VIRAL MARKETING: CONCEPT EXPLICATION AND CASE STUDIES

IN THE VIDEO GAME AND ESPORTS INDUSTRIES

____________________________________

A Thesis

Presented to

The Honors Tutorial College

Ohio University

_______________________________________

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for Graduation

from the Honors Tutorial College

with the degree of

Bachelor of Science in Journalism

______________________________________

by

Matthew Shiflet

April 2019
 This thesis has been approved by

The Honors Tutorial College and the Department of Journalism

__________________________

Dr. Parul Jain

Associate Professor, Journalism
Thesis Adviser

___________________________

Dr. Bernhard Debatin

Director of Studies, Journalism

___________________________

Dr. Cary Frith

Dean, Honors Tutorial College
 Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………..………………………1

Concept Explication…………………………………………………………………………….…5

Viral Marketing……………………………………………………………………………5
Web 2.0……………………………………………………………………………………9
Social Media……………………………………………………………………………..13
Memes and Memetics……………………………………………………………………20
Internet Virality…………………………………………………………………………..26
Marketing………………………………………………………………………………...32
Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………....36

Best Practices……………………………………………………………………………………39

Case Studies……………………………………………………………………………………...41
Overwatch League……………………………………………………………………….43
Web 2.0…………………………………………………………………………..45
Social Media……………………………………………………………………..49
Memes and Memetics……………………………………………………………51
Internet Virality…………………………………………………………………..54
Marketing………………………………………………………………………...56
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….58
Fortnite…………………………………………………………………………………..59
Web 2.0…………………………………………………………………………..60
Social Media……………………………………………………………………..63
Memes and Memetics……………………………………………………………66
Internet Virality…………………………………………………………………..68
Marketing………………………………………………………………………...70
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….72
Comparing Overwatch League and Fortnite………………………………………….....72

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….74

References………………………………………………………………………………………..7
1 | Shiflet

Introduction

I have been playing video games for as long as I can remember. In fact, some of my

earliest childhood memories involve my four-year-old self playing Twisted Metal 2 and Razor

Freestyle Scooter on the CRT television in my family’s Waukegan, Illinois, apartment. I

remember nothing of what my own room looked like, but I remember that living room and TV

vividly. As I grew up, I gradually became more interested in video games. My most memorable

childhood gifts usually involved games: Madden NFL 06 from my godmother, a PlayStation 2

from my grandparents, Assassin’s Creed III from a castmate in a stage production.

When I turned 16 and started my first job, I saved money for my first major purchase: a

PlayStation 4 on launch day, complete with several games and all the accessories. I was so proud

of myself for budgeting properly and still play on the console weekly, nearly six years later.

Around that time, I realized that gaming was not just a way to pass the time. I knew I wanted to

find a career in the field, and it is still my goal today.

Over the years, I have watched as video games and esports have grown in incredible

ways. Grand Theft Auto V is the highest-grossing media product of all time (Sarwar, 2018).

Legendary entertainers like Paul McCartney and Mark Hamill have lent their talents to video

games. Athletes now stream on Twitch. Longtime esports caster Alex “Goldenboy” Mendez

became a commentator for the NBC show The Titan Games (Goldenboy, 2018). Esports are now

shown on major channels like ESPN and ABC. Maybe most importantly, video games are now

being viewed as “mainstream,” and the general, non-gaming public is beginning to realize that

gamers are not unhygienic, unfit slobs hidden away with junk food. Instead, seemingly every

child with access to technology plays a video game of some sort. Gaming is simply a part of

everyday life and a part of the youth’s culture.

2 | Viral Marketing

On the other hand, I have also watched as virality in general has reached levels I

previously thought impossible. When PSY’s “Gangnam Style” music video finished its five-

month trek to 1 billion YouTube views in December 2012, I was fascinated (Gruger, 2012). I did

not think the speed could be matched. In 2017, Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito”

accomplished the same feat in just over three months (Flores, 2017). With over 6 billion views, it

has nearly doubled “Gangnam Style” and has almost 2 billion more views than its closest

competitor. Again, I was blown away by how fast “Despacito” spread, but now I know better:

Any day now, a new challenger will break that record.

My high school and college years seem to have been pockmarked by these fascinating

viral moments, where everyone from Facebook friends to newscasters could not stop talking

about the latest viral craze, from a strangely colored dress to the livestream of a pregnant giraffe.

But among the chaos that the buzzword viral has become, I realized that there is something more

to virality than a piece of content simply racking up millions or billions of views. Virality is, in

some ways, a game of chance. But the scales can be tipped, and virality can be harnessed by

individuals and organizations.

Both gaming and the concept of virality are maturing before our eyes. This thesis paper

was born when I noticed the connections between the two. As the brains behind video games

learn to appeal to broader audiences, they frequently call upon viral principles to do so. From

there, I realized the academic world lacked a meaningful explanation of what virality is and how

it works in terms of brand marketing. So, I set out to explain what viral marketing truly is,

because as it turns out, it is much more than just creating something funny and hoping it catches

on.
3 | Shiflet

New media technology brings with it new types of communication and marketing.

Newspapers provided a new avenue for written marketing, radio introduced spoken broadcast

ads, and film brought video commercials. In the 21st century, the world now has access to digital

platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Yet some marketers have only begun to

diversify their marketing approaches to fully integrate the platforms. While companies like

Wendy’s and Arby’s have embraced the marketing power of social media, others are still

sticking to dated, tried and true methods that may not yield optimal results. Marketers must adapt

to the strengths and weaknesses of new platforms to truly use them to their full potential.

Viral marketing can utilize the strengths of the current media environment. At its

simplest, viral marketing is about convincing consumers to share your content across online (and

offline) communities. Companies like Old Spice have used viral marketing campaigns to

advertise their products, and various metrics suggest that the strategy might be effective at

increasing sales (Mills, 2012). While the purpose of this literature review is not to suggest viral

marketing is the only strategy of the future, the topic is worth discussing as one such option. As I

mentioned before, viral marketing has not yet been properly defined and explained in a seminal

work that marketers can look to for guidance, despite the strategy’s recent successes. It seems

that there are some companies that simply understand the idea while others scratch their heads,

trying to figure out how their competitors can seed such interest in the base of consumers.

For the purpose of this review, viral marketing is explained as the application of five

connected components: Web 2.0, social media, virality, memes and marketing itself. In essence,

memes disseminate virally through social media networks on the internet in ways that marketers

can harness to reach consumers. But viral marketing is much more than creating funny image
4 | Viral Marketing

macros and hoping they go viral. The relevant components and their roles in viral marketing will

be defined and explained in subsequent sections.

The second portion of this paper will be dedicated to two brands that utilize viral

marketing in intelligent ways. While the two topics of the case studies, Fortnite and Overwatch

League, are very different in their approaches to viral marketing, both harness the power of viral

marketing’s five components. While Fortnite utilizes a far-reaching approach, Overwatch

League focuses on building a community that, to the members, feels closely-knit. Both strategies

are proving successful for the brands and provide ample, vivid examples for how each

component of viral marketing can be enacted. For Fortnite, this includes embracing user-

generated content and partnering with EDM artist Marshmello. For Overwatch League, this

means closing the gap between players and fans. Both unique strategies have earned their place

in this paper for their understanding and implementation of viral marketing.

Throughout this paper, I hope to inform, entertain and fascinate. As I researched Fortnite

and Overwatch League, I often found myself fascinated by the statistics, the innovation, the

casual appearance of unprofessionalism, and most of all, the staggering success. I have truly

enjoyed the thesis writing process, and I hope my passion for the work comes through. I am

always glad to discuss gaming, esports and viral marketing further, and anyone can reach me at

MattShiflet0404@gmail.com.

Ultimately, my goal in the following pages is to show that viral marketing is a legitimate

strategy for the future and that there are pioneers in this moment achieving incredible feats

through the approach. I hope that my work will help others come to a better understanding of

viral marketing as a strategy, not simply a buzzword.

5 | Shiflet

Concept Explication

Viral Marketing

Despite recent successes in viral marketing like Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could

Smell Like” campaign (Murray et al., 2013), the concept has not been adequately defined. As

with anything, it is difficult to understand where to go and what to do without proper guidelines.

It is for this reason that this review will discuss what appears to be the major components of viral

marketing. I hope this review can provide boundaries to define viral marketing and its

application to various marketing situations and allow others to build from it.

According to Mills, the core of viral marketing is “the contagious nature of the content

resulting in exponential spreading across social networks,” a loose definition that encompasses

marketing, virality, spreadable memes, and social media (which grew out of Web 2.0) (2012, p.

166). In prior years, others had hinted that those concepts might link. In 2008, Lacko wrote that

going viral was a key to building a better marketing plan. Berger and Milkman (2010) wrote that

marketers should pay attention to the emotions their content evoke, since emotion is a large

determinant in whether viewers will share the content online or not. As early as in the year 1999,

researchers found that the internet made it easier to add value to products and conveniently get

information to consumers (Kiang, Raghu & Shang, 2000).

Combining concepts and ideas from the literature discussed in this review, I present a my

definition for viral marketing: Viral marketing is the process of creating and disseminating

memetic content through social media networks on the internet in order to portray a brand,

product or service in a positive light, to reach consumers and to motivate them to share and

spread said content virally online and offline in an effort to ultimately improve perceptions of the

brand and/or sales.

6 | Viral Marketing

As previously mentioned, viral marketing is a combination of Web 2.0, social media,

virality, memes and marketing. It is necessary to incorporate all these aspects into the definition

of viral marketing because scholars and practitioners often simplify viral marketing as the use of

memes in marketing. But it is not that simple. In 2000, for example, Williams wrote about

memes in marketing, saying that memes can be used to stretch advertising budgets (citing Gelb,

1997) and that understanding memes can help marketers understand why some concepts become

popular and others do not (Williams, 2000). While Williams made valuable points in 2000, his

work is emblematic of much scholarly writing loosely related to what is now viral marketing: It

was either written too early to address the importance of aspects like Web 2.0 and social media,

or otherwise does not cast a wide enough net to holistically explain viral marketing. In short,

there is much more marketers must know to launch a successful viral marketing campaign

outside of memes.

The subreddit r/fellowkids chronicles instances of companies failing in their efforts to

produce viral marketing, often due to the misconception that “memes = viral marketing.” In

2014, for example, the hashtag #WhyIStayed trended on Twitter, and domestic violence

survivors shared their stories of why they did not or could not leave abusive situations. The

Twitter account for DiGiorno Pizza published a tweet saying “#WhyIStayed You had pizza.”

(Broderick, 2014). The tweet immediately backfired for the brand, as it clearly misunderstood

the intent of the hashtag. This is just one example of a company abusing a hashtag, trending

topic, image macro or internet meme format because of the false belief that simply creating and

sharing a meme will lead to positive results.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but the marketer must possess the knowledge of pop

culture and content editing that go into creating internet memes (Knobel & Lankshear, 2007).
7 | Shiflet

But even if a marketer creates an internet meme with all the inherent potential to become

popular, it would be wasted if launched in a closed network with few connections to others, on a

platform with the wrong audience, or even as a press release outside the scope of social media.

Surely, memes are but one part of viral marketing. As such, subsequent sections of this document

will elaborate on the role of memes alongside the other components of viral marketing.

Mills addressed the need for something more than memes in marketing in 2012 with his

SPIN Framework of viral marketing. While he pointed out there is no single, sure-fire path to

success for viral marketers, there are four key drivers that increase the chances of success:

spreadability, propagativity, integration and nexus (Mills, 2012).

The first point states that for a consumer to spread content, he or she must both like the

content and feel confident that it will have a similar effect on others (Mills, 2012). Hensel and

Deis made a similar point, writing that for a social media strategy to be effective, customers must

find the digital content valuable (2010). Propagativity refers to the actual structure of Web 2.0

and social media: the platforms where the content is posted must make it easy to share the

content through minimizing effort and maximizing the sharer’s reach (Mills, 2012). Social

networks make it easy, requiring one or two button clicks to share content with a user’s entire

follower base of hundreds or thousands of people. Integration refers to integrating multiple

networks that can “feed” each other, such as posting a YouTube video that can be shared to and

spread on Facebook, which then brings people back to YouTube (Mills, 2012).

Finally, nexus refers to the ability to release successive content and is the most difficult

of the four drivers to meet. A brand that hits nexus has not gone viral once but has sustained that

virality for the duration of a campaign that includes follow-up content (Mills, 2012). Along the

way, marketers must ensure their campaign maximizes awareness and popularity while
8 | Viral Marketing

minimizing bad publicity that can arise if the campaign goes awry, like when McDonald’s well-

meaning #McDStories campaign went viral on Twitter as disgruntled users primarily shared

negative experiences with the restaurant (Mills, 2012; Murray et al., 2013). The campaign

quickly spiraled out of control, and McDonald’s stock dropped by 3%, shaving almost $3 billion

off its market value, providing an ideal example of what not to do with viral marketing (Murray

et al., 2013). McDonald’s failed to understand its audience and did not consider negative

outcomes, resulting in the public relations disaster. On the other hand, Old Spice’s “The Man

Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign is sometimes used as a positive case study for viral

marketing because it is one of the few that hit all four points in the SPIN Framework without

being derailed by upset consumers.

In 2010, Old Spice recognized and addressed an issue: Young men aged 18-35, the fastest

growing segment of hygiene product consumers, held the impression that Old Spice was for

“old” people in their grandparents’ generation. To combat that, the brand launched a wave of

commercials featuring a young, often shirtless, spokesperson meant to drive home the point that

young men could be like him if they used Old Spice. The video ads were launched on air during

Super Bowl XLIV and online. The first commercial racked up more than 16 million views on

YouTube in less than six months. The campaign went viral among online communities and

spread offline, gaining exposure on television talk shows and in traditional media. Subsequent

waves in the campaign captured similar or increased levels of virality, with the featured video in

the campaign’s second wave reaching 11 million YouTube views in its first month alone. As a

result, the company’s body wash sales increased by 107% in July 2010 alone, and the product

line specifically mentioned in the ad increased 29% compared to sales during the four months

before the campaign began (Mills, 2012).

