a pathway to get there
Humor Speeds Viral Spread - by Gavin O'Malley, Media Post , Jan 2006 . Study finds that humor is the most effective tool to encourage strong viral circulation, followed by news, medical and health care, religious and spiritual material, video games, business and personal finance.
Can Viral Marketing Be Serious? - By Sean Carton | May 2005, Clickz
Fun @work: Viral Marketing for the Office - By Heidi Anderson - May 2004 - Clickz
Creating Brand Buzz in Forums - By Neal Leavitt - May 2004, iMediaConnection
Jockeying for Exposure, ClickZ Experts, 2004 case study of Jockey's pre-Christmas 'Make-a-Flake' promotion illustrates the huge potential of a well-crafted viral campaign. With no more promotion than 2 e-mailings to a house list of 1500 names, the campaign drove 1 million visitors to the campaign's destination micro-site.
Tips for Optimizing Viral Marketing Campaigns - By Brady Brewer | February 2001 @ Clickz - At the heart of e-mail marketing are concerns over sending unsolicited email, but by using viral marketing tactics carefully, marketers may avoid negative reactions and gain an excellent returns as they increase the reach to a group far beyond their original audience, says this article
What Makes it Viral? - Viral marketing is not an objective: It is an integral part of a campaign strategy that is used to achieve objectives, says Kathleen Riley @ this Clickz article
Is Viral Marketing All It's Cracked up to Be? - By Sandeep Krishnamurthy - May, 2000 @ Clickz
Viral Marketing: Pitfall or Windfall? - Kim Brooks - February, 2000 article @ Clickz
What is Viral Marketing? - By Steve Jurvetson of DFJ - May, 2000 article
Something Worth Talking About - Nick Usborne - December, 1999 @ Clickz. Nick says in order to be different from the crowd and attract qualified traffic with less ad bucks, it is necessary that every part of your site is worth talking about
Germ Warfare: How to Spawn a Marketing Virus - Kim Brooks - October, 1998 @ Clickz - The best marketing is marketing you don't have to do yourself. Call it word-of-mouth, spawning, self-propagation, organic or viral marketing. The basic idea? To be so cool that you don't even have to market yourself. To be so popular that everyone does the marketing for you. And to be so sneaky about it that it looks totally effortless, says this article
The Dynamics of Viral Marketing - research by Carnegie Mellon University, University of Michigan & HP Labs - This research paper presents an analysis of a person-to-person recommendation network, and tries to analyze how user behavior varies within user communities defined by a recommendation network. Product purchases follow a 'long tail' where a significant share of purchases belongs to rarely sold items. (PDF format)
Mining Knowledge-Sharing Sites for Viral Marketing - Matthew Richardson and Pedro Domingos - Department of Computer Science and Engineering - from Research @ Microsoft with University of Washington (PDF)
Viral Marketing with Blogs – from Business Blog Consulting
Viral Marketing Tips – from Taming the Beast
Viral Marketing Resources & News @ Media Buyer Planner
The Viral Garden’s Top 25 Marketing Blogs
Viral Marketing News & Insights from Biz Report
Men with Menstrual Cramps – P&G Viral Effort Gets Wild & Crazy
Insights into Viral Marketing @ Viral Meister
Practical Insights into Viral Marketing – Popular Media Viral Marketing Blog, Apr 2006 article
Social Networks and Viral Marketing - By Joseph Carrabis - The NextStage CRO talks about joke lists, your online network, and how trust powers good word of mouth @ iMedia Connection
Viral Marketing Disguised As Irrelevant Content – A brief review of the movie site Donnie Darko, which also serves as its online promotion arm
Viral Marketing Using Videos Posted on Video Sharing Networks such as YouTube
Top 9 Movie / Film-related Viral Marketing Stories of 2006 – see the list @ GreenCine
Viral Relationship Marketing: Step by Step - by Sergio Balegno - Studies have shown that, on average, at any given time, there are nearly four times as many qualified but longer-term prospects than there are immediate selling opportunities. Unfortunately, these qualified but less-immediate opportunities often fall through the cracks because few companies have the time to build a personal relationship with longer-term prospects. This is where virtual relationship marketing (VRM) comes in. The goal of VRM is to get prospects to qualify themselves and tell you when they are in the buying mode. Read more from this article @ Chief Marketer
Seven Tricks to Viral Web Marketing - Baekdal
A chart on viral marketing from Justilien

