Behind the Buzz - digital and interactive advertising and marketing

Virals, Memes and Packets

by Rachel on May 8th, 2008

Comments on an earlier post asked about virals and memes and a post on Ad Age talks about packets.  Here’s what I think are the differences.

Viral - short-hand used by marketers to describe content that gets distributed through word of mouth, although usually with a healthy dose of promotion when they are concerned with a product.  They are usually one-offs, although copies and parodies can happen.  The most common tend to be about sex, music, sport, celebrities, politics and combinations of all 5, although you can get exceptions to this.   The Evolution of Dance is a classic example; the current Nike ad is a commercial example.

Meme - an idea, someway of expressing something. There are usually many, many examples of content that subscribe to a meme.  Lolcatz is one of the biggest examples, Rickrolling another.  They rarely arise out of a deliberate policy from a brand or advertisment, but can be co-opted. For example, I’d classify the Mastercard Priceless ad structure of a meme, something that is used outside of the orginal intent to cover all sorts of instances, including this one post London being awarded the 2012 Olympics.

Packets - as defined by Mat Zucker, these are pieces of content developed specifically for groups, for network of friends, which are passed around within the network.  They’re not broadbrush attempts at content, which is generally advertising based, but specific utilities, games or conversational topics.

What other terms have you heard or do you use?   What are your definitions?

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POSTED IN: Marketing in General, Viral Marketing