9 | Shiflet

Old Spice managed to check off a vast number of the necessary items that will be

discussed in this review. It identified and targeted its audience and its needs, produced easily-

shareable content that was funny and appealing, spread that content through broadcast and viral

mechanisms both on and offline in ways that fed multiple social media channels, followed up on

its virality with subsequent waves, and more. As Murray et al. (2013) wrote, the company

intertwined multiple channels, inviting people to interact with the campaign on Twitter and

posting video responses to lucky users on YouTube, for example. By the campaign’s end, Old

Spice successfully spread a new brand message and increased sales while racking up over 236

million YouTube views in the process (Murray et al., 2013). Most beautifully, the websites the

brand used to facilitate the campaign are free to use (though it may have paid to sponsor posts on

social networks), and Old Spice utilized a horde of unpaid marketers in the form of everyday

social media users. After all, users will talk about brands on social media, so it is in a brand’s

best interest to enter and facilitate the conversation to help their biggest fans talk about them in

positive ways (Hensel & Deis, 2010).

Web 2.0

The first component of viral marketing to understand is Web 2.0, which describes the

internet as we know it today. In the early days of the Web, it was impossible for content to

spread as quickly as it can today. The birth of Web 2.0 overhauled online interaction and helped

make viral marketing possible. After the dot-com bubble burst in late 2001, the web was in a

sense reborn. Web 2.0 brought with it new applications with several things in common that early

websites did not share (O’Reilly, 2007).

More specifically, Tim O’Reilly, one first to use and popularize the term “Web 2.0,” said

it is built on seven key principles (2007). Catherine Imperatore said Web 2.0 can also be referred
10 | Viral Marketing

to as the read/write or participatory web, and it includes tools such as blogs, podcasts, forums,

wikis and social networks (2009). Imperatore continued to say that Web 2.0 allows users to take

control of information, respond to what they like and dislike, share content that appeals to them,

and more, whereas Web 1.0, or the early web, primarily featured “one-way communication of

information, from company, expert or media outlet to user” (2009, p. 20).

There are several ways Web 2.0 does this. As mentioned before, O’Reilly described

seven key principles that define the modern web. The development of those key principles

allows us to see, first of all, that Web 2.0 structurally changed the internet in many ways. The

first principle O’Reilly laid out is that Web 2.0 companies often center around cost-effective,

scalable services rather than packaged software (2007). Google offers its tools to users who pay

directly or indirectly to use them (O’Reilly, 2007). Nowadays, most users pay indirectly, such as

by watching ads before gaining access to YouTube videos. Google does not thrive on

downloadable software; instead, websites update when necessary (O’Reilly, 2007). This is

important because low and no-cost solutions keep Web 2.0 affordable for the masses and ensure

all users are on the same page with versions of the applications.

The next three concepts are closely related: Web 2.0 allows companies to collaboratively

build data sources that become richer as more people use them, they trust users as co-developers

of content, and they harness collective intelligence (O’Reilly, 2007). The resulting sources, such

as blogs, social networks and RSS feeds, were collaboratively built and can be accessed by

others (O’Reilly, 2007). Web pages constantly change as users update content, whereas early

web pages were static and did not change based on user input (O’Reilly, 2007). Hyperlinks

function like synapses and allow users to connect content across the internet by linking pieces
11 | Shiflet

together, thus making it easier to access information (O’Reilly, 2007). This all matters to viral

marketing because content can spread through these sources like wildfire.

Fifth, Web 2.0 allows users to leverage the “long tail” of the internet (O’Reilly, 2007).

The internet acts as an exponential curve: a few sites receive a lot of traffic at the head of the

curve, while countless smaller sites make up the remainder, or the “long tail,” of curve. Google

AdSense allows advertisers to distribute their ads across the internet without specifying exactly

which sites the ads should appear on, allowing businesses to reach other users in rarely trafficked

virtual spaces in the internet’s long tail without having to do it all manually. Sites like eBay

harness the long tail of buyers for items that would be difficult, if not impossible, to sell

in a small virtual or physical communities (O’Reilly, 2007). In the bigger picture, this means

viral marketing content can theoretically reach nearly any Web 2.0 user. Companies with large

online followings (Starbucks, McDonald’s) can reach millions of users with various interest

levels through platforms like Twitter and Facebook, while smaller companies can offer similar

campaigns to devoted followers through forums, subreddits, Discord servers, and so on.

Sixth, Web 2.0 allows the functionality of a software to go above the level of a single

device (O’Reilly, 2007). On page 34, O’Reilly explained how the iTunes application was

designed from the ground up to connect handheld devices, computers and the web (2007).

Finally, Web 2.0 allows for simple user interfaces, development models and business models for

websites (O’Reilly, 2007). O’Reilly pointed out that Housingmaps.com was built by snapping

two existing services into one without a complex business model (2007). We now see those

functionalities through apps like social networks that can combine multiple services and span a

variety of devices. Twitter, for example, now contains the livestreaming capabilities of

Periscope, which adds to the type of content that can be uploaded and viewed from PCs,
12 | Viral Marketing

smartphones and more. Not long ago, live footage of a concert could only be viewed in-person,

but Periscope allows the content to instantly reach the smartphones of Twitter users worldwide.

Advancements and collaborations like this occur constantly in Web 2.0 and provide

opportunities for innovative marketing tactics. The trouble is learning how to leverage those

collaborations to reach larger audiences.

Web 2.0 is characterized by and built upon two-way digital communication. This is a

vital consideration for nearly any content distributed online, including viral marketing. Digital

content often revolves as much around user response as the initial message being distributed,

particularly on social networks, as will be discussed later. Innovations in Web 2.0 allow content

to be shared, liked, disliked, commented on and critiqued with a simple click or two, from the

Facebook “Like” button to a Twitter retweet. Companies can even engage with the responses,

bringing the process full-circle: The early web was simply about pushing out static content, but

Web 2.0 users from companies to fans now easily converse around dynamic content.

As a result, Web 2.0 is filled with user-generated content, or UGC. Think of a popular

website, and chances are it contains UGC of some sort, even if it is as simple as user comments

below an article. This holds implications for any company or user trying to influence another. In

a 2007 paper, Cate Riegner wrote that “with the growth of online participation, consumers exert

greater influence over the products and brands considered for purchase” (p. 436). This online

word of mouth, or eWOM, has the ability to influence other users. A study of broadband users in

2006 revealed that 50 percent of all recent purchases by the respondents were influenced by at

least one online source (Riegner, 2007). This number is comparable to the 61 percent who were

influenced by offline sources in the same survey (Riegner, 2007). Riegner said that at the time,

eWOM was still in its “early adopter phase,” meaning the number of users influenced by online
13 | Shiflet

sources was projected to grow considerably in the following years (Riegner, 2007, p. 447). A

decade later, web use, online shopping, customer reviews and general UGC have all increased,

and eWOM has populated nearly every corner of the web, making it central to both Web 2.0 and

marketing strategies.

Social Media

Social media has become a major part of Web 2.0, with users spending countless hours

on Facebook, YouTube, World of Warcraft and other platforms. While social media is just one

part of Web 2.0, it is both a direct result of and propagator of its progression. Without the

technological advances of Web 2.0, such as dynamic rather than static pages, social media as we

know it could not exist. Likewise, the development and use of social media, ultimately, change

how we use the internet and Web 2.0. For example, Facebook allows users to make free voice

and video calls to others, changing how we decide to keep in touch. Platforms like GroupMe,

WhatsApp and WeChat make it possible to communicate entirely via the internet and bypass

traditional phone calls and SMS messaging entirely. Social media like these constantly push our

use of Web 2.0 forward.

Social media is filled with UGC, eWOM, and collaboration, and in turn, the structures of

social media allow such content to spread. Viral marketing is spread primarily through social

media, and like Web 2.0, social media platforms are constantly evolving. Understanding the

breadth of both commonplace and niche social media platforms is crucial for a viral marketing

campaign to spread to its fullest potential.

In common speech, people generally use the term “social media” to refer to popular sites

and apps like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. While these are examples of social media, they

specifically fall within one of six types of social media called social networks (Kaplan &
14 | Viral Marketing

Haenlein, 2010). If a company’s social media marketing is limited to only Twitter, Facebook and

Instagram, that company loses major opportunities to spread their content across other types of

social media.

For example, Wendy’s hosted its first livestream on Twitch in late 2018. The fast-food

chain played Fortnite with the focus of destroying the freezers of the fictional in-game burger

chain in order to promote its own commitment to “fresh, never frozen” beef.

Esportsobserver.com reports that the livestream peaked with 5,300 concurrent viewers and

finished the 10-hour stream with a total of over 27,000 viewership hours (Miceli, 2018). Esports

teams often use Reddit to connect with fans, as they know the website is popular among their

target demographic. Video game companies and startups may have Slack channels or Discord

servers to keep a constant, open dialogue with fans, users and testers.

In short, social media is made up of much more than the most typical social networks,

and companies should consider differentiating themselves by building presences on additional

social media platforms as applicable.

Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) described social media as “a group of Internet-based

applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that

allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content” (p. 61). Furthermore, Kietzmann,

Hermkens, McCarthy and Silvestre wrote that “social media employ mobile and web-based

technologies to create highly interactive platforms via which individuals and communities share,

co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated content” (2010, p. 241). All of that is to say that

the criteria a site or community must meet to be considered social media are rather broad. As a

result, social media encompasses more than the social networks most people are familiar with.
15 | Shiflet

Kaplan and Haenlein explained that they divide social media into six categories based on

the combination of social presence/media richness and self-presentation/self-disclosure

demonstrated on the platforms. Social presence and media richness together determine how close

an interaction comes to being as vivid as face-to-face conversation. Platforms with high social

presence often have high media richness, such as video chat platforms like Skype and Facetime.

Platforms like these provide intimacy and immediacy because they implement vivid media

(video) and occur in real time. On the other hand, platforms with low social presence often have

low media richness, like SMS-based and other text chat platforms. As a result, they share the

same axis when classifying social media (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010).

On the other axis are self-presentation and self-disclosure. Essentially, individuals want

to control the impressions other people form of them by controlling available information about

themselves in social interactions (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). In some situations, people will be

more willing to disclose information than in others, such as the difference between trying to

build a friendship and being approached by a stranger on the street. Some platforms require high

self-presentation and self-disclosure through use of a real name and personal information in a

biography section (Facebook, LinkedIn), while others are anonymous or pseudonymous (Reddit,

forums).
16 | Viral Marketing

Table 1. Classification of Social Media by social presence/media richness and self-

presentation/self-disclosure (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p. 62)

Again, this explanation shows that popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter

exist as only one type of social media, a type defined by moderate levels of social presence and

media richness and high levels of self-presentation and self-disclosure. But social media as a

whole encompasses everything from Wikipedia to World of Warcraft. Marketers cannot forget

that platforms like YouTube and Reddit are some of the most visited websites in the world and

thus should be considered as part of their social media and viral marketing strategies in order to

get more eyes on their content. The trick for marketers is to understand that they will need to

adjust their content and their approaches to each social media platform based on the

aforementioned factors. A viral campaign calling for users to film themselves performing an

action like the Ice Bucket Challenge can spread on Facebook and Twitter, for example, but not

on World of Warcraft. Marketers must understand that unconventional social media platforms

also offer opportunities for content to spread, if they are willing to embrace unconventional

means, such as the aforementioned Wendy’s example on Twitch. More examples of campaigns

extending across multiple social media platforms like these will be discussed in the case study

section of this thesis.

17 | Shiflet

A second point to understand about social media is that it has fundamentally changed

online communication by giving power to the user or consumer. Kietzmann et al. wrote that

social media has democratized corporate communication. In other words, “the power has been

taken from those in marketing and public relations by the individuals and communities that

create, share, and consume blogs, tweets, Facebook entries, movies, pictures, and so forth”

(Kietzmann et al., 2011, p. 242). Whether companies like it or not, people will talk about their

products and services. Users can create Wikipedia pages for products and services that may

convey information companies do not want people to know about. Petitions concerning business

decisions can circulate on social networks. Bloggers and content creators on YouTube can

critique products in text reviews and videos, and so on. Kietzmann et al. wrote this transfer in

power is significant because brands can no longer control what the public does and does not

know: “It is now up to firms to decide if they want to get serious about social media and

participate in this communication, or continue to ignore it” (2011, p. 242).

Kyle Hensel and Michael H. Deis stated that social media is important within marketing.

If brands want to maintain some control over their images, they need to track their presence

online and help facilitate conversations to minimize the number of clients degrading the brand’s

value. Social media should be used to find out what users are thinking and respond accordingly

(Hensel & Deis, 2010).

In the past, it was fairly easy to silence consumers who had issues with companies and

products. But now, due to social media, discord can spread rapidly to users worldwide, such as

an instance in 2008 when United Airlines broke songwriter Dave Carroll’s prized guitar. As a

result, Carroll wrote and recorded a song about the experience, and the music video posted to

YouTube has since been viewed millions of times (Kietzmann, et al., 2011). In the past, United
18 | Viral Marketing

Airlines could have swept the instance under the rug, and odds are that news of Carroll’s

experience would not have traveled the world without significant luck and effort. But the advent

of YouTube made communication quick and easy, reinforcing the point that the power shifted

from United Airlines, the business, to Carroll, the service consumer and social media user.

In 2013, Microsoft announced its upcoming console, the Xbox One, would always

require an internet connection to be used. Fans quickly (and harshly) condemned the company,

and it dropped the always-online requirement from the console before launch (Geigner, 2017). In

April 2017, Pepsi pulled a controversial ad involving Kendall Jenner handing a Pepsi to a police

officer after social media backlash (Pallotta, 2017). Over the years, instances like these of

customers affecting company changes through social media have become commonplace. Now

more than ever, as conversations about brands live on social media, brand owners must monitor

and control brand image before negative content spreads. An example would be in 2018, when

ABC cancelled the Roseanne reboot within just hours of star Roseanne Barr publishing a racist

tweet (Garrity, 2018). ABC handled the situation before social media sentiment grew out of

control.

Finally, the functionalities of social media do not simply “happen.” Social media follows

a specific structure that allows for robust functionalities to occur, thanks to the framework

created by Web 2.0. Kietzmann et al. define seven “functional building blocks” of social media,

two of which are the identity-disclosing and social presence Kaplan and Haenlein discussed in

their 2010 paper. Building upon the ideas of various other sources, Kietzmann et al. add that the

other five building blocks that social media platforms rely on are the functionality of groups,

reputation, conversations, relationships and sharing. Not every platform includes every building
19 | Shiflet

block, but social media platforms feature different combinations of the seven blocks based on

their configuration (Kietzmann et al., 2011).

To summarize Kietzmann et al., social media generally allow users to form groups or

communities governed by rules and protocols laid out by the purpose of the specific platform.