Points & Nuggets

One way of looking at viral marketing, in the words of the author of article on viral marketing: “Viral marketing is replacing traditional marketing because it allows low-cost, rapid, highly targeted, personalized, and therefore extremely effective, communication and propagation of marketing messages to existing and potential customers, by leveraging relationships of trust”
In another author’s words, the viral web sites have been usually those that:

Stir up instant controversy and provoke reaction
Make you fall off your chair laughing while trying to stop your ribs exploding!
Totally repulse you and yet you still can't help but have another look anyway.
Are just so stupid, so off the wall, that you can't believe your eyes!

Jupiter Media Metrics said in a 2001 report that 45 percent of online shoppers choose web sites based on word-of-mouth recommendations, yet only 7 percent of companies are implementing tools that allow them to identify viral influencers.
According to another author, some of the components of a viral marketing process are:

Giving away the product or service
Providing for effortless transfer of the message or product/service to others
Exploiting common aspirations, motivations or behaviors of the target segment
Utilizing others’ resources & existing communication networks in the best possible way, most times resulting in a win-win for all parties concerned.
“Meme” - a word coined by Richard Dawkins as an analogy to the biological inheritance unit, the gene - is defined by Richard Brodie as “a unit of information in a mind whose existence influences events such that more copies of itself get created in other minds.” Examples of memes include ideas, concepts, inventions, slogans, melodies, icons, and fashions. As you can visualize memes play a critical role in viral marketing – they represent, in a way, the heart of the message that gets viral marketed.

Some Examples & Related Case Studies

Pssst…Let Me Tell You a Secret - How Strategic Leaks Can Create a Buzz
Viral Marketing – Subliminal Advertising - Savvy companies are polishing their brands and pushing products by going undercover and trying to impress e-fluentials, says this article
Comedians Stumble Upon Viral Marketing Concept – with their Joke eBooks (2001 article)
Teenagers used to push Zango on Myspace? - this article from Vital Security asks. You might not agree with what Zango does, but some of the concepts it uses, if used in a more honest and trust-worthy manner, could elicit a viral response

Books

Tipping Point - by Malcolm Gladwell
The Anatomy of Buzz – How to Create Word-of-Mouth Marketing - by Emanuel Rosen
Unleashing the Idea Virus – by Seth Godin
Media Virus – Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture - by Douglas Rushkoff
The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing: How to Trigger Exponential Sales Through Runaway Word of Mouth - by George Silverman, Publisher - AMACOM/American Management Association
Connected Marketing: The Viral, Buzz and Word of Mouth Revolution, Author: Justin Kirby - Description: This book on viral marketing has a good collection of chapters written by specialists in viral marketing from different agencies and academic institutions.

Content Derived from Wikipedia article on Viral Marketing

Viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can often be word-of-mouth delivered and enhanced online; it can harness the network effect of the Internet and can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly.

Some of the first recorded offline / online viral campaigns were developed by Tim Nolan of Spent2000.com fame circa 1996. By placing abstract pairings of catch-phrases, quotes, song lyrics and image mashups, Mr. Nolan developed a method of creating "buzz" around a URL based installation. Phrases like "This city isn't safe" placed along side a URL created curiousity enough in people's minds to remember a URL and visit again once they were online.

Viral marketing sometimes refers to Internet-based stealth marketing campaigns, including the use of blogs, seemingly amateur web sites, and other forms of astroturfing, designed to create word of mouth for a new product or service. Often the goal of viral marketing campaigns is to generate media coverage via "offbeat" stories worth many times more than the campaigning company's advertising budget.

The term "viral advertising" refers to the idea that people will pass on and share interesting and entertaining content; this is often sponsored by a brand, which is looking to build awareness of a product or service. These viral commercials often take the form of funny video clips, or interactive Flash games, an advergame, images, and even text.

