in the marketing field, seeding is considered the process of allocating marketing to specific customers, or groups of customers, in order to stimulate the internal dynamics of the market, enhance the diffusion process and encourage faster adoption of the product throughout the entire population. in a marketing seeding program, a company offers some sort of promotion (free product, discounts, service trials, etc.) to a niche group of people with the intention that this would stimulate wom. an early example of a seeding trial was during the development of post-it notes, produced by 3m. in 1977, secretaries to senior management staff throughout the united states were sent packs of post-its and invited to suggest possible uses for them. they soon found them to be extremely useful and became "brand champions" for the product, an early example of viral marketing. companies that have used seeding trials include procter & gamble, microsoft, hasbro, google, unilever, pepsi, coke, ford, dreamworks skg, emi, sony, and siemens.