KLM Airlines: KLM has launched a new viral game but…

"Now Boarding" is a new online competition launched by KLM that allows people to build their own flight schedule, invite passengers (friends) and then win some plane tickets. As head of Staff & Press Commercial Youssef Eddini told me, KLM's goal at the moment is to increase the number of online transactions.

To do so, they're asking prospects to help them spread the word. The competition, now running, asks participants to invite 25 friends to join the game. This means that a lot of people will get the KLM brand name in their inbox, and 25 new names and e-mail addresses will end up in KLM's database - so the game sounds very promising in a viral marketing perspective. The problem is that KLM is continually running online competitions with a viral touch. In the last five months at least three invitation to play online arrived in newsletter subscribers' mailboxes.

What's the difference between an unsolicited promotional email message you receive from a Company and the one you receive from a friend? It's difficult to tell. Probably (and hopefully) the friend will stop sending you viral messages if you ask him to. But the point is that the line between viral marketing and spam might get thinner and thinner. Viral marketing can be abused. It's definitely powerful, and often cheap, but we shouldn't forget it could also work the other way around, generating a negative reaction in annoyed prospects.

It might be useful to suggest a dosage for viral marketing and online competitions: not to exceed two campaigns a year from a brand, lest the patient have an auto-immune reaction.