Viral marketing is popular because of the ease of executing the marketing campaign, relative low-cost (compared to direct mail), good targeting, and the high and rapid response rate. The main strength of viral marketing is its ability to obtain a large number of interested people at a low cost.

The hardest task for any company is to acquire and retain a large customer base. Through the use of the internet and the effects of e-mail advertising, the business-to-consumer (B2C) efforts have a greater impact than many other tools of marketing. Viral marketing is a technique that avoids the annoyance of spam mail; it encourages users of a specific product or service to tell a friend. This would be a positive word-of-mouth recommendation. One of the most successful perspectives found to achieve this customer base is the integrated marketing communication IMC perspective.

History

Some argue the term viral marketing was originally invented by Tim Draper and coined by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson of Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 1997 to describe Hotmail's e-mail practice of appending advertising for themselves to outgoing mail from their users. The first to write about viral marketing was media critic Douglas Rushkoff in his 1994 book Media Virus. The assumption is that if such an advertisement reaches a "susceptible" user, that user will become "infected" (i.e., sign up for an account) and can then go on to infect other susceptible users. As long as each infected user sends mail to more than one susceptible user on average (i.e., the basic reproductive rate is greater than one), standard in epidemiology imply that the number of infected users will grow according to a logistic curve, whose initial segment appears exponential.

If each user sends mail to more than one susceptible user then the campaign will in theory continue forever, or at least until all susceptible users have already received the message. Even if the message is not forwarded quite that often, the message might still be forwarded many more times than it was initially sent. For example, consider a campaign that starts out by mailing 100 users. Not all of them will forward the email, but some of them might. This 'some' would be tested using market research; say, for example, that it turns out to be 80% and that each forwards it to only one friend. In this case, 80 people would receive a "first generation" forwarded message. From there it would decline roughly exponentially, so that each generation would be smaller than the next, as 80, 64, 51, 41, 33...

An even earlier reference can be found in Richard Brodie's famous book, Virus of the Mind. Brodie worked for Bill Gates at Microsoft, who was quite aware of how information could spread quickly to win an argument and then a market.

Eventually the campaign would fade out. Research must be carried out on the life expectancy of such a campaign. More complicated formulas can be generated, but this would be the easiest for most marketing departments to work out. So the final campaign would cost the original amount of funds needed to send the email to 100 users and the rest (357, in this case) would be users marketed by viral methods and normally for free.

Notable examples of viral marketing

The spread of text messaging

The spread of IRC / Chatting

The spread of the R. Tam sessions for the 2005 film Serenity

Burger King's The Subservient Chicken and Coq Roq

Carlton Draught: Big Ad campaign.

Ford Motor Company's Evil Twin campaign

Gmail

Heinz's Ketchup Against Tomato Cruelty campaign

I Love Bees - viral marketing for Halo 2

Jamie Kane BBC sponsored online game

McDonald's "McRib Farewell Tour"

Microsoft's Origami Project campaign

Microsoft's Xbox 360 campaigns, called OurColony and Hex168

Tupperware parties

The Ring movie and its massive cursed video secret promotion

The Ring Two movie promotion used another blank-label videotape ending with www.she-is-here.com, a website where users shared their unexplainable experiences with the cursed videotape

Snakes on a Plane's "Get a call from Samuel L. Jackson" campaign

FX Networks' use of Myspace pages as advertisements

Sony's viral videos promoting the 2005 release of the PS2 game Shadow of the Colossus through "giant sitings" on giantology.typepad.com/ and other sites. Convincingly created "home videos" and news reports depicting evidence of ancient giant creatures in India, the polar north, and Peru.

Disco.app CD burning application for Mac OS X.

The Rolling Rock Beer Ape commercials

Sony's Playstation Portable campaign, alliwantforxmasisapsp, which has been met with scorn.

