Viral Marketing Strategy On Magnum Ice Cream

Viral Marketing Strategy in "Magnum"

Over the years many customers in Indonesia are successfully influenced by advertising by either newsprint or electronic media. Now, the power of marketing is not by the advertising anymore, customers believe more on what people said. Nowadays, customers have more power compared to the past. It is triggered by the development of alternative media such as internet and mobile phone. It makes customers feel easier to communicate with others without limit.

There are many things and topics to be discussed by customers in every occasion. Like conversation with friends, family, coworkers, etc. Many rumours which are related to some products (buzz) which are spreading in the middle of customers, either positive or negative one. That rumours called as "buzz marketing" or "viral marketing"".

As we knew, some time ago people get busy discussing how hard to find Magnum ice cream in social media. It was one of viral marketing strategy. That conversations was extended and became trend topics in social media like Twitter. Of course this condition is strengthen each brand on customer's mind and otomatically increasing sales in the market. This condition obviously happened with good planning and campaign strategy that can create "buzz" in the society. Magnum ice cream's campaign starts with Unilever hired some public figures who has many followers in their Twitter account. In a moment, tweet (the term in Twitter) from the public figure's Twitter account spread widely to their followers. Also that promotion can be spread to more people because their followers will retweet it. They do not need to spend a lot of money to spread this promotion to over ten thousands people. Only with internet connection, that promotion can be done everywhere and everytime. Costs will be different if they use advertising in television or other media because it will be higher.

Viral marketing is a marketing technique which is when a company spread some informations to other people then the receiver will also spread it to other people. And so on until the exponential growth happen. In internet, viral marketing means when a website or internet users who send a messages to other website or other people and continued to other website. This technique works in internet because of its own characteristic. Many people use different word to say viral marketing, such as: avalanche marketing, buzz marketing, cascading style marketing, centrifugal marketing, exponential marketing, fission marketing, grass roots marketing, organic marketing, propogation marketing, referral marketing, ripple marketing, self-perpetuation marketing, self-propogation marketing, wildfire marketing.

While the buzz marketing is one of viral marketing techniques when an individual who is spontaneous sends some information to his or her relation. But from many name of viral marketing, more or less they have the same meaning. The point is, buzz marketing try to create some condition to make product, service, company or anything that will be launched become people's topic on their conversation. This technique is cheaper than hiring professional marketer. Buzz marketing create marketing from words of mouth and it will always growing. Nowadays, marketers already increase their ability to recognize people who have an important role in the public. That people who has an important role can do some approach to spread the information about some product or a new services.

Few times ago, Magnum become popular in social media like Facebook and Twitter. Many people tried to get this Wall's product, but they found nothing whereas they already went to many minimarkets. Instead, there were some minimarket wrote "Magnum are sold out" in front of their main door because many people try to found it. Then customers complain in the social media like Facebook and Twitter.

Magnum was being increasingly sought by customers after Wall's launched their new variant of this ice cream few times ago, like Wall's Magnum Chocolate Truffle. So, now they have three variants of ice cream, like Magnum Classic and Magnum Almond. Magnum also do more promotion on its new products. Because of that, many people thought that the scarcity of Magnum is a marketing strategy of Wall's to promote one of their product.

Wall's said that this scarcity is more or less happen because of their marketing strategy. Senior Brand Manager of Wall's Magnum PT Unilever Indonesia Tbk, Meila Putri Handayani, said that she applying parallel strategy. Usually, before they promote their product they provide