Concerning reputation, users know what users and content are popular, which differs from

platform to platform. Conversations require users to communicate, and the type of conversation a

platform facilitates helps define the platform (e.g., conversations on dating sites differ from

conversations on Twitter). Users build relationships with others to certain extents, resulting in

relationship networks that can be professional (LinkedIn) or social (instant messaging). Finally,

the extent to which users share content differs from platform to platform depending on aims of

each platform. For example, YouTube content creators primarily upload content in video format,

thus restricting the content that is shared on the platform (Kietzmann et al., 2011).

With this in mind, Kietzmann et al. suggest that companies should develop their social

media strategy based on the 4 C’s: cognize, congruity, curate, and chase. In the first step,

companies need to recognize and understand the social media world, from the structures of the

various networks to the topics discussed in each. Congruity describes the need for companies to

develop strategies that utilize the different functionalities of specific platforms while leading to a

specific goal. Third, curation is about having a consistent voice and content style on social

media. Finally, chase describes the need for companies to be constantly aware of the

conversations and developments always occurring on social media (Kietzmann et al., 2011).

In short, a brand’s social media presence should not be an afterthought, but it must

involve strong research and an attention to detail.

20 | Viral Marketing

The implication of all this is that viral marketers’ efforts are limited by inherent structural

limitations of each platform, and their potential goals and outcomes will be colored by what is

possible and what is effective from platform to platform. On the other hand, utilizing a multitude

of platforms will allow companies to market their content based on each platform’s unique

attributes. Viral marketers must understand how the building blocks of each platform come

together in order to effectively target and interact with users, both on a level unique to each

individual social media platform, and also in a way that unifies the strategies and voices of the

brand across platforms.

Memes and Memetics

Memes are directly tied to human culture. Though the word “meme” was only coined in

1976, it describes a timeless unit of cultural dissemination, as geneticist Richard Dawkins

explained when he introduced the phrase. Dawkins said that “examples of memes are tunes,

ideas, catch-phrases, clothes, fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches” (1976, p.

206). Examples include chain letters, the “Where’s The Beef?” slogan from Wendy’s, and the

Milk Council’s milk moustache posters (Gelb, 1997). Much like a gene transmits biological

information, a meme transmits cultural information. The very word “meme” mimics the word

“gene.” Hence, as genetics is the study of genes, memetics is the study of memes. More

specifically, memetics refers to “the theoretical and empirical science that studies the replication,

spread and evolution of memes (Heylighen & Chielens, 2009).

In keeping with the analogy of genetics that memetics was borne from, Dawkins said that

like genes, memes work to survive by leveraging longevity, fecundity and copying-fidelity

(Dawkins, 1976). Six years later, John A. Ball backed up Dawkins’ statement, writing that

“genes and memes function as if their only purpose were to propagate and perpetuate
21 | Shiflet

themselves” (Ball, 1984, p. 159). Longevity refers to how long a meme stays in a brain or in

another medium of transportation, and fecundity refers to how well it spreads (Dawkins, 1976).

Memes like catchy songs exemplify both longevity and fecundity; they can become massively

popular, and even when years pass between hearing the tune, it is easy to remember the lyrics or

find them preserved elsewhere. Copying-fidelity, on the other hand, refers to how well memes

copy without changing. While it may appear that memes mutate over time, Dawkins wrote it

may be that two unchanging memes appear to blend, just as the unchanging genes for skin color

can appear to meld in a child’s skin (1976).

Dawkins wrote that over long periods, the effect and legacy of memes may be greater

than of genes. Because individuals only inherit half of each parents’ genes, a person’s notable

genetic legacy disappears within generations (Dawkins, 1976). Dawkins highlights Socrates,

who “may or may not have a gene or two alive in the world today,” yet his ideas—his memes—

survive in books and minds worldwide (1976, p. 214). Like genes, memes partake in a survival

of the fittest, and the fittest are those that replicate best (Ball, 1984). But the analogy between

genes and memes can only be taken so far, as scholars have noted. For example, Ball explained

that memes can mutate in seconds and require two or more people, while genes can mutate

within one organism and do so over longer periods (Ball, 1984).

Ball also suggested that memes are one of four components crucial to the behavior of

organisms, with the others being an organism’s genes, environment and a random component

such as free will (Ball, 1984). Considering memes can include units of survival-based

information like ways to cook and take care of children, this may very well be the case. Because

memes must be successful by some criteria (e.g., the most effective child-rearing tactics) to

spread from brain to brain, marketers should note factors that make certain memes effective. In
22 | Viral Marketing

1996, Francis Heylighen discussed 10 factors that help determine how successful a meme will

become. The more of the criteria the meme meets, the more likely it will spread. Heylighen says

the first four—the coherence (or internal consistency), novelty, simplicity and individual utility

of the meme—are subjective because they determine to what extent an individual will accept a

meme based on his or her own situations (Heylighen, 1996). For example, if the consumer does

not find utility in the meme, it may not be the fault of the meme, but it may be because the

individual already obtained the information elsewhere. The other six criteria are intersubjective

because they are based on the memes themselves and determine how easily they travel. They are

salience, expressivity, formality, infectiveness, conformism and collective utility (Heylighen,

1996). For example, if a meme is not easily expressed in a specific language, it does not contain

expressivity and cannot easily spread.

When a meme spreads, it follows a pattern that Noel Murray, Ajay Manrai and Lalita

Manrai described in 2013 as a six-step cycle. First is transmission, where memes are encoded

into media like an advertisement or video and expressed to one or more individuals. Second is

decoding, where the receiver consumes the meme. Third is infection, where the meme enters the

host’s brain and enters the fourth step, storage in long-term memory. Fifth is survival, where the

meme fights off competing memes. Finally, the retransmission stage loops back to the first, as

the consumer begins the process of spreading the meme (Murray et al., 2013).

In general usage, however, the word “meme” has taken on a narrower meaning than its

definition suggests. In pop culture, a meme has become a “catchall for freely copied and amusing

online content,” according to Murray et al. (2013, p. 329). Such online content can take the form

of pictures, videos or other mediums. The instances are usually classified based on some visual

aspect that links them, such as the “Keep Calm and Carry On” meme, which carries the shape,
23 | Shiflet

font and formatting of a British wartime propaganda poster, independent of the infinite messages

that can be conveyed in distinct instances of the meme (Varis & Blommaert, 2015). In everyday

speech, these are referred to as “internet memes.” Piia Varis and Jan Blommaert wrote the

following about internet memes in 2015:

[Internet] memes operate via a combination of intertextual recognizability and individual

creativity—individual users adding an ‘accent’ to existing viral memes, in attempts to go

viral with their own adapted version. (Varis & Blommaert, 2015, p. 40)

Figure 1. The original 1939 Keep Calm and Carry On poster. Adapted from Keep Calm and

Carry On in Wikipedia, n.d. Retrieved April 9, 2019.

This is a subtle difference that makes internet memes unique compared to other memes.

While “meme” generally refers to content that changes very little (e.g. “Where’s The Beef”) if at

all as it spreads, internet memes are repackaged before redistribution (Shifman, 2013). In 2007,

Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear found that nearly all internet memes they studied displayed

some combination of humor, crossover references to other memes, jokes and pop culture, and the

combination of two unlike components (Knobel & Lankshear, 2007). In the case of the “Keep
24 | Viral Marketing

Calm and Carry On” internet meme, for example, the written content of the meme can range

anywhere from “Keep Calm and Call Batman” to “Keep Calm and Drink Beer,” but visual

presentation elements like the center-aligned block text on a solid color background do not

change (Varis & Blommaert, 2015). The latter instance of the meme meets all three of Knobel

and Lankshear findings by being humorous to those who understand the joke written into the

unusual crossover of two unlike properties — British posters and Batman — that would, in other

contexts, not be combined.

Put together neatly, Limor Shifman defines internet memes as “units of popular culture

that are circulated, imitated, and transformed by individual Internet users, creating a shared

cultural experience in the process...created with awareness of each other and shar[ing] common

characteristics” (2013, p. 367). For the purposes of this paper, the term “meme” will refer to

spreadable ideas as a whole, and “internet meme” will refer to the specific type of meme

described in this and the previous two paragraphs.

The distinction is critical to make because memes and internet memes are fundamentally

different, yet many researchers fail to realize this. In order to talk about memes and internet

memes as tools, it must be clear what is being referred to in any given instance. As mentioned on

page 3, scholars and practitioners often incorrectly assume that they can simply parody pop

culture and “go viral” without understanding the nuances of memes necessary to leverage memes

properly on and offline. “Meme” has become a buzzword to generically refer to funny content

posted online, but it is important to remember that memes are much more than image macros

found online. In turn, viral marketing is much more than just the use of memes. This may be the

biggest misconception in viral marketing.

25 | Shiflet

Memes and internet memes are vital to viral marketing because the content of the

marketing lies within the memes — the imagery, catchphrases, jingles, slogans that create the

DNA of marketing efforts. However, the memes themselves mean nothing without the other

components of viral marketing, such as a thorough understanding of social media necessary to

help those memes spread. In short, just putting memes in marketing materials is not a shortcut to

success.

Furthermore, Susan Blackmore highlights in The Meme Machine that one of the three

major problems in memetics is that researchers do not agree on what exactly a meme is and how

to specify its unit(s) (1999). Robert Aunger points out that some argue against memes being

replicators at all, in a strict sense. Because internet memes undergo remixing, some argue that

they are not actually the cultural replicators that the field of memetics is built on (Aunger, 2001).

Even popular websites like Urban Dictionary and Wikipedia often contradict on important

points, such as whether a meme is a concept, phenomenon, or actual item like an image or video

(Cannizzaro, 2016). While the semantics and specifics of memes can (and should) be argued,

such extreme levels of specificity are not required for a marketer to understand memes and learn

how to use them effectively in viral marketing.

What is important for marketers to understand about memes is that they existed offline

long before they appeared online. Because of this, marketers should focus not only on making

internet memes that go viral online, but on finding ways to pull the same content from the screen

and into the real world as ideas and conversational topics that spread offline as well. The memes

are the subject matter, and the internet is simply a tool, albeit a powerful one that helps memes

spread faster than ever. Heylighen said this is because the internet combines speed, copying-

fidelity, fecundity and longevity unlike any other medium, making it the most important medium
26 | Viral Marketing

to consider (1996). The internet is instant, and files are transferred without degradation along the

way, making it ideal for replicating and spreading content. People have been creating

memorable, spreadable content for millennia, but internet-specific virality is relatively new. As

such, it is the next component of viral marketing that must be understood.

Internet Virality

Internet virality is based on the concept of biological viruses and their spread. The Funk

& Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia explains that biological viruses replicate by hijacking host

cells and using their facilities to create thousands of progeny viruses (2017, 1p. 1). The viruses

then spread to other organisms through air, bodily fluids or by other means, infecting cells within

those organisms and continuing the cycle (2017). Internet virality functions in much the same

way. Dawkins says that “when you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my

brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way that a virus may

parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell” (1976, p. 207). In essence, memes “go viral”

when they spread from brain to brain and use those brains as tools to replicate and repeat the

process.

While there appears to be no specific, quantifiable threshold a meme must pass in order

to be considered viral, Weng, Menczer and Ahn wrote in 2013 that one can “employ the

popularity of a meme as an indicator of its virality; viral memes appear in a large number of

messages and are adopted by many people.” In that sense, virality can be thought of as a

spectrum. As content becomes more popular, it also moves from the “less viral” end of the

spectrum toward the “more viral” end. This is not to say that popularity is the sole indicator of

virality, but it is one of many. Specific structures of online communities and information flow

provide a look at how the process of virality works; the early spreading of a meme also indicates
27 | Shiflet

its potential virality, with the most successful memes completely overtaking structures and

spreading to other groups (Weng et al., 2013, p.1).

Weng et al. visualize communities as networks of interconnected individuals, and

separate communities are linked by one or more individuals who belong to multiple

communities. Communities with high levels of social reinforcement and homophily feature many

members likely to ensure other like-minded members adopt memes within the group. However,

if a community features high structural trapping, it has very few individuals who extend past the

community, and information is less likely to transfer to others. Social networks like Twitter

include structures of what the researchers call Retweet Networks and Follower Networks. In

essence, users who belong to multiple networks serve as couriers, transferring memes from one

community to another. It is at this point that memes break out of the structure and can cascade

virally to others like an epidemic (Weng et al., 2013, p. 1-3). In a viral marketing campaign,

marketers must use these communities and structures to their advantage to spread their content.

Furthermore, Goel, Anderson, Hofman and Watts wrote in 2016 that content spreads

through one of two general ways. One is through broadcast mechanisms, through which “a large

number of individuals can receive the information directly from the same source,” like the

broadcast of the Super Bowl. On the other hand, content can spread virally. In describing

virality, they wrote that “the notion of viral spreading implies a rapid, large-scale increase in

adoption that is driven largely, if not exclusively, by peer-to-peer spreading.” Where broadcast

spreading relies one large informational burst, virality relies on a multiplying process where each

user infects a few others who continue the infection (Goel, et al., 2016, p. 180). Regardless of

what process causes content to spread, “the end result is some pattern of adoptions that exhibits

some structure.” Broadcast and virality can intertwine, such as when content is introduced
28 | Viral Marketing

through a broadcast but goes on to spread virally after its initial debut (Goel, et al. 2016, p. 182).

Just as O’Reilly said use of the internet’s long tail is an essential part of Web 2.0, Goel et al.

wrote that when broadcast and virality intertwine, the former can be viewed as the head of

distribution, and the latter is the tail that continues the spread over time.

The structure of virality can differ wildly for each meme being distributed. Some content

sees most of its spread in less than an hour, but some viral content spreads over several days.

Some structures involve a small number of adopters, each doing a lot of spreading per person,

while others involve more adopters spreading to fewer members of the following generation.

That means even structures that involve similar numbers of adopters can look vastly different

based on how much spreading the average adopter does and the number of generations it takes

for the viral content to run its course (Goel, et al., 2016, p. 185). Once content has broken free of

the community where it originated, one can think of its virality as resembling a family tree. The

size of each subsequent generation depends on how much the previous generation multiplies.

The more people that a marketer can convince each user to “infect,” the faster content will

spread.

