Slashdot Mirror
Viral Marketing to Become the Norm?
An anonymous reader writes "One of the oldest advertising companies in the U.S., JWT, has just bought up all the Huffington Post's front-page ad space for a whole week. They are taking the unique approach of trying to create ad content interesting enough to make people want to watch, instead of the traditional ad agency approach of bludgeoning the user base over the head through interstitials and other forced ad techniques. Will the ad companies be able to put forth enough continued effort to make good ads that become viral, or is this just a short phase to gain publicity?"
Instead of MAKING the customer do something, you make it attractive enough for them to WANT to do something.
MPAA, RIAA: you taking notes?
I don't see the connection between "interesting enough to make people want to watch" and "viral".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
They've already succeeded. It's been posted on Slashdot. What better indicator of sucess in a viral marketing campaign designed to attract attention and publicity do you need?
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
I'm sorry, I must have got something wrong...
You're not saying some time in the future I won't be forced to watch commercials because some gizmo or another preventing me from switching channels? I'll watch commercials of my own free will?
I don't believe a change of this magnitude throughout the marketing industry is possible.
It would be nice, though.
However, I fear that if I start watching commercials thinking I like it, I'll have been brainwashed. And they won't have changed.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Most commercials here in Greece are so clever and well-made that you actually switch channels hoping to catch some of them. Their only downside is that everyone remembers the commercial but noone knows what product it's for, except maybe that it's for icecream or a phone company or something. So something for the advertisers to consider is tying the product with the ad, so it's memorable.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Viral advertising works because it is rare. How could it be the norm? I seriously doubt that there is enough talent out there to regularly churn out advertising that is entertaining enough. It is, after all, only advertising. People will learn to filter it out.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
It worked.
Why cut IT when your office space costs $3/sf? gibso
and it will be dead forever. Look at places like myspace. It is pure viral marketing, friends tell friends and friends get friends to join. The amusing part is, myspace makes money off of the old, failed system of marketing, while myspace enjoys having no advertising budget of their own. they have millions of stupid kids out there spouting off how great their service is. it is an amazing feat.
if anyone is trying to market their business, i suggest they read "PyroMarketing" good stuff.
Fans of the strip will catch the drift.
In other words, the second thing- this is a short-term thing to gain publicity. First, there are barely enough agencies making good ads now, let alone sustain this kind of campaign. Second, if anyone does find anyting new and different, it only takes about 30 seconds for other marketing types to glom on. Then we're bombarded with the "new and different" for a few years.
Besides- "viral marketing" is a flawed premise, at least as far as adult audiences go. Yes, viral communication is possible if you're trying to spread an idea that's similar to those already present in the viewer's mind, but once you cross the line into introducing something that the viewer didn't know he needed, you're more likely to get a cybernetic immune response.
I came, I saw, I left. It looked better in the brochure.
as a US citizen (like many others) i have been bombed and hounded by advertising for so long now that i automatically ignore all advertizing like ignoring the background noise in a factory...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Because of the nature of the beast. There is a fundamental disconnect between what they want and what they can get, no matter how good their ads get.
What they want is for your primary goal in life to be to consume their product. (This is especially difficult in that several hundred or thousand products all share this same goal, and best case scenario is still that only one can "win".)
What they can get at best is "an interesting commercial", at a much greater expense than just creating a standard annoying-as-hell commercial.
They'll be pleased with the initial apparent progress towards their goal, but when it caps out long before it gets to making consumption your primary goal in life, they'll become disillusioned and go back to the cheap-but-annoying model, as it has better bang-for-the-buck.
Advertising's primary problem is that they were able to fool themselves in the past that they were making progress towards making their products our overriding concern, because of the very fuzzy and indirect nature of the feedback they recieved. As they become better at figuring out the real effects of their advertising, they are becoming more desparate to "recapture" their old progress and stature, which is especially difficult as it never existed in the first place. Until they realize that it was always an illusion, and re-align themselves to think of themselves as an investment instead of an attempt to create little quasi-religions centered around products, they are always going to have this problem.
(Note that most business people already correctly think of advertising as investment and have for a long time. It's "Big Advertising" that has a very wrong mental model of their own importance.)