Related:

Viral video

Word of mouth marketing

Alternate reality games

Guerrilla marketing

References

Kirby, Justin (2005). Connected Marketing. Butterworth-Heineman, an imprint of Elsevier

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing

End of Wikipedia content

Content derived from Wikipedia article on Word of Mouth Marketing

Word-of-Mouth Marketing, or WOMM, is a term used in the marketing and advertising industry to describe activities that companies undertake to generate personal recommendations as well as referrals for brand names, products and services.

Word-of-mouth promotion is highly valued by advertisers. It is believed that this form of communication has valuable source credibility. Research points to individuals being more inclined to believe WOMM than more formal forms of promotion methods; the receiver of word-of-mouth referrals tends to believe that the communicator is speaking honestly and is unlikely to have an ulterior motive (i.e. they are not receiving an incentive for their referrals).[1] In order to promote and manage word-of-mouth communications, marketers use publicity techniques as well as viral marketing methods to achieve desired behavioral response. Influencer marketing is increasingly used to seed WOMM by targeting key individuals that have authority and a high number of personal connections.

A very successful word-of-mouth promotion creates buzz. Buzz generates a highly intense and interactive form of word-of-mouth referral that occurs both online and offline. Successful word-of-mouth initiatives do not follow a strictly linear process with information flowing from one individual to another rather successful models leverage subgroup connectivity and relationships by pursuing a Reed's Law hub approach to message distribution. A marketer has successfully created buzz when the interactions are so intense that the information moves in a matrix pattern rather than a linear one. The result is everyone is talking about or purchase the product or service.

Examples

Gmail - Google did no marketing, they spent no money. They created scarcity by giving out Gmail accounts only to a handful of "power users." Other users who aspired to be like these power users "lusted" for a Gmail account and this manifested itself in their bidding for Gmail invites on eBay. Demand was created by limited supply; the cachet of having a Gmail account caused the word of mouth, rather than any marketing activities by Google.

FreshDirect - FreshDirect did no marketing to cause the word of mouth. They did exceed expectations of consumers who used their service. These consumers in turn raved about FreshDirect to their friends voluntarily and even spent time convincing them to try it. Word of mouth resulted from FreshDirect so far exceeding expectations that their customers naturally wanted to share, brag, or talk about it.

Chain e-mail about certain product/service can be considered as word of mouth marketing.

Contrast with (non-examples)

Hotmail - Hotmail "piggybacked" on personal emails from one person to another to publicize their free email service. At a time when few people had email, the first and only free email service in the marketplace was appealing and novel - hence their rapid adoption and spread. However, the same "piggybacking" technique currently employed by all free email providers (except gmail) no longer works. Furthermore, the Hotmail users did not voluntarily pass it on; they had no choice about Hotmail adding the "sign up" link at the end of their personal emails.

Burger King's Subservient Chicken - Burger King's marketing program called Subservient Chicken did indeed generate a lot of word of mouth, but the word of mouth was about the marketing campaign instead of the product that was being marketed. Also, those marketing efforts which rely on being edgy or on some kind of stunt often fade quickly when the novelty or edge wears off. Finally, this type of marketing is not reproducible or sustainable since it won't be edgy the second time around.

McDonald's LincolnFry - a fake blog was discovered, and it generated lots of negative word of mouth and little participation.

American Express' billboard - a fake blog poster who told readers to check out a great Amex billboard was found to be an Ogilvy employee; this violation of trust resulted in massive negative word of mouth which spread around the world.

Related Topics

Marketing

Promotion

Publicity

Viral marketing

Word of mouth

Business Marketing

Online marketing

Reputation management

New Media Marketing

Evangelism marketing

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_of_mouth_marketing

End of Wikipedia content

More References

Word of Mouth Marketing Association
Word of Mouth Marketing – article from Wikipedia
Viral & Buzz Marketing Association - The VBMA is an international network of individual viral, buzz and word-of-mouth marketers, practitioners and academics
How to spend your marketing and ad budget - Let's say your marketing and/or ad budget doesn't have the same legs it used to, or that you've just decided to make a change. Or maybe you don't even have a marketing budget. Is there something you can do that might be more creative and, in many cases today, at least--if not more--effective? – asks this article from Creating Passionate Users blog