But not everything goes viral online. Goel et al. found that of the roughly 1.2 billion

content adoptions they studied on Twitter, content did not spread farther than the poster’s base of

followers in about 99% of tweets. As Weng et al. (2013) wrote, looking at the structure of

virality is important because structure is completely independent of message content (p. 4). A

user could post any type of content, but if the structural components of a community trap it from

spreading, then the attributes of the content itself do not matter. Half the battle of having

something go viral is in having the right community structure to ensure the content has the

opportunity to spread, no matter what it is. The other half of the battle is actually producing the
29 | Shiflet

type of content likely to entice others to spread it, and researchers have uncovered certain

attributes of content more likely to spread than others.

Berger and Milkman (2010) wrote that at a basic level, positive content is more viral than

negative content (p. 2). But they also found that the sole most powerful predictor of virality was

the amount of anger (anger being a specific subset of negative content) the content invoked in the

reader or viewer (Berger & Milkman, 2010, p. 22). They also found that regardless of which end

of the spectrum content fell on, highly emotional content was more likely to go viral than non-

charged content (2010, p. 19). This is because highly-charged content also carries a high level of

activation or arousal: In other words, it is more likely to drive an action. For instance, viewers

found it easier to pass by content that made them sad (low arousal, or deactivation), but they

found it harder to resist sharing content that made them angry (high arousal, or activation)

(Berger & Milkman, 2010, p. 24).

Aside from emotional valence, researchers have found that the information within the

content can also influence its virality. Specifically, Piia Varis and Jan Blommaert wrote in 2015

that much viral content can be described as phatic media, which contain “relatively low levels of

‘information’ and ‘meaning’.” The authors quote Miller (2008) as saying that as internet content

has shifted toward smaller microblogged snippets (e.g., Twitter), phatic media, or

“communication without content,” has flourished (Varis & Blommaert, 2015, p. 31). They point

out that online communities tend to engage in phatic small talk in order to fill virtual silence and

create content that can subsequently go viral (Varis & Blommaert, 2015, p. 32). As such, many

viral internet memes tend not to carry much meaningful information but fill virtual news feeds.

Even when content is substantive, its propagators may not even read it. For example, when Mark

Zuckerberg posts content to Facebook, users will share it within seconds of it being posted, even
30 | Viral Marketing

if the content is several paragraphs long and could not have possibly been read in that time

(Varis & Blommaert, 2015, p. 35). This could be because people simply want to be one of the

first to share the message (“firsting”) or because they want to help the poster spread the word

(“astroturfing) (Varis & Blommaert, 2015, p.33).

A 2011 New York Times study of “more than 2,500 medium-to-heavy online content

sharers” found other reasons people share viral content. 94% of people consider the usefulness or

entertainment the content could provide to others, 78% share content to stay in touch with people

and 69% share content to feel more involved in the world (Blueclaw, 2014; Business Wire,

2011).

Similarly, Yuki (2015) found that four drivers explained which content from popular

brands went viral online. The first is social currency, means that users share content that makes

them “look good” on social media. Second, users share emotional content, though the importance

of specific emotions varies by product. Third, users share content they deem useful for others in

one of two ways: either by the information (recipes, news, infographics, etc.) or the incentive

(coupons, sweepstakes, etc.) within the post. Finally, users share content that tell stories. Yuki

found that the extent to which these four factors matter will vary based on the sharer’s

demographics and the brand category. For example, storytelling becomes more important with

age, so brands targeting seniors should more heavily consider storytelling approaches for online

content than a brand targeting young adults (Yuki, 2015).

Goel et al. found that content like pictures, videos, news articles and petitions are likely

to go viral. To the point of phatic content, they found that pictures and videos often go viral

regardless of content simply because they were posted by celebrities who can drum up tens or

hundreds of thousands of shares or retweets (Goel et al., 2016, p. 187-188). On the other hand,
31 | Shiflet

petitions, which they found to be considerably more viral than news, pictures and videos, often

do not get publicity through broadcast mechanisms (Goel et al., 2016, p. 187). In these situations,

as the New York Times study suggests, people take matters into their own hands and share the

content that they perceive others will find valuable. Depending on their specific goals, marketers

can use either phatic or valuable content in their viral marketing strategies.

Perhaps the most obvious takeaway from all these researchers’ results is that capturing

internet virality is a bit tricky. There is no one definite answer. Content cannot be scientifically

engineered for guaranteed virality, and the elements that can help content spread will vary by

product. On top of that, even if the content itself is primed for virality, it will go nowhere if the

consumer base lacks the connections necessary to spread it past the first or second generation.

But the one thread that ties all potentially viral content together, in the simplest form, is

relatability. No matter what type of product, service or brand is being promoted, content must be

relatable in some way to even have a chance of going viral. Relatability ≈ shareability.

Relatability can mean many different things. People share information if others can find

the value in it, making it relatable. Storytelling content is relatable when users can connect with

it in some way, such as when a veteran sees a video about a brand helping connect families after

a deployment. Entertaining content is relatable when a user thinks his or her friends are also

likely to find it entertaining. A photo posted by New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees

would be relatable to someone who has many friends who also admire the player, and so on.

Each organization must understand what its base of consumers finds relatable, then it can create

content accordingly. It’s as simple as giving the people what they want. The difficulty lies in

truly understanding what the people want, and companies must pull from various data points to

truly understand what their customers want.

32 | Viral Marketing

Marketing

The final point of viral marketing to be understood is marketing itself, which may seem

redundant. But, all the efforts in combining the aforementioned components come back to the

main purpose of making something appear valuable, whether a product, idea or something else

entirely. Since 2013, The American Marketing Association has described marketing on its

website as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating,

delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society

at large” (AMA, 2017). In short, marketing is all about creating value. Even the world’s most

innovative products mean little if marketers cannot convince potential buyers of their value.

The process of adding value to brands and products goes back as far as hagglers and

street vendors have existed. But over time, the process has taken many different forms. Today,

marketers pull from over a century of findings to create plans to effectively market their products

or services. Those plans are often called “marketing strategies” or “marketing plans” and are the

backbone of marketing endeavors. George M. Zinkhan and Arun Pereira quote Walker et al.

(1992) as saying that marketing strategy is “the effective allocation and coordination of

marketing resources to accomplish the organization’s objectives within a specific product

market” (Zinkhan & Pereira, 1994, p. 186). In 2008, Baker wrote that for a marketing strategy to

be successful, marketers must identify where their brand currently is and where they want it to

go next. Marketers must identify gaps to fill and obstacles to avoid, prioritize which issues to

tackle first, and commit to action that will see the strategy through (Baker, 2008, p. 80).

Without a well-developed plan, marketing results may be less than optimal, to say the

least. As researchers tried different strategies, they eventually found what does and does not
33 | Shiflet

work. Currently, many companies use integrated marketing communications (IMC) approaches

as their marketing strategies. In 1993, Schultz proposed a conceptual definition of IMC:

IMC is a concept of marketing communications planning that recognizes the added value

of a comprehensive plan that evaluates the strategic roles of A variety of communications

disciplines (for example, general advertising, direct response, sales promotion, and public

relations) and combines these disciplines to provide clarity, consistency, and maximum

communications impact (as cited in Schultz & Kitchen, 1997, p. 9).

Or, as Belch and Belch write, the idea behind IMC is that “all of a company’s marketing

and promotional activities should project a consistent and unified message and image to the

consumer” (Belch and Belch, 2012, 24). This unification applies across advertising, sales

promotion, PR, the internet and direct marketing (Belch and Belch, 2012).

One example of a company utilizing an IMC approach would be the sandwich chain

Arby’s, which uses the tagline “We Have The Meats” across print ads, TV ads, social media, and

more. In its ads with audio, the tagline is spoken by a man with a deep voice, backed by deep

brass instruments. Pictures of the sandwiches all show them filled high with layers of meat.

Across all its advertisements, Arby’s conveys that its sandwiches are hearty and meant for

hungry, carnivorous eaters.

In the consumer-facing portions of IMC (such as in advertisements) it is important that all

communications carry the same tone, as in the Arby’s example. This is important for viral

marketing campaigns as well. In both instances, the company must fully commit to a brand

personality. If one avenue is serious, all should be. If one channel is bubbly and lighthearted, all

aspects of the campaign should be. This unification makes IMC and viral marketing campaigns

easily identifiable, and the advertisements are easy to connect directly to specific brands. The
34 | Viral Marketing

phrase “Just Do It,” for example, will remind someone of Nike whether read in print, heard on a

Spotify ad or even mentioned in a friendly conversation entirely unrelated to the shoe brand.

IMC continually grows more important as global competition increases. As Schultz wrote

in 1992, there is increasingly more product parity in the market. Because competing products are

often similar in value or quality, the differentiation must come from successful marketing

(Schultz, 1992). IMC can ensure that all of a company’s communications help promote each

other.

By 2012, Belch and Belch considered IMC “the dominant approach used by companies to

plan and execute their marketing communication programs” (Belch and Belch, p. 2). They write

that IMC has risen to prominence because marketing has gone from targeting a few monolithic

channels to fragmented consumer bases. Simply placing a TV ad is not enough when so many

younger consumers watch increasing amounts of YouTube content, for example. This means that

many ads must carry the same message in order to reach the same number of consumers that one

ad used to. Belch and Belch cite a study of advertising campaigns in 2002 that show combining

TV and online advertisements help companies reach more specific audiences such as teens,

working women, and others (Belch and Belch, 2012). Furthermore, they write that the internet is

one of the “fastest growing and most dynamic areas of IMC” because it allows users to have an

active voice in deciding the kind of marketing communications they wish to see (Belch and

Belch 2012, p. 14). So, even though a teen may see one ad online through YouTube that may be

targeted more specifically to his interests, his mother may see a different ad on TV. But both ads

would carry roughly the same message through an IMC approach. If the ads are successful, both

the mother and son should form similar impressions of the brand after seeing the ads.
35 | Shiflet

One such instance occurred in the wake of the so-called “Tide Pod Challenge” in January

2018. The Tide brand YouTube channel published two videos featuring New England Patriots

player Rob Gronkowski talking about the Tide Pods. In one professionally-produced video, he

talks about how Tide Pods are highly-concentrated packs of detergent great for lifting tough

stains, just like any other traditional 30-second laundry detergent spot (Tide, 2018c). The other

video, however, is a very basic video with light editing, featuring footage that appears to be shot

from a smartphone in Gronkowski’s home (Tide, 2018a). In this video, Gronkowski talks about

how Tide Pods should not be eaten.

The former, professional video is targeted toward those who make the decisions about

which detergent brand to buy. The second video is targeted to teens who may or may not do their

own laundry and is similar in style to vlog content popular among teens on YouTube. But, at the

end of the day, both videos tell the same simple message: Tide Pods are for cleaning clothes.

This unification of the message is the essence of IMC and is representative of the current state of

most marketing campaigns. Brands have many market segments to reach, and they do so with

slightly different content. The Tide ads also point to the beauty of viral content. The simple,

candid Tide ad went viral online while the professionally produced one did not. Viral marketing

can be simple and easy to produce, so long as it is authentic, resonates with consumers and

convinces them to share it with others.

That is exactly what happened on social media. On YouTube, the simple Tide ad has

been viewed nearly 500,000 times, despite its low production value, while the more traditional

ad has been viewed roughly 55,000 times. On Twitter alone, the more popular ad has been

viewed over 10 million times and has been retweeted over 90,000 times (tide, 2018b). It is, by

far, the most popular tweet the Tide account has ever published. Whether or not Tide produced
36 | Viral Marketing

the ad in the hopes it would go viral, it happened anyway. Marketing can go viral on a whim, but

the act of viral marketing is a conscious effort. Brands can think of it as an extension of an IMC

campaign. If IMC involves aligning channels to send similar messages to all consumer segments,

then viral marketing is the next step: Enticing those segments to not simply receive the messages,

but to share them with others.

Conclusions

In essence, brands are trying to push positive messages about themselves out to the

masses in ways that could spread farther than the brands feasibly could on their own, using

primarily traditional methods of marketing. While the process may seem as simple as creating an

internet meme and clicking the “post” button on a social network, it is by no means easy. When

brands fail to understand even one aspect of viral marketing, the effort can do more harm than

good, such as the #McDStories campaign. For viral marketing to be used to its full potential,

marketers absolutely must understand the underlying components they may not otherwise think

about, from the qualities of successful memes and viral content, to the best ways to utilize social

media platforms and Web 2.0 capabilities to release the message in the right avenues. These

messages have the potential to spread online like digital wildfire, eventually leaping off screens

into the minds, conversations, and most importantly, the actions of people in “the real world.”

Viral marketing does not simply put a tidbit about a brand into the eyes or ears of consumers:

Viral marketing creates a strong desire in consumers to share that content with others.

Those brands with the means to motivate fans to action should consider a viral marketing

approach to increase sales and the number of people engaging with the content the brand is

posting online. Brands that already have millions of followers on their social media profiles are

halfway there. Social media analytics allow brands to see engagement rates among users, so
37 | Shiflet

experimenting with viral marketing ideas could increase engagement, and thereby the reach of

content. For those that have both the follower base and engagement, viral marketing may entice

outsiders who see shared posts to follow the brand. This review and several of its sources have

established that brands must make their offerings valuable for consumers to notice. If outsiders

find value in entertaining content, it can be an opportunity for the brand to bring the outsiders in

and expose them to more direct advertisements after building relationships with them.

Finally, viral marketing should continue to be developed and defined. As the internet

continues to advance, it becomes even more important to understand and engage in viral

marketing. But because the term has been so loosely defined, it is difficult to comprehensively

teach. Marketers are doing themselves a disservice by not aggressively developing the idea into

something more concrete. Once viral marketing has an agreed-upon definition and teachable

guidelines, it can become an integral part of marketing education. Where current marketers are

more or less learning (or teaching themselves) as they go, future marketers would be at an

advantage if they knew how to leverage viral marketing directly out of college. Hopefully the

definition put forth here can help move the field in the right direction.

It should also be noted that as of right now, most companies cannot subsist on viral

marketing alone. Billboard ads are not viral, but they work well for some companies. Radio ads

likely will not spread virally, but they can be very useful. Traditional, broadcast marketing

tactics like these can be combined with online-focused viral marketing to push a brand forward.

And those viral marketing efforts do not need to be complex or extravagant.

