Influencer Effect
1 min readApr 13, 2022
Marketers/advertisers usually focus their attention on the people responsible for making the purchase. In many cases, this is an effective method but in other cases it can make for a completely useless marketing campaign.
Virgin Mobile took a more effective approach in marketing its cell phone service by focusing not on the people making the actual purchase, but instead focusing on the impact of the people making the purchase. To make this campaign work, Virgin developed a viral website called Parental Enlightenment Kit, which offers a number of tips (often fairytale fun) to convince their parents to buy a Virgin Mobile phone for them.By enlisting teens, Virgin has multiplied the effectiveness of its marketing campaign for 3 reasons:
1. Teens will constantly refer the phone/service to their parents until they get it - Virgin's campaign will continue to work long after the teen leaves the computer.
2. This approach is exactly the kind of viral spread. As teens tell their friends about it, it will rapidly increase in effect.3. They have targeted the most likely decision maker rather than the person responsible for the purchase.Companies in other industries have taken a similar approach and achieved amazing results. For example, Pfizer targeted men with erectile dysfunction (an excess PC for impotence) rather than doctors who would actually prescribe the drug (Viagra) to treat it. You can take the same approach to market your product/service and reap the tremendous rewardsGet Jaikhandelwal’s stories in your inbox
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