Creative & Memorable Advertising Reference

General – Classic & Memorable Commercials

Best Advertisement Campaigns – form Ad Week

An excellent collection

Classic Video Advertisements – from Tripoint
Ad Flip – Classic Print Ads Archives
Ad Access – Advertising History Archives from Duke University
Classic TV Commercials – from About.com
Classic Advertisements Gallery from Smithsonian Institute
TV Commercials Now
Free Classic TV Ads – from Road Ode.com
Yahoo Directory of TV Commercials
Memorable Commercials – from Digs Boards
Campaigns that have Made a Difference – from the Ad Council
Ad Awards – International Advertising Awards
Visit 4 Info – TV Adverts Resources
Admack Commercials Database
I Have An Idea – Canadian Advertising Intellectual Archive
Ad Eater – Advertising TV Spots Worldwide Database
US TV Commercial Library – US TV Ads
Television Commercial Database – from Clip Land
Awful Commercials dot com
Advertisement Ave Ad Database
Television Ads – Collection of Memorable TV Commercials
Top 10 Advertising Icons of the Century – from Ad Age
The Advertising Slogans Database – from TV Acres
Classic Commercials – from About.com
The Freaky Universe of McDonald’s Advertising – Stay Free Universe
Old Time Radio Commercials – from Old-Time.com
Television Commercials – from File Planet
Best Advertising Campaigns Index – from Ad Week
Ads from the Comic Books – Super Marketing
Classic Commercials – from About.com
Ad Rants
Amazing Ads – from CoolHunter.net
Ad Age Advertising Century – Top 100 Advertising Campaigns
Memorable Marketing Moments
Advertising Headlines – The Best 100 Ever Written – Expat World (PDF)
Content Prophets – Addictive Advertisements
EPICA Awards- Europe’s Premier Creative Awards
Some Cool Ad Pictures Here
Ad Access – from Duke University – an awesome collection of advertisements in the following categories – Beauty & Hygiene, Transportation, Radio, Television & World War II
Ad Folio – An extensive database of creative advertising; priced, not free
See also: Advertising Outsourcing @ eBPO.in
Ad Critic
Advertising Worth Admiring – from Small Business Branding & Marketing
Top 100 Advertising Campaigns – Ad Age
Tips for Creating Memorable Ads
AdWeek Creative Advertisements Section

Creating Memorable Commercials

Memorable Advertisements for the Following Aspects

The Message – the communication – Nailing a Brand Message – from iMedia Connection, Making Your Message Stick

The Medium

Print – Getting More from Print Advertising (MS Word Document format) – insights from PRS eye tracking of ad readership
Internet
Radio
TV – TV Advertisements of the 60s, 70s & 80s – Nostalgia Central, Highlights in the History of Coca Cola Television Advertising, Classic TV Commercials – from Retro Junk, TV Adverts – Funny, Cool & Sexy TV Commercials & Ads (UK Focus)
Film – Why Does Cinema Advertising Work – Ads on the Wall
Roadside Advertisements & Hoardings
Event/OnStage/Promotions - POP, Promotional Products, Events
Direct Marketing
Packaging, Branding & Design (On Product) – Memorable taglines, Crafting a Memorable Logo – from Entrepreneur .com, Easily Remembered Makes Big Money – from Site Point
Outdoor – Billboard, Poster, Transportation & Vehicles – Subway Advertising – Outdoor Underground; New tech in outdoor advertising one-way vision printing & dynamic digital display. One-way vision printing allows advertisers to advertise on one side, while from the other side there is an unhindered view. Dynamic display allows one to view different advertisements from different angles (unlike the old tech, this new tech allows printing on multiple ads on a single print area)
PR

The Method

Humour – The Art of Humor in Advertising – Advtg & Mktg Review, One Hundred Years of Humor in American Advertising (PDF)
Rhetoric
Element of surprise – Hijacking the Urban Screen – Trends in Outdoor Advertising & Predictions for the Use of Video – First Monday
Use of technology
Something cool – Cool Ideas for Themes & Capturing Attention – Use of Satellite Mapping from Google, Amazon for Cool Advertising
Themes
Celebrities
Specialty entities (like Spud the animal)
Weird
Breaking Stereotypes – Have you Ever Tried to Sell A Diamond – The Atlantic Online
Little Dialog
Getting Straight to the Point
Catch Phrases – Top 79 Advertising Slogans & Catchphrases