For example, hardware chain Lowe’s boasts over 600,000 YouTube subscribers and has

uploaded several DIY videos that have each garnered millions of views (Lowe’s Home

Improvement, n.d.). These videos spread virally but align perfectly with the brand’s purpose
38 | Viral Marketing

(selling hardware) and its more traditional marketing tactics. On Twitter, its strategy is a mix of

traditional marketing through announcements of new items and sales combined with clever

tweets that combine selling hardware with relevant, trending topics. For example, during Super

Bowl LIII, Lowe’s posted a video about building a “D-Fence” sign with tools from the store

(Lowes, 2019a), referenced football terms like “moving the chains” (Lowes, 2019b) and

quarterback sacks (Lowes, 2019c) alongside videos of heavy-duty chains and sacks of sand that

customers can purchase in-store, and more. These tweets are simple and tame, but they perfectly

promote the company’s products and services while garnering more likes and retweets than the

more traditional marketing messages on the Lowe’s Twitter account.

In conclusion, viral marketing is more nuanced than many marketers have assumed.

Effective viral marketing requires understanding the combination of Web 2.0 benefits and

limitations, social media structures, the qualities of successful memes (particularly internet

memes), structures and requirements of virality and established marketing concepts. As

marketers continue to learn what does and does not work, it is necessary to consolidate those

findings into comprehensive, agreed-upon resources that define and explain the concept. At its

best, viral marketing revolutionizes marketing in the 21st century. At its worst, it is a fad that

peaks and falls out of style. But for the time being, brands like Old Spice have proven that it

works for the moment, and marketers should take note.

39 | Shiflet

Best Practices

Based on the existing research compiled above, I would like to offer a short list of best

practices for viral marketing, split into sections for each of the five components.

Web 2.0

● Utilize two-way communication

● Monitor UGC & eWOM

For better or for worse, Web 2.0 allows companies and consumers to communicate back

and forth quicker than ever. On one hand, brands can use this to connect with consumers and

shorten the perceived gap between the two parties. On the other hand, consumers will always

talk about brands. You must monitor the online conversation and use two-way communication to

steer it in the right direction. Left unchecked, negative eWOM and UGC will spread across the

web and cause PR nightmares. In the best scenarios, companies and consumers can collaborate

online for the benefit of both parties.

Social Media

● Understand that social media is more than just Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

● Diversify to platforms as applicable to your brand and adjust interactions accordingly

Broadcasting messages on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are commonplace for most

brands nowadays. The challenge is to go above and beyond to interact with consumers in more

unique ways. For example, tech-savvy brands can find success among teens and young adults by

hosting Discord servers and being active on Reddit. Forums exist on nearly any topic where

brands can participate and interact. Companies of all sorts can create video content for YouTube

or sponsor videos by established influencers. Platform diversification and interaction can

increase the reach of messages to unique individuals as well as increase the number of times a
40 | Viral Marketing

given individual may see a message. This can help your messages spread further and quicker

than they could through only brand messaging on traditional social networks. Furthermore,

companies must also understand that brand ambassadors and content creators are integral to

modern social media success. Even where you do not create your own content, you must enable

others to do so and fill the gap for you.

Memes and Memetics

● Understand that memes and internet memes are two different things

● Research a given internet meme before bandwagoning onto it

Marketers have been utilizing memes in the form of slogans and jingles for far longer

than internet memes have existed. Utilizing memes in marketing is, in that respect, nothing new.

Using internet memes in viral marketing, however, is more complicated. The most important

consideration for using internet memes in marketing is to understand the origins of a given meme

you plan to remix. Misinterpreting and misusing an internet meme can make a company appear

out-of-touch, at best. At worst, it can create a PR nightmare. The second consideration is to

ensure that you do not use an internet meme simply for the sake of being trendy. For an internet

meme to work for your brand, it should either relate to your brand’s purpose or match your voice

in marketing materials.

Internet Virality

● Extreme popularity through broadcast mechanisms does not equal internet virality.

● 99 percent of content will not go viral. To increase your odds, be useful or entertaining.

Just because something is popular does not mean it is viral. The Super Bowl, for

example, is not viral in and of itself, even though over 100 million people watch it. But

conversations about it, controversial plays or YouTube uploads of its commercials may go viral
41 | Shiflet

online, as tweets and posts spread content across the internet. Even so, 99 percent of content

posted online will not spread virally. To increase your chances, seed your content in relevant

communities, make sure it meets one or more of the criteria that will make people more likely to

share it, and make it relatable. Last, be consistent. You may think you have a hit with a tweet,

video or internet meme you just made, but it may not go viral. Try again with the next one.

Marketing

● Think of viral marketing like IMC: all messaging must be consistent and unified

● If your product or service cannot be differentiated, your marketing must be.

Viral marketing must be unified across platforms in a way that matches the purpose or

personality of a brand. This cannot be stressed enough. A brand that hastily shoehorns internet

memes into an existing marketing strategy just to be trendy will often fail. Viral marketing must

be built with the previous four components at the center, not as an afterthought. IMC provides a

template for how to unify viral marketing across platforms. Viral marketing provides a fantastic

opportunity to stand out from the competition in a vibrant, relatable, way. Creating content that

people want to share can elevate even the most mundane brands, if done tastefully. As with the

Gronkowski Tide ad, viral marketing materials do not have to be complex, as long as they are

authentic.

Case Studies

The information about viral marketing presented in this document is not simply theory.

Countless brands are taking the aforementioned steps within their marketing strategies. In my

experience, many of the brands that implement viral marketing the best are from the video game

and esports industries. For the remainder of this document, I will discuss two specific brands and

how their approaches to viral marketing are excellent examples to emulate.

42 | Viral Marketing

The first brand will be Overwatch League, a professional esports league run by

Activision Blizzard. The second is Fortnite, an incredibly popular video game and cultural

phenomenon developed by Epic Games.

In the former example, I will focus primarily on the Overwatch League social media

channels, as well as some of the channels for individual teams within the league and their leading

figures, such as popular players and team staff. Overwatch League is still growing and only in its

second season. Relative to leagues like the NBA and NFL, its reach is small, which it leverages

to its advantage. Overwatch League allows fans to feel close to other fans, players and staff,

creating a sense of community in a league with millions of fans. Overwatch League content

spreads virally through its fanbase because of the community’s interconnectedness, making the

distance from the league office to its fans shorter than competing traditional sports leagues.

In the latter example, I will focus mainly on how Fortnite checks the boxes of viral

marketing through its primary channels and through some well-known employees and external

influencers, such as Twitch streamers. The reach of Fortnite is larger than Overwatch League,

which provides contrasting examples. Fortnite has the task of reaching an audience of over 250

million players in a way that still feels genuine and relatable – hallmarks of a successful video

game in today’s environment. The team behind the game does this in a variety of ways, ranging

from community-building for its most ardent fans, to major partnerships and sponsorships that

appeal to its massive mainstream audience.

Case studies, which traditionally involve detailed research and analysis of the subject,

provide a fantastic opportunity to see viral marketing in action. In these case studies, my purpose

is to compile relevant information and provide context to help gamers and non-gamers alike

understand the viral marketing implications behind every interaction. Case studies also happen to
43 | Shiflet

be the best option for this thesis for multiple reasons. Logistically, I was not able during this

process to travel extensively for interviews. I did not attempt to create my own viral campaign

because of the variables: Viral campaigns of this level not only require skill, reputation and luck,

but also an amount of funding I do not have access to. Other methods like surveys and focus

groups could have been useful as supplementary information, but they could not have replaced

case studies to help effectively explain viral marketing. In the end, I found that case studies best

complemented the concept explication portion of this thesis by illustrating those theoretical

concepts in real-world examples.

Overwatch League and Fortnite feature two very different approaches, but both succeed

in their own ways. These studies show that there is no single correct way to implement viral

marketing as long as the five components are present in the campaign. My hope is that through

this section, readers can gain an understanding of what viral marketing can look like in practice,

not simply in theory.

Overwatch League

Overwatch League, or OWL, is the professional esports league run by Activision

Blizzard based on its popular first-person shooter, Overwatch (Wolf, 2018). OWL’s first season

took place during 2018 with 12 teams, and the league expanded in 2019 to include a $5 million

prize pool for the 20 competing teams representing cities around the world like Guangzhou,

Seoul, London, and Los Angeles (Ashton, 2019).

Overwatch is a tactical 6-on-6 first-person shooter game that requires high levels of

mechanical skill and teamwork, and the 8-12 salaried players on each team represent the world’s

best. OWL is structured like a traditional sports league in many ways. Players practice daily,

teams can sign, drop and trade players throughout the season, teams compete in lighthearted
44 | Viral Marketing

matches during the All-Star Weekend, and match scores are compiled throughout the season to

produce a playoff picture and eventually crown a champion. An OWL season cycles through

four stages, each with its own miniature playoff race, and ends with the season playoffs and

finals (Ashton, 2019). In 2018, 10.8 million people watched the finals worldwide through

websites like Twitch and television stations like ESPN (Goslin, 2018b).

In Overwatch, each player chooses a character from the (still-growing) roster of 30 in

order to attack or defend an objective. Each of the game’s four modes carry different objectives,

including escorting a moving payload safely to its destination and capturing a control point in a

king-of-the-hill style mode. In every mode, teams must not only complete the objective, but they

must also eliminate the enemies trying to stop them from doing so. OWL teams play each of the

four types in every best-of-five series, cycling back to the first type if a tiebreaker is needed

(Parrish, 2018).

Every OWL match will end in a win or loss, combined with a map differential. For

example, a 4-0 sweep will give a team a +4 differential, while a 3-2 nailbiter produces a +1

differential for the winner. These metrics are used to determine playoff teams at the end of each

stage and again at the end of the season (Parrish, 2018). If any changes are made to elements of

Overwatch, all the updates are applied in bulk between OWL stages so professional teams do not

have to adjust strategies week by week. This separates esports like OWL from traditional sports:

The rulebook can change several times per season.

OWL is also a growing, lucrative business. Franchise owners include media companies

like Comcast and traditional sports owners like New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft

(Ashton, 2019). Those who bought franchises for the inaugural season reportedly paid $20

million for a spot, and second season buy-ins reportedly increased to anywhere from $35 to $60
45 | Shiflet

million (Wolf, 2018). The league made waves prior to its second season when it became the first

esports league to partner with Fanatics, which handles official merchandise for all the major

American sporting leagues (Fanatics, 2018). Millions of viewers tune in weekly, with the 2019

season’s opening week pulling over 13 million viewers, up 30% from 2018’s kickoff (Steiner,

2019). Currently, all matches are held in Los Angeles, but OWL will move matches in 2020 to

all 20 home cities around the world, an unprecedented undertaking for an esports league (Wolf,

2019).

This is Blizzard’s goal for OWL: Unprecedented. It is trying to prove that an esports

league can mirror a traditional city-based model with salaried players, sustainable income and

longevity over years or decades, while catering to a younger demographic that traditional sports

often neglect. It surely helps that esports in general are growing rapidly, with estimates pointing

toward esports revenues topping $1.1 billion in 2019 and $1.65 billion by 2021 (Perez, 2018). If

the momentum continues, OWL could be a large part of that number. Much of the potential for

success lies in the league and teams’ marketing style, which combines standard broadcast

marketing with grassroots efforts that traditional sports leagues do not utilize.

Web 2.0

● Utilize two-way communication

● Monitor UGC and eWOM

OWL is a multi-faceted league with many organizations and individuals representing it

online. This gives OWL an incredible amount of reach. Aside from the league’s official profiles

on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Twitch, each of the 20 teams usually have

profiles on the same platforms, plus Discord. Most of the players, especially the most popular

ones, maintain presences on multiple platforms, as do the commentators (called “casters” in

46 | Viral Marketing

esports), team staff, league analysts, graphic artists, and more. Within OWL, there are hundreds,

if not thousands, of public figures who regularly interact with fans in two-way communication.

This connectedness is representative of esports and separates it from traditional sports.

Popular athletes will broadcast posts on social media but tend to rarely interact with fans.

Established league and team accounts may retweet fans or reply occasionally, but again, it tends

not to be a priority. But in OWL, the default is that fans can more frequently interact with those

in the league.

For example, when the players, casters and analysts are not working, they often stream on

Twitch, where they chat with fans and answer questions while playing Overwatch or recapping a

recent OWL match. Maybe the most notable intermediary is Justin “Jayne” Conroy, Assistant

Coach for the Dallas Fuel. When Jayne (most esports personalities identify themselves by their

in-game persona) is not coaching the Fuel, he dedicates his time to helping fans become better at

Overwatch.

On his personal YouTube channel, Jayne offers tips for how to improve, reviews OWL

footage with professional players, critiques fan gameplay footage and develops guides for how to

effectively play as specific heroes (Jayne, n.d.). He also runs tournaments for players of all ranks

and helps people connect with potential teammates through his Discord server (Elo Hell, 2019).

Jayne’s interaction with the community of OWL fans is unique: An equivalent scenario

might be if New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick devoted his weekends to coaching middle

school teams and organizing training camps for kids. This sort of interaction with fans is unheard

of in most traditional sports, but in OWL, it is central to the strategy. The fans can feel like they

are part of the action.

47 | Shiflet

The league also embraces UGC and eWOM through fan art, posters at live events and

more. Teams, players and other staff members frequently share fan drawings and crafts, comedic

YouTube videos and well wishes submitted by fans. During the league’s inaugural season, fan

involvement even at the arena quickly became a running joke.

Every day, fans would bring funny signs in hopes they would be noticed by the cameras

or by others at home. Sometimes the signs would involve a request for Overwatch or for OWL.

In early February 2018, one such sign read “LET TORB WALLRUN.” The fan wished one of

the game’s characters, a gnomish man named Torbjörn, could climb walls like the ninja character

named Genji. The Overwatch Twitter account obliged, publishing a video showing what it would

look like if Torbjörn could climb walls (u/Schoching, 2018).

This sparked a slew of similar signs in the following weeks, as more fans wanted their

peculiar ideas realized. Three weeks later, the crew created a second video based on a sign

reading “LET ZEN WALK,” which refers to Zenyatta, a robotic monk who levitates in-game

with his legs crossed instead of walking (D’Anastasio, 2018).

48 | Viral Marketing

Figure 2. Screenshot of a video depicting Overwatch character Zenyatta walking, in

response to fan requests. Adapted from post by @PlayOverwatch on Twitter, February 22,

2018. Retrieved April 9, 2019, from

https://twitter.com/PlayOverwatch/status/966870469155610624

Combined, the two videos resulted in over 80,000 retweets, over 190,000 likes, and

nearly 3.5 million views on Twitter alone (PlayOverwatch, 2018a, 2018b). News outlets and

subreddits across the internet spread the word even farther, turning the odd videos into smashing,

viral successes for both Overwatch and OWL.