... that viral marketing just doesn't work.
It's true that eventually, viral marketing may become less effective than it is now. But since it's based on me watching because I want to watch, all I have to do is watch the ads I like. Hopefully, it'll become popular enough that the bludgeon-you-over-the-head ads go away.
As a consumer, that's really the Grail for me -- get rid of the bludgeon-you-over-the-head ads. No more spam, no more commercial breaks (or maybe one at the start and halfway through a show, instead of every 10 mins.)
I really do wish the best for people and their products, but at the end of the day, I'm going to buy the product I think is better. Your best bet to get me to buy computer hardware is to have it competitively priced and carried by Newegg, not to have an annoying jingle at the end of every Dell ad (Intel Inside). Advertising as a whole just isn't a reliable way to get intelligent people to buy your product -- there's a good chance you'll just annoy the potential customer out of buying the product in the first place. Case in point -- I, and most of my friends, stopped buying Pepsi because we were so annoyed at the Pepsi girl. We bought Coke instead, until years later, we finally learned to think for ourselves. Now I buy Pepsi because I think it tastes better.
So, take that marketing budget and fold it back into the company. Spend it on improving your product. Rely on word-of-mouth, and realize that it spreads insanely fast over the Internet. And if you must, use viral advertising, so that I don't have to watch it.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The key thing I want to know about any "viral marketing" is WHO engineered the virus in the first place? Was it a stealth marketing shill trying to "subvert the cluetrain", or was it a truly grassroots meme like the Mentos+Coke thing?
If it's the latter, I'm fine with it, because it's genuine, but the former is just dirtier than even massmedia ads because the manipulation is sneekier and you KNOW the bastards are laughing all the way to the bank. At least with conventional ads you know someone's trying to sell you; with viral/stealth marketing it *could* be authentic, but it's more likely to be just some smirking jackasses taking everyone for a ride.
Power to the Peaceful
If people do learn to filter it out, the advantage of viral advertising is, they won't have to watch it anyway.
With traditional advertising, people filter it out, but still have to watch it, wasting their time, their power (having the TV on), the broadcasting company's time, etc. With viral advertising, only people who actually want to watch it will waste your resources pulling it down.
I've never seen anything conclusive to say that subliminal messages work, or that in-your-face ads work. I only have my own ancedotal evidence: I buy things based on word-of-mouth (reviews, Slashdot, etc), and the most effective way to get me to buy something is to make a good product and have it listed on Newegg, Thinkgeek, or whatever store I end up in.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The thing is, whether you like it or not, when you see a commercial on TV you will be able to recognize the product later on. The idea is not to make commercials visually appealing and entertaining, it's to get the name out there.
I mean, when I need a new car, I know that Family Auto Mart is just off the corner of New Haven and Main Street. They finance anybody!
I really don't care to become personally familiar with ANY product whose last sentance contains the last three words
Does anybody remember (think it was BBC) Comedy show used to run on Canadian T.V. "This Hour Contains 22 1/2 Minutes". IIRC
Content from Ad Agencies? I don't know. We can't get CONTENT from the mass news media...repetition, propaganda. and plenty of bull, but meaningful content is in serious short supply anywhere.
"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It simply wastes your time and truely annoys the pig"
full disclosure: I work in advertising.
There are a lot of entertaining ads out there, the problem is they're only entertaining the first few times you see them, then they get boring. Then annoying. Then grating. I've seen some (supposedly) good products strangle themselves with over-exposure, and the thing is, while showing an ad more often gets you more impressionable eyeballs, it also alienates the customers you might've had, had you not bludgeoned them over the head with your thirty second spot.
The solution to this is tricky. Rather than producing a larger variety of ads, I think companies should move the bulk of their content to the internet - if people are actively looking for your information they're less likely to be annoyed by it. (Please note that I'm not talking about banner ads, here, I mean sites dedicated to providing product information in as friendly a way as possible.) There are all sorts of reasons why this won't work, namely that most people (unlike this crowd, I'm sure) don't watch TV with a laptop nearby just in case an interesting URL pops up on the screen, but it'd be a nice thing for them to consider.
