Viral Marketing Breeding Cynicism

New Media Blogger writes "First Lonelygirl15, now Bridezilla. Canada's National Post provides an interesting perspective on the newest trend of using viral videos as marketing tools, and how these fake blogs or 'flogs' are having a pernicious effect on our tendency to trust what seems genuine."

Comments

peer pressure

[gravesb]

If you are so easily influenced by this type of video, maybe there are some other issues besides trust that you need to look at.

Re:This forces us to be more discerning

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people can't be more discerning, especially when they're looking at topics that aren't close to them. If you don't have the insight that enables you to tell marketing from honest opinion, you can only choose a level of general distrust that affects both. Increasing amounts of viral marketing and affiliate advertising will raise that level of distrust and that means people become more cynic, which is not a nice state, if you think about it.

Re:This forces us to be more discerning

[Mike1024]

How is this a bad thing?

If it creates both (a) discerning people and (b) the need for people to be discerning, it seems disingenuous to praise it for making people more discerning.

By the same logic you could say muggers are good because they force people to be more alert.

Re:This forces us to be more discerning

[tverbeek]

The fact that Anybody At All believed that {LonelyGirl15 was genuine/Taco Bell bought the Liberty Bell/Saddam Hussein had WMDs} demonstrates that people will fall for just about anything.

Deceptive marketing is only good in the sense that chicken pox is good: by exposing people to it and giving them a chance to develop a resistance to it, their chances are improved of not succumbing whe exposed to even worse stuff (i.e. lying political leaders).

On the other foot

[Joebert]

The company behind the latest You Tube video sensation would like you to know this: It was never the intention to portray anything other than a dramatization.

In that case, I suppose they'll understand if I create videos that make it appear products like theirs ruined my life, dropping hints to make people think of their products & post them in the same mannor as their videos.

Afterall, it's only a dramatization.

Sad thing is, I'm willing to bet I'd have cease and desist or face legal consequences letters sent to me faster than I could imagine by doing so.

Re:This forces us to be more discerning

[ultranova]

Then ask a friend who knows or even one who's a specialist.

How does your friend know it ? How can you know his knowledge didn't come from viral marketing ? How do you know the specialist is actually a genuine specialist and not a cleverly placed viral marketeer, and if he is a specialist, that he hasn't been bribed ?

If you want a new PC, ask someone who knows those things, etc.

How do you know he isn't getting paid to recommend Dell or some other crappy brand ? And how do you know I'm not getting paid to say bad things about Dell every chance I get ?-)

The tendency, of course, should be to educate yourSELF, so you can know more on your own.

How can you educate yourself when you have no way of telling truthful sources from viral marketing ?

Some people like being stupid, and serves them right.

Ignorance is not the same as stupidity. Besides that, if you have no way to know which sources to trust, you have no way to get rid of that ignorance. That is the problem with viral marketing.

Re:This forces us to be more discerning

[TheRaven64]

I've recently adopted a new strategy when it comes to shopping. Every time I've complained about irritating adverts that tell me nothing about the product, people have pointed to brand recognition as the answer. Studies have shown that people are more likely to buy a brand they recognise than one they don't.

Now, when I don't know anything much about a particular product (e.g. toothpaste), I will choose the brand I recognise the least. If it works, I'll keep using it. If not, I'll switch to a slightly more familiar one. The ones that blare irritating advertising at me will be last on the list.

Re:This forces us to be more discerning

[bit01]

Besides that, if you have no way to know which sources to trust, you have no way to get rid of that ignorance. That is the problem with viral marketing.

No, the problem is noise. A message can be compromised by too much noise as well as too little message. That is the problem with viral marketing and marketing in general.

In the real world you do not have the time to all evaluate the messages you receive. You must always trust your sources to greater or lesser extent. Marketing deliberately tries to subvert trusted sources by flooding them out with content free trash. It's no accident that the most successful advertising campaigns tend to be the ones with the most money spent. If the value of messages was inherent that would not be true. An arms race to get mindshare in other words. Everybody loses except the marketing "industry". It's also fraudulent but unfortunately the legal system isn't even close to being able to deal with it.

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Beware deceptive astroturfers