How did videos like 'Damn Daniel' sent sales of white vans soaring?

How did campaigns like "Dove's "Real Beauty Sketches" brought awareness to beauty went viral?  

or even a simple photo of "#whitegold or #blueblack dress got viral? 

I am sure everyone knows the power of all these examples and how it was able to garner a massive amount of attention from the public. But what actually went down in history that #broketheinternet was Kim Kardashian's Paper cover.

So what is viral marketing? Viral marketing is a form of electronic word-of-mouth whereby some form of marketing message related to a brand is transmitted through the use of social media applications (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011)

In this case of Kim Kardashian, she bared it all on Paper magazine. This gave an whole new concept of magazine covers that are edgy and different. When Kim Kardashian posted the magazine cover on twitter, it garnered thousands of retweets and the paper site received over 50 million hits in one day.

From this success, we learn that there are three criteria to tick off in order to create a viral marketing. The three basic conditions which is that the right people need to get the right message under the right circumstances. (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2011) 

Paper magazine is a small circulation magazine, more situated towards an independent outlook. Instead of using mainstream and typical cover shots, they made a bold attempt on this cover. Leveraging also on Kim Kardashian's popularity on social media sites and her vocal opinions on loving her body, they were able to get the message across. Within 24 hours, the print magazine was able to generate publicity and got people talking about a magazine or publication they had never heard of. Hitting an all high 6.6 million page views with 5 million of those being unique visitors. The impressions created through all social media totalled to over a million. Celebrities like her husband, Kanye West as well as her other family members retweeted the photo and showed their support. This garnered even more attention towards the magazine even before it was released. The key to Paper's success was to involve the person they were featuring. Instead of 'sending a person to interview', they involved Kim Kardashian in this spread. Paper Magazine is currently well received by many people globally.

However there are also other cases of viral campaigns that was able to gain awareness of its campaign at the start but brought about a discussion of ethics in marketing. An example would be Witchery viral campaign. Basically, they created a 'genuine' youtube video of an woman attempting to track down a man. This brought about a lot of help from the public in helping the women find the man in the jacket. However when it was exposed that everything was staged, the public response was negative. The public felt that it was unethical of them to have lied about it and this angered public as they felt deceived. (you could watch the videos here x and x)

This was badly engineered and the campaign backfired about them. But have you ever wondered that since it became viral, more people know about the brand name? A point to note is that even though there was an increase in brand awareness, but it comes along with a negative brand association.

References:

Kaplan, A. & Haenlein, M. (2011). Two hearts in three-quarter time: How to waltz the social media/viral marketing dance. Business Horizons, 54(3), 253-263. 

Credits: x