Interactions like these encourage fan involvement with the league. Frequently promoting

positive UGC keeps social channels flooded with similar content, as it creates the feeling that

any fan could be noticed at any time on a global scale. Because league members frequently

interact with fans across channels, OWL leverages the idea that it is in some way “closer” to the

viewers than other leagues. It feels like a small community, not a large corporation, even though
49 | Shiflet

tens of millions of people watch the matches. The more the league interacts with fans and

encourages their passion, the more opportunities there are for something to go viral.

Social media

● Understand that social media is more than just Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

● Diversify to platforms as applicable to your brand and adjust interactions accordingly

As mentioned in the previous section, OWL features hundreds of personalities and

organizations that maintain social media presences. As a result, one of OWL’s strengths is that

its ecosystem is filled with diverse content. That content tends to differ by platform and by

creator, but there is something for every fan scattered across the social media landscape.

At a basic level, the Overwatch League and team accounts consistently tweet match

updates and highlights on gameday, allowing those looking simply for information to stay in the

loop when they cannot watch the games. Often, analysts and casters will offer their own insights

on Twitter before, during and after matches, from their predictions of who will win upcoming

matches to explanations of how the losing teams failed.

More in-depth analyses take place on YouTube, Twitch and through podcasts available

on services like Spotify. As mentioned, figures like Jayne produce analytical content on

YouTube and Twitch. OWL caster Christopher "MonteCristo" Mykles co-hosts a talk show

about the league and frequently posts updated power rankings to his YouTube channel

(InsightOnEsports, n.d., ggMontecristo, n.d.). Former pro player and current OWL Game

Producer Jonathan “Reinforce” Larsson publishes a podcast to Spotify and YouTube featuring

his predictions and musings (Jonathan, n.d.). These figures are just a few of those within the

OWL scene who produce analytical content, which gives fans a wide variety of opinions to listen

to, based on their preferences.

50 | Viral Marketing

Where comedy is concerned, several teams fill that gap through YouTube. For example,

The Los Angeles Valiant produce a cooking series called Gamer Snacks, where Canadian player

Brady "Agilities" Girardi and Korean player Young-seo "KariV" Park have fun cooking various

Western and Korean snacks (LA Valiant, n.d.). The New York Excelsior upload YouTube videos

where players answer questions about their teammates, read mean tweets written about them

(similar to Jimmy Kimmel’s popular segment) and explain Korean gaming slang (NYXL, n.d.).

Such videos give fans the chance to learn more about their favorite players and again makes

them feel more accessible than traditional athletes.

Reddit and Discord are popular platforms among OWL viewers. Subreddits like

r/Overwatch, r/CompetitiveOverwatch and r/OverwatchLeague are thriving communities where

players, fans and other staff congregate to discuss the league. Similarly, most teams operate their

own Discord servers where fans can discuss matches together, find groups to play Overwatch

with and occasionally chat with the players. Discord is a platform that combines elements of a

forum, a group message and a Skype call. A Discord server can contain multiple text and voice

chat rooms separated by topic where members can discuss. For many teams, Discord is a great

way to create a sort of club or virtual hangout for fans.

It should be noted that much of the OWL content across social media does not come

directly from the league, but from those it employs and even from dedicated fans. After its initial

broadcast through official accounts, such content often spreads virally through the community.

From league-approved posts to off-the-wall videos that staff make in their free time, the wealth

of content related to OWL ultimately makes fans more invested in the league. It keeps them

interested and involved even when they’re not watching matches.

51 | Shiflet

A Nielsen study published in 2018 says esports fans spend just over three hours weekly

engaged in watching esports matches and related content (Nielsen, 2018). While this number will

grow, other studies suggest the number is currently lower than the amount of time traditional

sports fans invest into their leagues of choice (Anderton, 2018). For OWL, high levels of diverse

content across social platforms ensures that viewers will find something they want to invest more

time into watching as the league continues to grow.

Memes and memetics

● Understand that memes and internet memes are two different things

● Research a given internet meme before bandwagoning onto it

Overwatch League is a hotbed for memes. As of writing, none have broken into the

mainstream to the same level as Fortnite’s memes, but within the league’s fanbase, its memes

have impact. The memes provide yet another way for fans to feel like a community, connected

by some intangible bond.

The most straightforward meme in OWL is the official hashtag for every team. Each

hashtag revolves around the team identity or brand in some way and serves to transmit cultural

information. Each hashtag is part of a team’s culture. For example, the San Francisco Shock

organization and its fans can add #ShockTheWorld to a social media post to show support for the

team (@Loadscr33n, 2019). On Twitter, each official hashtag generates the relevant team’s logo

in the tweet when it is posted. Often, the hashtag for a team extends past the screen, as fans

scrawl the phrase on shirts and posters. For some teams, the hashtag doubles as the team chant,

such as for the Los Angeles Gladiators, who shout “Shields Up!” online as well as in the arena

on gameday (u/jemswoof, 2018).

52 | Viral Marketing

Like the previously mentioned spectator posters calling for odd requests, some OWL

memes are more abstract. Similar to the way yelling “Kobe!” when throwing an item into a trash

bin immortalizes NBA player Kobe Bryant, individual OWL players can become memes based

on their in-game actions. One character in Overwatch, D.Va, has a special ability that allows her

to create a huge explosion capable of instantly eliminating others in the vicinity. Colloquially,

players refer to this ability as a “D.Va Bomb,” but to OWL fans, it is known as a “Poko Bomb,”

after Philadelphia Fusion player Gael "Poko" Gouzerch, who became notorious in the league’s

inaugural season for his unparalleled skill with the ability (Poko, n.d.). Alternatively, Dallas Fuel

player Dylan "aKm" Bignet became infamous in one match for taking three minutes and 45

seconds to charge the ultimate ability for the character Genji. Even poor players can charge

Genji’s Dragonblade ability in one to two minutes, making the “aKm Blade” a slang unit of time

— An OWL commercial break lasts roughly 1.5 aKm Blades (u/Kayuun, 2018).

OWL’s memes are about creating identity. Memes like the ones described help fans

connect to either a player or team. This returns back to the perceived closeness of OWL to fans.

There is huge overlap between OWL fans and Overwatch players, meaning nearly anyone

watching a match can go try to launch a Poko Bomb or earn an aKm Blade of his or her own. In

contrast, iconic plays in other sports, such as Odell Beckham Jr.’s legendary one-handed catch,

are out of reach for viewers at home.

OWL representatives also take care when interacting with popular internet memes, being

sure not to interact with questionable ones. For example, some variations of the longtime meme

known as Pepe the Frog have become connected to Nazis and the Alt-Right in recent years (Pepe

the Frog, n.d.). As such, OWL ensures players and teams do not use Pepe the Frog memes in

their social media posts and discourages fans from using the internet meme as well (Carpenter,
53 | Shiflet

2018). OWL knows that while Pepe is not inherently a problem, the wider connotation is

troubling, and the league is sure to steer away from potential controversies (Carpenter, 2018).

Similarly, OWL fined and suspended former Dallas Fuel player Félix “xQc” Lengyel for

repeatedly posting a Twitch emote (similar to an emoji) into the OWL stream chat when Malik

Forte, a black OWL reporter, appeared on-screen (Chalk, 2018). Both Forte and xQc say the

emote was not meant to be racist or offensive, but OWL still reacted strongly, making clear that

potentially problematic internet memes had no place in the league (Chalk, 2018, Malik Forté,

2018).

More positively, many teams and players use popular internet memes to connect with

fans. Teams use popular images, GIFs and textual memes to make announcements or share

lighthearted content. Whenever a new internet meme emerges, OWL entities participate. One

example of this came in February when a new meme featuring ASCII representations of rabbits

circulated, and teams like the San Francisco Shock published their own variations (San Francisco

Shock, 2019a). Longstanding internet memes circulate throughout OWL as well, such as an

image of a man explaining a conspiracy theory at a corkboard that the Shock remixed to illustrate

the stress of not knowing if they would qualify for stage playoffs (San Francisco Shock, 2019b).

All the internet memes that OWL teams utilize are tame and without negative connotations, as

required by the league’s strict policies. This insistence on understanding internet memes before

posting will hopefully ensure that teams do not create controversy within the league or in

mainstream media for their social media posts.

The meme-heavy atmosphere of OWL reflects its younger, tech-centric fanbase. OWL

understands that its communications should look different than those of traditional sports

leagues, and its smart, tactical use of memes and internet memes helps fans relate to and enjoy
54 | Viral Marketing

league-related social media content. As mentioned in the last section, keeping fans engaged is

vital for a growing league, and entertaining social media presences go a long way to building and

sustaining large bases of followers.

Internet virality

● Extreme popularity through broadcast mechanisms does not equal internet virality.

● 99 percent of content will not go viral. To increase your odds, be useful or entertaining.

Because of the interconnected nature of OWL’s fanbase, content can spread like wildfire

among fans. As a reminder from the first part of this paper, going viral does not necessarily mean

that content is seen by billions or even simply that it is popular. Virality, in short, involves peer-

to-peer spread of content spanning multiple generations from its origin (Goel, et al., 2016). This

happens in several ways within OWL.

One major way concepts spread virally through the OWL fanbase is through Twitch chat.

As viewers watch the OWL broadcast on Twitch, they can chat with others via text and emotes.

The OWL broadcast, however, is not conducive to a coherent chat experience. With over

100,000 people viewing at any given time, the chat is a constant blur of words and imagery.

While meaningful content does exist in Twitch chat, conversations cannot reasonably be held in

OWL’s chat, leading instead to spam, as viewers flood the chat with emotes and memes.

Much like an encore chant or The Wave can move through the crowd at a live event,

some specific pieces of spam in Twitch chat can spread rapidly and overtake the chat box despite

it being nearly impossible to locate the spam’s origin. These are known as copypastas, as users

copy and paste the phrases in order to share them. For example, when the Philadelphia Fusion

are playing a close match, the following copypasta may appear in bulk: 🌶️ SPAM 🌶️ THIS 🌶️

CHILI 🌶️ TO 🌶️ HELP 🌶️ OUT 🌶️ PHILLY 🌶️ (TwitchQuotes, 2018). Or when

55 | Shiflet

broadcast’s attention turned to former Atlanta Reign player Daniel "dafran" Francesca, chat filled

with variations of “let’s go, dude,” dafran’s signature catchphrase.

Figure 3. Screenshot depicting Twitch chat during an Overwatch League broadcast being

overrun with variations of dafran’s “let’s go, dude” catchphrase. Adapted from chat on

Twitch, February 14, 2019. Retrieved March 21, 2019, from

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/380714481?filter=archives&sort=time

The spread of copypastas like these is crucial for esports, as they mimic the group

mentality of a traditional live event, providing fans a way to virtually connect to each other.

OWL takes note of the viral phrases in chat and incorporates them into social media posts,
56 | Viral Marketing

showing that it is aware of the chants and encourages their spread (Overwatch League, 2019a).

This implies that OWL understands its fans and their behavior.

When it comes to first-party content, Overwatch League’s most viral posts tend to

revolve around impressive play highlights and historic feats. For example, one of OWL’s top

tweets of 2019 (as of writing) is the announcement of the Shanghai Dragons’ first victory, which

came in February after 42 straight losses (Overwatch League, 2019b). That tweet garnered over

6,000 retweets and spread throughout the fanbase and slightly beyond, as even mainstream

outlets began to report on the snapping of one of sporting’s worst losing streaks. If OWL’s most

popular tweets are any indication, fans clearly enjoy staying informed while on social media and

enjoy sharing the week’s craziest moments with others. In these instances, the content is both

useful and entertaining, the two major criteria for internet virality (Blueclaw, 2014).

While OWL has not yet experienced a moment of extreme mainstream virality, the

league does understand how to spread content quickly through its fanbase, spark conversation

and convince others to share the news. Combining the ability to craft persuasive messages with

the diversity of social platforms, from Twitter to Twitch, OWL can ensure that its content

effectively saturates its fanbase.

Marketing

● Think of viral marketing like IMC: all messaging must be consistent and unified

● If your product or service cannot be differentiated, your marketing must be.

Discussing all the marketing in OWL would take far too long, as each of the 20 teams

utilize different strategies. But therein lies a strength of the league: Each team has its own

differentiated identity, and for most teams, they consistently maintain that identity throughout

their social media marketing.

57 | Shiflet

As in any league, OWL’s teams must differentiate themselves on social media. Some

teams, perhaps most notably the Washington Justice, are often criticized for their lack of

personality and boring social media graphics (Washington Justice, 2019). Other teams, like the

Hangzhou Spark, are almost universally liked, as fans from teams around the league enjoy their

social media content.

The Spark combine a consistent and well-liked marketing strategy with a vibrant baby

blue and neon pink color scheme to stand out from most of the league. At the center of the

strategy are colorful, anime-style posters that depict the Spark’s mascot fighting against the

opposition. For instance, in the poster shared the day before the Spark’s match against the

Houston Outlaws, the mascot squares up to duel a cowboy draped in the Outlaws’ green and

black (hangzhou_spark, 2019a). The Spark lost the ensuing match and later shared a post-match

graphic showing the Outlaws cowboy shooting the hat off the Spark mascot and knocking him

out (hangzhou_spark, 2019b).

Each week, the Spark tell a two-part story through the posters, and fans react

overwhelmingly positively. The posters routinely garner more likes, shares and retweets on

Twitter and Instagram than most of the team’s other posts, even in losses, which fans would

usually not be proud to share to others. Even more impressive is that the Spark’s pre and post-

match updates garner more engagement than the equivalent posts from other teams with

significantly higher follower counts. This shows the power of the Spark’s high-quality content.

Each week, fans are eager to see what the posters will depict, and they are equally eager to share

those posters with others, even spreading to various subreddits and Discord servers.

As a league, OWL maintains some consistencies across its teams. One consistency is that

team accounts, players and staff frequently trade friendly banter and trash talk. This promotes
58 | Viral Marketing

interaction across brand lines: If the London Spitfire Twitter account replies to the Florida

Mayhem, fans of both teams may join the conversation and become invested (London Spitfire,

2019). When Jayne criticized the Philadelphia Fusion’s playstyle in the days before the Fusion

played his Dallas Fuel, the OWL ecosystem lit up (Jayne, 2019). Players, OWL employees and

fans alike jumped into the conversation, which carried far beyond Jayne’s initial tweet to spawn

Reddit threads and on-camera discussion of the topic on the day of the match. For OWL as a

whole, moments like these grow the brand and cause fans to become interested in more than just

their own team, which is vital to the league’s growth.

