Can Viral Marketing Content Spread According to the Rumor Formula?

Abstract

On the social media, brands use the potential of message virality to cut their investment budgets in traditional media and increase their audience. Users share marketing messages spontaneously, helping campaigns to spread exponentially. But what type of content goes viral? In the so-called post-truth era, where fake news spreads faster than real news, it is worth analysing whether something similar happens in the field of viral marketing. In an analysis of the content from 651 viral advertising videos, ambiguity, one of the essential factors in the Allport and Postman formula for the spread of rumours, was detected in 42% of cases. According to these authors, a rumour spreads if the content is important and necessarily ambiguous. Based on their work, this study analyses key factors in a hypothetical viral advertising formula; these factors are ambiguity, but also strategic creative drivers and advertising genres (viral strains), which together form a construct that replaces the importance factor in the original formula. The results could help guide content creators and brand managers in their communication strategies.