Gangnam Style – A Perfect Example of Viral Marketing?

Do you know which video is the most famous video on YouTube? In only three months, “Gangnam Style” by Psy is already one of the most viewed videos on YouTube. The release of this song was in July 2012 and it currently has over 500,000,000 clicks and has recently become the number one download on iTunes. This song is characterized by its strong beats and lyrics with only three English words.

How has this video achieved this wave of success?

The answer is viral marketing. I talked about this phenomenon a few weeks ago in one of my previous posts. A lot of companies benefit from this efficient tool, and rapid multiplication is the engine for fast propagation. The operative word is “rapid”. Companies use viral marketing to increase the awareness of their products, while individuals use this strategy to increase their name recognition. 

Mostly, a lot of celebrities are involved in this process. “Gangnam Style” has been shared on the Internet by many celebrities like Tom Cruise, Britney Spears and Kate Perry. For example, Britney Spears wrote on Twitter that she is interested in learning the dance. After that Ellen DeGeneres honored this request and invited Britney Spears and Psy to her show so that he could teach her how to dance to this song.

Additionally, there are a lot of flash mob videos of this song on YouTube from all around the world.

I saw the funniest imitation of this song at the volleyball match of the MSU team. A guy performed the dance during halftime. The whole audience applauded, and a few people even danced. This guy was dressed exactly like the same as Psy and knew the dance perfectly.

But what is so special about this song?

The answer to this question is easy. This song has a ridiculous looking horse dance, but is simple to imitate by anyone. Besides, the song has an appealing beat, is a well produced video which makes you happy, and there are a lot of parodies of this song/dance on YouTube. Especially the parody videos help to make the original all the more viral. 

Comment on "Bend it Like Beckham"

 This film is about a young Indian girl, called Jesminder, who grew up in England. She lives with her parents and sister and has a great passion for football. Therefore, she has some difficulties with her family, because they can´t accept her decision to play football. They ban her from every aspect of football.

As someone interested in a lot of different kinds of sports, especially this one, I like movies about sacrificing for a sport. Whenever Jesminder has time for playing football, she lies to her parents and does it secretly. This movie is about bending of rules, social paradigms and lives. Moreover, it is about a story of a young woman overcoming family pressures and following her dream of playing football, regardless of whether she has to break through some obstacles. The main point of the film is about dealing with conflicts between cultures and generations.

Nevertheless, I don´t like the acting in this movie, the football action scenes are badly implemented (just camera tricks), a few stereotypes exist in this movie and the plot was predictable as well. Moreover, I think a lot of Americans are unlikely to recommend this film, because other sports are more widely followed in America.

Retail Media – Rising Market

Currently and over the last few years, online retailing has boomed. The number of online shoppers has increased. Especially in Western Europe, approximately 140 million people use online shopping portals regularly. Online Retailing or online shopping is a kind of electronic business. Consumers are buying goods directly from the retailer without any middleman or intermediary. 

Therefore it is a kind of direct sales. The generic term of such a form of sale is e-Business, meaning business on the Internet. The main activities of e-Business are buying, selling, servicing customers and collaborating with business associates.

I worked for two years for a big e-Business start-up company which is located in Germany called Zalando. I worked there as a student employee at the supply chain management department. Zalando specializes in footwear but has also a wide range of clothing and beauty products. It is a very young company but fast-growing as well. 

My decision to work while attending the university was motivated by the idea to get an insight in the field, especially logistic know-how in contrast to the wide array of theoretical foundations I am learning at the university. This company was founded in 2008 and had a sales of over $660 billion in 2011. According to that, I was a part of this quick and strong growth. Now they are already expanded all over Europe.

The increased usage of using online shopping methods correlates intensively with the increased amount of start-up companies in that special field. Online retailers operate an intense marketing program and create a unique shopping experience for the consumer with a lot of advantages, like a fast delivery, the opportunity to return products for free without giving any reason and to supply an intensive customer support through a well-established service system. 

For example, Zalando´s first commercials underlined the opportunity to return their delivery free of charge. The slogan was: “Shout for happiness or send it back”. The following commercial demonstrates the type of marketing of Zalando.

However, the high ratio of returns, almost 70 percent, led to changes in advertisement, with the result that the second part of the slogan was dropped.

In another example, Amazon.com oriented their entire corporate structure and corporate strategy towards costumers. Bezos, the CEO of Amazon.com, said: “We don’t make money when we sell things, we make money when we help people make purchase decisions.“

The top 5 businesses of consumer retailers in the U.S. and Canada, based on online sales are:

1. Amazon.com Inc. ($48,080,000,000)*
2. Staples Inc. ($10,600,000,000)
3.  Apple Inc. ($6,660,000,000)
4. Walmart.com ($4,90,000,000)
5. Dell Inc. ($4,609,728,000)                                       

* in brackets: sales of 2011