Virgil W. Magee is the Deputy Director of Media Analysis for Strategic Communications for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, Afghanistan. In his position he is responsible for the identification and analysis of local, regional and global media trends pertaining to multinational ISAF and North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) alliance missions and strategic objectives for 42 partner nation defense and foreign affairs ministerial-level organizations, NATO and United Nations mandated missions.
There are so many businesses that attempt to use viral marketing as a way to spread their message quickly and to a lot of people. This simply is creating a marketing campaign that will make people send it to everyone they know. The message can be video, pictures, cartoons or even articles. It just has to be something that spreads faster than you can imagine. Because a lot of businesses are using it, some people are wondering whether the military can take advantage of this marketing technique. The problem with the answer is that it is both yes and no.
The reason the military should be able to use viral marketing to their advantage is because viral always works. People who send the messages do not even have to use the service of the company that has the message. All people care about when it comes to viral marketing is the content. If it is funny or moving in any way, it will work. Very few companies have failed at using this form of marketing because of how great it works.
The reason more companies do not use it is because they cannot think of content for the message. The reason that people do not think the military would be able to use viral marketing effectively is because a lot of people do not trust the military anymore. They know that a lot of the material sent from the military is censored. How are people to know what is real and what is not? Because of this fact alone, many people do not think it would work so well for the military.
They would have to use more traditional forms of marketing, as well as some really great public relations, to gain back the trust of people. Once that is done, then viral marketing could work out well for them. If the military wanted to use viral marketing effectively, they would have to learn how to treat themselves as a business.
It almost seems as if they forget this when they go about their marketing and advertising campaigns. Of course, they are not exactly the same as other businesses, but at the end of the day, that is what they are.
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