Viral Marketing Campaigns

international | consumer issues | other press Sunday November 27, 2005 23:41 by regular joe

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 14th May 2002

Persuasion works best when it’s invisible. The most effective marketing worms its way into our consciousness, leaving intact the perception that we have reached our opinions and made our choices independently. As old as humankind itself, over the past few years this approach has been refined, with the help of the internet, into a technique called “viral marketing”. Last month, the viruses appear to have murdered their host. One of the world’s foremost scientific journals was persuaded to do something it has never done before, and retract a paper it had published.

See: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2002/05/14/the-fake-persuaders/