Far from the smokey rooms of Mad Men and the old-school ad campaign that told consumers what they were supposed to like, modern marketing whizzes have decided they are just much, much too lazy for that. A viral campaign is a marketing blitz that essentially creates a pitch which is cool and interesting enough that consumers will spread it on its own. Sometimes a campaign is designed to be viral. Sometimes it gets there on its own. The whole phenomenon is either heartening in the sense that advertising has been forced to a new level of originality, or incredibly depressing as consumerism has finally cemented itself as having all the qualities of a virulent social disease.

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