It's proven that it works too. Clydesdale sales are always highest in February. Same with monkeys and boobs. That's pretty much the big 3 for Super Bowl commercials.
Our founding fathers removed the guys in charge. Be American. Vote incumbents out.
I never saw an ad. Adblock is my friend ...
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Perhaps I am mistaken but, personally, I do not believe that my purchasing decisons have ever been greatly influenced by all those advertisements which emphasize style, emotional needs and brand recognition over substance. I when I buy groceries, I read the labels and avoid anything that has the word hydrogenated in it, because I try to avoid transfats (which recent research has shown is even worse than saturated fats). I also check the label for details such as saturated fat and calories. I then compare similar items on the shelf for the price per ounce. I only purchase eggs them from the health food store and look for a label which says things like "free range" and "no hormones" partially becuase I belive "free range" is a more humane way to range chickens.
When purchasing a car or major appliance, I go to the library and check to see what consumer reports magazine has to say. When purchasing a computer or computer periperal I check a computer magazine and then go on-line and check to see if the product is compatible with Linux.
During election time I would never vote for a candidate on what was said in a campaing ad based on a few slogans and misleading one-sided brief sound bites. I always try to read up on the issues and canditates to at least some extent to make a proper informed decision or else I don't vote at all. To me it seem that it would be better to not vote at all than to base my vote on the emotional appeals and missleading statement found in televison ads.
So anyway, it amazes me to think that conventional advertising must work as well as it does. Does it acutally work equally well on all of us? Do we all make our purchasing decisons based on emotional nonsense? It is amazing how uninformative and usless most advertising is. By the way, I am not acutally, sure what this new "viral advertising" technique would be like
I have not seen an ad for years. Huffington looks exactly the same to me. You mean there are people who don't have all ads turned off ??? ... Well I just assumed ... you know it's so easy .......
... Standards and Practices !
PenGun
Do What Now ???
... I will tell you that it isn't dead.
I have a minor in marketing and have been invovled in marketing in some form or another since the age of 16 (I'm 24).
There are different types of marketing, direct marketing and "top of mind" marketing.
Direct marketing is designed to generate sales or leads. Top of mind advertising, sometimes called branding, is more modest but designed to have the potential customers keep the brand or company in the top of their mind. Budweiser commercials are a good example. Seeing a Bud ad isn't going to make you go to their site and order beer, or run out to their store to buy a 6-pack. But it will keep their brand, image, and logo in the back of your mind so that next time you have a choice of beer, you will possibly try Bud.
Also, if mass marketing is dead, why are billions spent on it a year?
Now, I agree that newer, more innovative and more inventive types of advertising is coming about which I think is due to complaceny and becoming jaded at seeing so many ads all the time. Also since people are starting to interact with their media and not just sit and watch or listen to a broadcast this has forced those wanting to promote or sell to evolve their methods. That is called progress.
And you are right, next to PR (un-paid for publicity from a reputiable source), word-of-muoth advertising is the best you can get bar none.
Libertas in infinitum
I hate the term "viral marketing" as it is used to represent interesting content as opposed to "forced-down-your-throat" ad propaganda. Many years ago Bell Canada got into this "viral marketing" stuff by hiring a comedian to do their TV ads in Quebec. Now I hate telecoms even more than I hate buzzwords, but the ads were hilarious and everyone either loved or hated them, but all knew of them. Many people even recorded or downloaded them.. some used them as an answering message or ring tone.. you'll be hard pressed to find a Quebecer that won't chuckle or even sing along if you say "Bonjour Toto". The ad campaign was an explosive success.
Cue to the crappier ads I've seen locally, one for a huge used car dealership "Mega Automobile". They hired some coked-out ditz to overpronunciate catch phrases from a cue card while frenetically bouncing her empty head on each syllable. Just as cheesy as the stereotypical used car salesmen that work there. At least they could have hired a coked-out bikini ditz instead.. hell just stick a picture of Kermit the Frog on the screen for 30 seconds, it would probably work better than the cookie-cutter no-budget bullshit they pulled.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
If I download a film, and tell my friends to do the same, would that be Viral marketing?
PES has been doing "viral marketing" techniques for years. Check out CoinStar for example.