Combining Growth Manager content and corporate identity of IT company Ideals as a hybrid viral marketing strategy

The relevance of the study is determined by increasing competition in the digital environment and the declining effectiveness of traditional advertising tools, which encourages companies to seek new approaches to building organic reach and audience engagement. This issue is particularly significant for information technology companies whose audiences are characterised by a high level of digital literacy and a critical attitude toward direct advertising. Under these conditions, a promising direction is the combination of viral content with personalised communications and corporate visual brand identity. The aim of the article was to substantiate the effectiveness of combining the Growth Manager’s content with the corporate identity of the company Ideals as a hybrid viral marketing strategy, based on the generalisation of the results of an empirical study of viral advertising campaigns. The methodological framework of the study included content analysis, comparative analysis, generalisation, and analytical evaluation of audience engagement metrics with digital video content. The empirical basis was formed from cases of viral video content analysed within a master’s research project on the activities of a communication agency specialising in the creation of short creative video formats. The study found that viral mechanisms effective in the activities of creative agencies can be adapted to the communications of information technology companies, provided that the personal expert content of the Growth Manager is integrated with the corporate brand identity. It is proven that such a hybrid model contributes to increased organic reach, audience engagement, and the formation of trust in the brand. The practical value of the study lies in the possibility of applying the proposed hybrid strategy by information technology companies to enhance the effectiveness of digital communications without a significant increase in advertising costs