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Christmas: The Greatest Viral Marketing Campaign in History

December 25, 2008 I would like to wish all of the "Making Marketing Work" readers a very Merry Christmas. It's a time of lights, merriment, and poinsetta garlands hung over the doorways. It is also the time of year that many  celebrate the birth of Jesus, the inspiration for the greatest viral marketing campaign in history.

Although there are many other holidays my family could celebrate this time of year, we celebrate Christmas. Our reasons are not cultural. They are historical. This history is the reason, I believe, that the message about the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus has become the longest lasting, most influential word-of-mouth marketing campaign in the world.

Here are three little-known facts about historic Christianity that I credit, in part, for its success:

Jesus did not claim to be a prophet or a great moral teacher. He claimed to be the great "I AM," the pre-existent, sovereign creator of the Universe.

That Jesus claimed to be God is not a claim made by Christians centuries later. There is multiple historic attestation that Jesus taught his own divinity and that the earliest Christians worshipped him as God.

Think of it as the ultimate celebrity endorsement.

The New Testament is not a collection of stories about Jesus. It is a collection of letters by individuals (or written on their behalf) recording their eye-witness testimony.

Just as products gain from the testimony of real people using real products, the books of the New Testament were written by individuals who lived with Jesus, listened to him preach, watched him die, and—as improbable as it may seem—saw him alive again. Repeatedly, the writers use phrases like, "as we have seen and heard" and "as you, yourselves, know."

In marketing speak, "Real people — not actors."

Jesus' resurrection from the dead was confirmed by more than 500 eye-witnesses.

The apostle Paul wrote that, not only did 500 people witness Jesus alive again after three days, but many of those witnesses were alive at the time he was writing. Essentially, Paul was saying, "Don't take my word for it. Check it out for yourself."

Not only this, but the Christian message did not take hold hundreds of miles away in a city where people didn't know any better. It occurred in Jerusalem, the place where Jesus was crucified. It was a public execution, so any falsification or exaggeration would have been extremely difficult to perpetuate. Yet, thousands of Christians went to their deaths being burned as human torches in the gardens of Caesar Nero or being torn by wild beasts in the Roman coliseums. Yet, not a single recantation is on record.

Marketers would kill for this kind of customer loyalty!

So what can marketers learn from the survival of the Christmas message? Start with a great product. Encourage their desire for the product with testimonies of real people whose lives have been transformed by that product. Continually provide value and nurture the customer relationship so that customers will spread the message about the product through viral methods and stay loyal to you and your product, even in adverse circumstances.

Have questions? Comments? I'd love to hear from you. You can email me at info@digitalprintingreports.com. For more information on primers for marketers and small businesses on digital, 1:1, Web-to-print, and personalized URL applications, visit Digital Printing Reports. You can also keep up with all of my posts on EBS, The Inspired Economist ("Greening Print Marketing"), and other blog sites by following me on Twitter.

Posted by Heidi Tolliver Nigro on December 25, 2008 | Comments (0)