The Target Audience

The Content

Words -
Images – Outdoor Advertising & Creative Imaging Solutions Samples from MetroMedia Technologies, Color Images More Memorable than Black & White – from Innovations Report
Multimedia (audio, video, text and pictures, music) -
Jingle -
Elegance -
Graphics -
Aesthetics -
Mind-blowing Scenes -

Advertising Forums

Creativity in the Various Advertising Media

Alternate Media
Billboard Design – Billboards – Snapshots of History, About.com, Billboards That Work & Those That Don’t, In-Game Billboards Go Interactive
Boarding Pass Design
Booklets
Bookmarks – Bookmark Collector
Brochures – The Art of Brochures, Guerilla Marketing
Brand Identity & Management – Visual Branding Keys to Make Your Business Memorable – from eZine Articles
Business Cards, Phone Cards & Gift Cards – Making Memorable Business Cards – Creative Pro
Bulk Mailers Designs
Calendars
Campaigns
Catalogues & Catalogue Design – Mind your Creative – Tips for Catalog Design, Catalog Design Tutorials & Tips Resources, Veer Visual Elements Catalogs Samples List
Collateral – Look at some interesting creatives from Brancato Creative, Some creatives from Creative 2.0 Portfolio
Communication Plan
Corporate Identity
Cutting Marks
Danglers Design
Digital Mailers
Door Hangers
Envelopes – Creative Envelopes & Magazine Re-use from All Things Creative Blog, Personalised, One of a Kind Envelopes, from DT & G Design
Film Advertising
Film Placements, Placement
Freebees, Freebies
Flip Charts – Binders, Pages
Folders
Graphic Design
Greeting Cards
Handouts
Hoarding Design, Hoardings
Labels – Custom Labels, Duplex Shipping Labels, Lapel, Lapels – Innovative Packaging Ideas from Lightning Labels
Letterheads – The Big Book of Designs for Letterheads & Web Sites
Logos – Using Your Logos in Memorable Ways, Some interesting logo designs from Carbery Creative, 7 Logo Design Tips – from Branding Basics @ About.com
Magazine Advertisements – Enthymemes in Magazine Advertisement – An Analysis of Oneida Silverware Ads – A Research Paper/Dissertation
Mailers – Flyers & Mailers – from PeachPit, Some Creative Ads from AK Creative Works
Mass Advertising
Mobile Advertising/Mobiles
Model Photography
Newspaper Design & Redesign, Redesigning
Newspaper Ads & Classifieds
Office Stationary, Stationery
Packaging Design
Photography
Plastic Cards
Point of Sale & Point of Purchase
Postcards – Creative Postcard Club
Posters

Presentation Folders

Press Ads

Press Ad Alternative Designs

Printing - Digital Offset Color, Digital Presentation, Print and Mail
Printing Artworks
Promotion
Publication Design
Rack Cards
Screen Savers – Awesome Screen Savers
Shelf Talkers
Special Products
Stickers – Some Memorable Bumper Stickers
Table tops
Television, Televisions
Truck backs
TV Commercials/TV Spots
Outdoor Design – Creating Award Winning Outdoor – A Guide for Designing Effective Advertising (PDF)
Visual Aids
Visiting Cards

Books & Guides for Making Great Advertisements

Write Great Advertisements: A Step-by-step Approach, Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd (01-Mar-1990), ISBN: 0471507032, Author: Klein, Erica L.
Creative Advertising: Ideas and Techniques from the World's Best Campaigns - by Mario Pricken, Pubisher: Thames & Hudson

General Reference

Web Portals

The following portals provide resources on research, directory, search engine / search engines, yellow pages, classifieds

AOL, Yahoo, Google, eBay, YouTube, Yahoo Groups, Wikipedia, CNN, Time, Forbes, Fortune, BBC

BillDoll.com – The Billion Dollar Site