Aside from banter and an emphasis on high-quality graphics, OWL fans can also expect

OWL and the accounts under its umbrella to balance information with comedy. The various

accounts’ social media marketing tends to be lighthearted, family safe, funny, and prepared for

friendly competition. While teams may disparage their competitors online, it is always done in

jest. Throughout OWL, it is clear that all teams within the league have respect for one another.

This creates an atmosphere where, at the end of the day, fans expect teams to take the

competition seriously, providing intense, yet clean matches free from the fistfights and obscene

gestures that can plague traditional sports. In this sense, OWL has securely positioned itself as a

“wholesome” league throughout its social media marketing.

Conclusion

Overwatch League is a perfect example of viral marketing that does not look like the

conventional view of viral as a buzzword. Overwatch League has not produced billions of

YouTube views or mainstream craze. But it gets to the heart of what viral marketing truly is: A

way to convince an audience to do the work of spreading content for you through high levels of

engagement.
59 | Shiflet

Overwatch League does this largely through its community-centric approach. While the

growing league is a big business boasting millions of viewers, it maintains the feel of a tight-knit

community, where fans interact with one another and with the league and its affiliated entities.

The fans feel like part of the action rather than spectators far removed from the league. Because

of the high level of access they have to players and staff, fans find good reason to be heavily

invested in the league. They are, in a sense, rewarded for their loyalty. As Overwatch League

continues to grow, it must continue to find ways to keep the feel of a community, something that

has always and will always be critical for a gaming-related venture.

Fortnite

Fortnite Battle Royale is a free-to-play battle royale game launched in September 2017.

In the game, hereby referred to as Fortnite, players parachute alone or with up to three allies to

an island where they must obtain gear to fight the other players. Out of the 100 players who

begin a match, only one individual or team will win. The basic format of dropping without

supplies onto a massive map in order to be the last fighter standing is representative of the

massively popular battle royale genre that has blossomed in recent years due to titles like

Fortnite, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Apex Legends. Fortnite’s vibrant and goofy

arsenal of guns, traps, vehicles and other items change frequently, keeping the game fresh for

new and old consumers alike while differentiating it from other battle royale competitors

(Goslin, 2018a). A free Minecraft-like Creative Mode launched in December 2018 (The Fortnite

Team, 2018b).

Over time, Fortnite has become one of the most-played, most-viewed and highest-

grossing games in the world. As of November 2018, the game had over 200 million registered

players (Bailey, 2018). In March 2018, popular streamer Ninja set the single-person (non-
60 | Viral Marketing

company or brand) record for most concurrent Twitch stream viewers when 628,000 watched

him play Fortnite with NFL athlete Juju Smith-Schuster and rappers Drake and Travis Scott

(Vincent, 2018). Fortnite itself made over $2.4B in revenue in 2018, more money than any other

game has made in a single year, thanks largely to sales of in-game items like dances and

costumes for characters (Arif, 2019).

Its unprecedented levels of cultural impact make it a prime example of how viral

marketing should be used. A game that spent years in development and initially launched to little

fanfare and mixed reviews eventually became one of the most inescapable topics of 2018. By

mastering the five components of viral marketing, the team behind Fortnite compels its

consumers to share its content and spread positive, brand-building sentiment about the game

globally, both online and offline. In viral marketing, a brand’s best ambassadors are happy

consumers, and the team behind Fortnite has an army of fans making the game a cultural

cornerstone comparable to few other video games in existence.

Web 2.0

● Utilize two-way communication

● Monitor UGC and eWOM

Epic Games uses multiple channels to stay directly connected with its players. At the

basic level, it offers technical support through online FAQs and an email support system. Some

employees interact with fans on their personal Twitter accounts. But the company’s primary

connection with players is through Reddit. Of the more than one million subreddits presumed to

exist, r/FortniteBR is one of the top 200 most-subscribed subreddits in the world (RedditList,

2019).
61 | Shiflet

The r/FortniteBR community acts primarily as a platform where players can share

comments, questions, concerns, gameplay highlights and other Fortnite-related content they find

interesting. For Epic Games, it is a platform where employees can post threads and comments,

read feedback and interact with the players, similar to a forum. In fact, the Fortnite team

interacts more on the subreddit than it does its own forums, where it tends to simply post threads

without responding to consumers in the comment threads. This may imply that the Reddit

community is larger or more vocal than the community on Epic Games’ forums, or that Epic

simply wants to focus all traffic of one type (in this case, forum-style traffic) to one platform

rather than two. This consolidation provides a strong community, as forum users flock to

r/FortniteBR, where Epic is active.

If a verified Epic Games employee comments on a Reddit post, the tag Epic Comment

will appear next to the post title. For the most part, this interaction between the developers and

the players is positive for the community. In threads about funny moments players have

experienced, Epic employees may respond by saying how much they enjoyed the post, thereby

gratifying and validating the player.

In posts about controversies, Epic can address concerns quickly and easily. After a major

Fortnite tournament in July 2018, a subreddit poster accused one competitor of cheating

(u/Sora26, 2018). The community believed the accusation and spread it, causing quick and major

unrest. Only three hours and 16 minutes after the post appeared, an Epic employee created a

response post explaining that the competitor did not cheat and explained how Epic came to that

conclusion (u/SkyzYn, 2018). Within the comment section of that post, several other employees

added more relevant details, helping to assure the community that there was no cheating and that

Epic had thoroughly investigated the issue.

62 | Viral Marketing

Epic also communicates with its players in more positive contexts as well. In one post

from September 2018, a father posted his son’s drawing of a chicken-themed costume, or a skin,

that he wanted Epic to design and add into the game (u/tfoust10, 2018a). While the 8-year-old’s

drawing was not very descriptive, the community loved the idea. The same day, the subreddit

became flooded with other members’ interpretations of what the skins could look like, from

simple sketches to fully-rendered prototypes. By the time the boy came home from school, his

father had lined a wall with others’ ideas for the Chicken Trooper (u/tfoust10, 2018b). The flood

of ideas and the push for Epic to make the skin a reality continued for weeks. In late November,

likely to coincide with Thanksgiving, Epic released a skin based on one of the sketches (Favis,

2018).

These interactions are representative of Epic Games’ relationship with the Fortnite

community. The company does not simply engage in two-way communication with useless

banter or empty promises. It tends to use two-way communication to show that it cares about the

players’ thoughts, opinions and suggestions. Since Fortnite’s release, Epic Games has become

known to gamers as one of the most responsive developers to player concerns. Overall, the

eWOM about Fortnite is positive, and when it is not, Epic Games tends to quickly and

effectively address it, as in the example about the suspected cheater.

By being so engaged in its community, Epic has a solid grasp on the UGC and eWOM

created about Fortnite. Epic actively interacts with content creators and supports them, as in the

Chicken Trooper example. Its encouragement of new ideas keeps players and content creators

engaged. The magnitude of this cannot be underestimated. Third-party content creators on

Twitch, YouTube and other websites exist in a symbiotic relationship with game developers and
63 | Shiflet

publishers: Keeping content creators happy puts more eyes on the product and eventually puts

the product in more hands, which then cycles through to inspire more community creations.

The video game market is highly competitive, especially for battle royale games. Epic

has a huge task in front of it: Keep people playing Fortnite, despite new competitors. One way it

does this is by showing goodwill to players via the aforementioned Web 2.0 mechanisms in a

way nearly unrivaled in the gaming industry, especially among other large companies.

Social media

● Understand that social media is more than just Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

● Diversify to platforms as applicable to your brand and adjust interactions accordingly

Epic Games maintains Facebook, Twitter and Instagram profiles for Fortnite, and those

profiles serve as resources for millions of players to read updates, learn about new skins and in-

game dances (called emotes), and stay generally up-to-date with the game’s status. Those

branded accounts, however, are mainly for one-way broadcast communication, and the strategy

for them is fairly straightforward: Inform players with upbeat, jovial posts. Fortnite, however,

expands its spread beyond those basic platforms to reach millions more fans in meaningful,

participatory ways. To reference a previous example, one million people are members in

r/FortniteBR, where Epic employees frequently respond and interact.

Fortnite’s social media presence appears to be based on two principles: To manage its

own channels appropriately and enable those within the community to do the same. The former

ensures that fans are sufficiently informed and entertained by Fortnite’s own content, while the

latter helps the community grow to unprecedented levels, putting more eyes back on the original

game. Quite simply, the strategy works: Fortnite was the most-searched video game on Google

in the United States in 2018 (Google Trends, 2018).

64 | Viral Marketing

Just as for OWL, Epic Games also connects with Fortnite players through Discord,

Twitch and YouTube. The Official Fortnite Discord server contains over 300,000 members,

including Epic employees, as well as over 100 voice channels and over 20 text channels where

players and Epic employees can discuss Fortnite-related topics (Official Fortnite, 2019).

For players, the Discord server is a space to meet new friends, form groups to play with,

discuss in-game challenges, report bugs and vent their frustrations. For Epic, it provides another

way to monitor player sentiment and respond to criticism and feedback. Brands must meet their

consumers on the social media platforms where they already congregate. In this case, Discord is

an extremely popular, growing platform for gamers, and Epic Games maintains a strong presence

there for its Fortnite brand.

On Twitch, Epic Games runs an official Fortnite channel where it broadcasts

tournaments live (Fortnite, n.d., b). The channel has over 1.7 million followers, making it one of

the top 30 most-followed channels on the website as of March 2019 (SocialBlade, n.d.). Tens or

hundreds of thousands regularly tune in for the live events, and the channel allows Epic to own

the distribution of its official events.

On YouTube, Epic mixes tournament broadcasts with more traditional advertisements

that usually range between 20 seconds and two minutes in length (Fortnite, n.d., a). Those

advertisements about new items, in-game modes or events often obtain millions of views, and the

channel boasts over 4.9 million followers.

Epic Games understands that each social platform requires a different approach. As an

entity, the company uses Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to broadcast news in a formal,

professional way. Individual employees use Discord and Reddit to communicate back and forth

with players in casual, more personal ways. It uses Twitch to expand its esports ventures and
65 | Shiflet

tournaments through broadcasts of live productions, and its YouTube is a mixture of Twitch’s

tournament content and traditional video ads. But all platforms work together to further the same

brand image: Fortnite is fun, competitive and always changing and expanding.

Just as important is the fact that Epic Games understands the importance of social media

not only for itself, but for everyone else who plays Fortnite for fun or to create their own social

media content. In the video game industry, companies manage their game communities in a

variety of ways. Some companies, like Nintendo, tend to be very controlling about how people

use the games outside of simply playing them. Most are very hands-off, letting people do as they

please, but without any sort of positive or negative reinforcement. Epic takes an extra step. It not

only allows creators to do as they please, but it encourages them in several ways. Fortnite is a

social phenomenon, partly because of Epic’s direct support of creators.

For example, Epic issues Support-A-Creator codes for many Twitch streamers and

YouTube creators (The Fortnite Team, 2018a). This means that whenever a player buys an in-

game item, they can enter the code for their favorite creator, giving the creator a monetary cut of

the purchase. This chance for increased income ensures that video creators continue to produce

Fortnite-related content, keeping it popular in an ecosystem where games can rise and fall in

popularity within months.

Another example of Epic supporting the community through social media is through its

acceptance of community ideas. Many game studios have disclaimers that they will not use any

outside ideas or suggestions for their games. But Epic, as demonstrated by the Chicken Trooper

example mentioned in the previous section, takes into account consumer suggestions and is

willing to collaborate. This encourages players to continually generate and share new ideas,
66 | Viral Marketing

which keeps communities like r/FortniteBR active, provides ideas Epic may otherwise not have

considered and fosters good faith among the players.

In essence, Epic Games’ use of social media for Fortnite shows that it knows how to

adjust its approach to effectively reach players on unique social platforms. But it also goes where

many studios do not, by actively working to enhance engagement among and with its

community.

Memes and memetics

● Understand that memes and internet memes are two different things

● Research a given internet meme before bandwagoning onto it

Fortnite’s use of memes and memetics has set a new standard for the video game

industry. Even those who do not play any video games at all are familiar with Fortnite thanks to

its spread beyond the internet and the platforms it can be played on.

One of Fortnite’s most recognizable features is its library of emotes. Emotes can be

earned or purchased in the game and span a wide variety of styles, from moves invented by Epic

Games, to popular dances like The Carlton and The Running Man (Pro Game Guides, n.d.). In

Fortnite, players often use emotes to connect with others, similar to secret handshakes among

friends. Other times, players dance after eliminating a foe as a form of bragging and humiliation.

But Fortnite’s emotes do not exist only within the game; they’ve become popular outside it as

well, fitting Dawkins’ assertion that memes transmit cultural information (Dawkins, 1976). Like

songs and catchy jingles, Fortnite’s dances are quickly recognizable and have spread across the

world.

For example, after scoring a goal during the 2018 FIFA World cup, French player

Antoine Griezmann performed the game’s popular Take The L dance (Boudreau, 2018). That
67 | Shiflet

footage spread rapidly across the internet and televised news broadcasts worldwide. Griezmann

is just one of the many athletes across professional and amateur sport leagues who have used

Fortnite dances to celebrate or humiliate.

This example shows Fortnite’s cultural power. Its memes ー its dances, costumes, and

even its terminologies ー have spread, as memes should, beyond their origin. In this case, they

have even spread off the internet and into “the real world.” This spread not only informs new

audiences about the game, but it reinforces Fortnite’s presence in the minds of those who already

play it.

Epic Games has also utilized internet memes as well, tapping into a point of interest to a

large amount of its player base. In late June 2018, the r/SurrealMemes subreddit spawned an

internet meme based on an image of a moth (Moth lamp, n.d.). Iterations of the meme spread

across the internet over a course of several weeks, and in late November 2018, Epic Games

added the Mothmando skin to Fortnite. The skin’s announcement tweet garnered over 8,000

retweets, whereas most skin announcement tweets tend to receive 500-1000 retweets

(FortniteGame, 2018).

By spreading its own inherent memes, Fortnite is able to stay relevant to the general

public. Internet memes also serve as an engagement tool for Epic. By interacting with internet

memes, the company is able to connect with a significant amount of its player base that finds

internet memes entertaining.

Epic Games does not interact with internet memes often (though it does sometimes

spawn internet memes based on the content within Fortnite). Adding a moth-related costume to

Fortnite was a rare case of Epic interacting with popular internet memes. Using internet memes

sparingly ensures that Fortnite’s content is not irrelevant to large groups of players. It also
68 | Viral Marketing

provides fewer opportunities for Epic to find itself in hot water over an addition to the game.

