The Use of Viral Marketing in Politics : A Case Study of the 2007 French Presidential Election

Abstract: The aim of this study is to explore the implementation of viral marketing in Politics. We led a case study in order to discover how viral techniques were used to promote candidates running for the 2007 French election. The review of previous research provided learning about the use of new communication methods in electoral campaigns.Nevertheless, they are not specifically devoted to the viral marketing method. At present, theoretical models about this new phenomenon exist only for business sectors. Viral marketing is becoming of greater importance in the promotion of a candidate's brand image. It was interesting to discover how marketing techniques are transferred into the field of politics. Through our theoretical framework we analysed results from our interview with a webmaster who works for the Nicolas Sarkozy's political party. We explained the role of viral marketing in the communication strategy of politicians. Thanks to the focus group, we assessed the impact of viral marketing among French voters. The results show that it generates a word-of-mouth campaign about the candidate's personality which results in a political "Buzz". This high media coverage heavily influences the voters who are highly sensitive to image branding. However, the counterpart of using viral marketing is the lack of control that candidates maintain over their image. For example, the spreading of undesirable videos could harm their credibility. Finally, our study shows that modern politics is appealing for viral marketing in order to shape the political leader's image, which constitutes a determinant factor to influence voters.