This is key: If an internet meme is added to Fortnite, it is tame and without suggestive

connotations.

Although Fortnite connects with its fans through memes and internet memes, it does not

do so in a way that would alienate those who don’t follow the latest trends. The most dedicated,

in-the-know fans can have access to inside jokes while everyone else gets to enjoy the game as

well. In essence, Fortnite’s tasteful use of memes and internet memes is a great example for

others to follow. The references are there for those who appreciate it, but without being highly

intrusive.

Internet virality

● Extreme popularity through broadcast mechanisms does not equal internet virality.

● 99 percent of content will not go viral. To increase your odds, be useful or entertaining.

Epic Games continues to find new ways for Fortnite and its content to go viral across the

internet. Much of Fortnite’s virality occurs on social media websites like Twitter. Most often, the

game’s major announcements go viral, garnering nearly 10,000 retweets or more. Other posts,

like tweets about bug fixes, skins, emotes, and small updates tend to garner under 2,000 retweets.

Because most people share content they think others will find useful or entertaining (Blueclaw,

2014), it makes sense that tweets about major developments in the game would go viral. Major

announcements will be more useful or entertaining to the player base than smaller additions.

For example, Fortnite hosted a virtual concert from EDM artist Marshmello in February

2019. The concert was the first of its kind: Marshmello performed a live 10-minute set that was

transmitted simultaneously through all the Fortnite servers (Rubin, 2019). The event drew 10.7

million in-game players, which broke the game’s record for most concurrent users (Webster,
69 | Shiflet

2019). It has also garnered millions more views through live streams and video recaps of the

concert through Twitch and YouTube.

One of Fortnite’s tweets about Marshmello-themed in-game items garnered over 9,700

retweets and was one of the account’s top five most retweeted tweets of February. Two of

Marshmello’s tweets about the partnership garnered over 10,000 retweets each (marshmello,

2019a, 2019c). The video recap of the concert posted to Marshmello’s YouTube channel has

accumulated over 29 million views within one month (Marshmello, 2019b). The statistics seem

to indicate that the event was a success, as the social media activity about the concert from both

Fortnite and Marshmello garnered more engagements than most of the other content on the

accounts.

The partnership made sense for Fortnite, as Marshmello is well-known among both

Fortnite and Marshmello followers as being a major fan of the game. In 2018, he streamed

multiple times with gaming celebrity Ninja. The pair also won the Fortnite Celebrity Pro-Am, a

tournament that pitted 50 teams of one professional Fortnite player and one celebrity each

against each other (Alexander, 2018). On YouTube, Marshmello has more than 30 million

subscribers, over 25 million more subscribers than Fortnite (Marshmello, n.d.). On Twitter,

Fortnite has roughly 5.5 million more followers than Marshmello (7.17M to 1.65M). On

Instagram, Fortnite has almost 18 million followers and Marshmello has almost 19 million, as of

March 2019 (Fortnite, n.d.; marshmello, n.d.). Both are highly popular across social media, with

strengths on different platforms. The two have overlapping fan bases, and the partnership

allowed for in-game and real-world merchandising. The partnership was practically bound to

succeed, and it did, becoming Fortnite’s most popular event.

70 | Viral Marketing

Beyond the content posted by Fortnite and Marshmello social media profiles, the concert

also spread rapidly thanks to other YouTubers, Twitch streamers and players posting and sharing

content about it online. Countless news outlets wrote articles and posted social media content

about it, all contributing to the overall conversation that trended across the internet.

Again, people tend to share content others may find useful or entertaining. The

Marshmello and Fortnite collaboration was an ideal fit for the game because of the overlap

between fan bases. This probably made posters more likely to share content about the

collaboration, since the posts were highly likely to be valuable to their audiences.

This is a prime example of a strategy that can help a brand’s content go viral: Make sure

that the content will be useful or interesting. If it is valuable to the consumer base, as information

about the Marshmello concert in Fortnite was, then consumers will hardly have to be convinced

to share it.

Marketing

● Think of viral marketing like IMC: all messaging must be consistent and unified

● If your product or service cannot be differentiated, your marketing must be.

Maybe the easiest aspect of Fortnite’s formula to explain is its successful marketing

approach. Online, where we will focus, the game’s marketing is simple, straightforward, and

effective. As mentioned before, Fortnite’s messages are consistent across platforms, as any

modern IMC strategy should be. In a sense, much of Fortnite’s traditional marketing, like its

social media posts and video ads, provide a malleable basis that its more ambitious endeavors,

like the Marshmello in-game concert, can build from. The simplicity of Fortnite’s marketing is a

strength rather than a weakness.

71 | Shiflet

For example, Twitter and Facebook allow users to upload profile banners for their pages.

On those platforms, Fortnite uploaded a banner to promote the game’s 8th season, which

features a pirate theme and new character costumes. On Instagram, however, profiles do not

feature banner images. Instead, the banner was split into six square images that were uploaded in

order to recreate the original image atop the profile, which displays images in three-item width

rows. The profile then did not post any Instagram content for several days so that the order of the

images would not be disturbed.

This is one straightforward instance of Fortnite tweaking the same basic content to apply

to multiple online platforms. The brand uploaded the same image to three platforms, but it did so

on Instagram in a way that allowed it to work around the platform’s inherent limitations. While

Fortnite certainly did not invent this mosaic style, it did successfully utilize it to get a message

across in an uncommon way that also allowed it to increase total engagements for the content.

The six images posted to Instagram certainly garnered more likes and comments than if the

original had not been broken into segments.

Fortnite also features a cartoonish animation style and vibrant colors, attributes that

separate it from the drab color palettes of its realism-centric competitors. Fortnite’s social media

posts often stand out from others in a given feed or timeline because of the vibrancy of the

colors. Across all platforms, Fortnite’s marketing carries the same colorful consistency.

Verbally, Fortnite also remains consistent. Most of its posts utilize catchy, borderline

cheesy wordplay. For example, one announcement about a hovering skateboard invites players to

“catch some air” on Facebook (Fortnite, 2019b). Another announcement on Twitter about a new

cannon tells players to “launch into battle” (Fortnite, 2019a).

72 | Viral Marketing

In short, Fortnite players know what type of content they can expect across platforms.

The colorful content differentiates itself from competitors, and the straightforward, fun verbal

messages communicate important information. When something unique appears, like a retweet

from a celebrity, or a high-importance announcement, it is easy to distinguish from the game’s

other marketing content. Those marketing materials tend to feature increased engagement,

whether in views, shares or likes. Fortnite has found a simple strategy that works, reinforcing the

idea that marketing does not have to be extravagant, as long as it is authentic and useful to

consumers.

Conclusion

Fortnite has gone viral like virtually no other game before it. Part of that success is due to

the quality of the game itself, but a huge responsibility rests on Epic Games to market it

effectively. Its multi-faceted approach accomplishes many goals: It helps consumers feel

valuable and lets their voices be heard, it preserves the atmosphere of fun, it meets players

wherever they are across social media, it varies its content by platform, it promotes exciting

updates and features, and it encourages external advocates and content creators. Best of all, Epic

Games does all of this while packaging its viral marketing efforts into an easily digestible

formula that helps players understand what to expect, no matter the platform. The main takeaway

from Fortnite’s approach is that while it does occasionally go above and beyond (such as for the

Marshmello concert), most of its success comes from its consistency and attention to both detail

and the customer in day-to-day functions across the internet.

Comparing Overwatch League and Fortnite

Although Overwatch League and Fortnite share the similarity of employing viral

marketing tactics, the two do so in very different ways. Both the comparisons and contrasts
73 | Shiflet

between the two illustrate the flexibility that viral marketing provides. While viral marketing

should eventually lead to consumers spreading the word on behalf of a company, there are a

multitude of ways it can occur.

Where OWL entities try to make fans feel like family, Fortnite is content with keeping

most fans distant, save for those who contribute new content ideas on websites like Reddit. OWL

spreads its news across countless fronts, from official brand accounts to individual personalities,

but Fortnite’s content is much more condensed. Viral in OWL can mean reaching hundreds of

thousands or millions of people, while viral content in Fortnite reaches tens or hundreds of

millions.

This final point may be the most important to understand when contrasting viral

strategies: The absolute size of the reach is not the only indicator of success. By numbers alone,

Fortnite would outshine OWL, as Fortnite reaches millions more people than OWL on a daily

basis. However, this does not make OWL unsuccessful. Everything is relative. Games like

Fortnite will eventually fall out of favor. Fortnite is doing all it can to stay viral for the moment,

and its billions of dollars in revenue speak to its success. Yet its trajectory over the next five to

ten years will likely trend downward, peaking in 2018 and slowly declining through the 2020s.

This tends to be the norm for video games in highly-competitive genres, such as battle royales.

With the exceptions of games like Grand Theft Auto V and Minecraft, where there is little

competition in the genre, or the competition delivers clearly inferior products, games tend to

steadily decline in popularity over spans of several months to several years. Fortnite is banking

on its massively viral success in the moment, as that success is fleeting, and its fast-paced, high-

profile strategy reflects this.

74 | Viral Marketing

OWL, however, is aiming for a much more sustainable business model. The league hopes

to be a staple of esports for years or decades to come, a goal that is not as farfetched as it may

seem. For comparison, the professional league for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has been in

operation since 2013 and is still one of the most popular esports in the world, showing no signs

of slowing down. The esports scene is steadily growing, and OWL truly does have the

opportunity to not only exist, but also grow for years to come. In this context, it makes sense that

OWL would not see the same explosive growth and virality as Fortnite. Instead, it is

experiencing a slow, steady growth that can be sustained for years to come. As such, its

community-building approach and lack of mainstream virality are fitting for the moment. In

time, OWL may very well overtake Fortnite in popularity, and the fact that this is not currently

the case does not diminish OWL’s success for its own marketing campaign. This is again

because the measure of virality is not based on absolute values, but on the effectiveness of

spreading content among peers in, and eventually beyond, a group. As Overwatch League

continues to grow, it will need to keep its peer-to-peer spread of content high in order to stay

viral.

The potentially opposite trajectories for Fortnite and OWL do not preclude similarities

between the two, however. Both owe at least part of their success to solid understandings of what

their fanbases desire. For OWL, that means embracing player and team-based memes, like

dafran’s “Let’s Go, Dude!” catchphrase and subtle jabs at aKm for his infamous performance.

For Fortnite, it means implementing skins, emotes and features designed or requested by fan

communities like r/FortniteBR. Both groups utilize a variety of social media, from the traditional

Facebook and Twitter to the gamer-focused Twitch and Discord. It is clear that both Activision

Blizzard and Epic Games understand where to find their fans. Both groups produce social media
75 | Shiflet

content clearly tailored to a young audience, and both understand how to competently integrate

memes and internet memes.

In the end, it is impossible to say that one approach is better than the other. Fortnite sees

massive success in the moment, but OWL prepares for long-term sustainability. Both examples

illustrate unique ways of integrating virality into marketing, and both have their merits. When

looking to these examples for ideas to borrow for your own campaign, consider what your goals

are and determine which of the strategies shown will best suit those goals. Viral marketing

provides a plethora of ways to entertain, inform and connect with fans, some of which have been

detailed in this paper. My hope is that something within these case studies can put you on the

right track to emulating the success of OWL or Fortnite.

Conclusion

In the end, I believe this thesis paper provides something valuable: A clear definition of

viral marketing, with examples and explanations, that others can reference in creating future

campaigns. I hope it provides a framework that practitioners can utilize for themselves and build

upon for others moving forward. But I realize that this paper is not a definitive answer for all

things viral. It does not dig deeply into the mathematics behind viral diffusion. It does not break

down all the numbers and analytics behind successful viral campaigns. The Best Practices

section does not provide a fully-comprehensive list of every action that must be taken in order to

succeed.

This was always the intention. Through this paper, readers have likely noticed that viral

marketing takes many forms, making it nearly impossible to provide highly specific

recommendations. The field is constantly shifting and changing, with new social platforms like

Discord appearing seemingly overnight. Therefore, my suggestion cannot be to use Discord, but
76 | Viral Marketing

rather to migrate to the newest platform where consumers reside, whatever that may be in the

future. As platforms change, viral marketing changes. As the structure of the web changes, viral

marketing changes. For every new feature or task that can be completed online, at least one

company or individual will inevitably utilize it. The saying is cliché, yet true: The possibilities

are endless.

This leaves incredible room for further research, whether generalized or specific, both

within and outside gaming. Future studies may look specifically at topics like best practices for

Discord, how to determine if vocal fans on Reddit really do speak for the majority, determining

which industries viral marketing may not work for, and how older consumers react to internet

memes. Generalized studies may consider if internet memes spread better in the form of images,

videos, or another form, when in the context of a viral marketing campaign. They may more

closely examine the impact of viral marketing on lexicon or behaviors, possibly through the

lenses of catchphrases from “Where’s the Beef?” to “Dilly, Dilly!”

I was not able to travel or directly speak with marketers who have engaged in the

campaigns mentioned in this paper. This means that there is still a major question to be answered

in future research: How much of viral marketing is planned, and how much is opportunistic?

Critics could argue that viral marketing is less of a strategy and more of latching onto whatever

happens to stick with an audience. To an extent, this may be the case for some companies. But I

would argue that most successful viral marketing campaigns start with a structured outline

featuring room for flexibility. For example, OWL planned to tweet about the Shanghai Dragons

match and surely planned to capitalize on the team’s first victory. What that might look like,

specifically, was likely unknown until the victory occurred. It seems instances like that require

prior planning, but because of the speed of the internet, part of the campaign must be reactionary
77 | Shiflet

by nature: Brands must react and respond to consumers’ interactions with the campaign. To me,

this does not scream chaos or poor foresight. Instead, it shows that brands are willing to think

quick and adjust on the fly, an attribute that other traditionally structured marketing campaigns

often cannot boast.

This, however, is my opinion based on what I have researched. I do not have a definitive

answer derived from interviews and discussions with successful viral marketers. Such

conversations would be valuable research for future projects, as they would give insight to how

flexible a viral marketing campaign is compared to its predecessors. Every bit of understanding

can help make viral marketing more effective in the future.

Marketing must evolve. The future will be written by those who lead innovation on

internet-centric viral marketing campaigns. I hope this paper can provide the groundwork for

those innovations to occur.

Step 1. Understand viral marketing.

Step 2. ???

Step 3. PROFIT

(???? PROFIT!!!!, n.d.)

78 | Viral Marketing

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