Viral

Further Evidence That Nothing is Viral

trafficThe research refuting the grand myth of viral marketing continues to pile up.

The latest is an analysis from TubeMogul that shows the real sources of traffic to so-called “viral videos.”  As anyone who has actually looked a referring traffic on a socially distributed video can tell you, it is blogs that drive the most traffic by an overwhelming majority.  To quote the data, it’s about 80% of the traffic for a mere 35,528,837 videos surveyed.

This isn’t the result of a chain letter, these are highly influential blogs driving traffic to content.  Not forwarded emails or IMs.  Not even social networks.  In fact, the data on how important social networks are to this kind of content is equally revealing:

In total, search engines provided 11.18% of all video referrals; social networks provided 3.66%. Following close behind were social bookmarking aggregation sites, with 3.19; then video search engines (0.63%) and email/IM sites (0.05%).

These all powerful social networking sites barely beat out social bookmarking aggregation, which the vast majority of Internet users are still completely unaware of.  Equally interesting is the small sliver of people that are driven to “viral videos” in the way most people think of “viral” distribution, email and IM.  0.05%.  That is so low that it’s statistically irrelevant.

I know we will continue to hear about viral marketing for years to come but I hope that, over time, professional marketers and public relations practitioners will begin to change the way they talk about this kind of marketing to focus more on the influencer networks that actually drive brand building results in this space.

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Buzz Off, and Please Make It Viral

beeThere are a lot of terms in this new world of marketing that I really hate.  I’ve written before about how I believe that nothing is really “viral.”  I work in an industry where I get calls out of the blue asking me how much it would cost for us to do a viral video for brand X.  Or how can we stop the “blog chatter” around some bad news (this is usually involving a blog with millions of readers).  Or how do we generate some early “buzz” around an announcement that no one really cares about.

Ben McConnell tackled the issue of word-of-mouth vs buzz quite adeptly in a recent blog post.  He defined “word-of-mouth” as follows:

Word of mouth is a byproduct of a remarkable culture. It’s how companies like 37 Signals, Discovery Education, and The Container Store grow and flourish. Their companies are organized around a well-defined purpose and strong values, which may not be for everyone, but they’re important enough to a significant group of people.

Subsequently, he describes “buzz” quite differently:

Buzz is the result of word-of-mouth marketing. Its results are typically short-term. Gimmicks are common, and examples abound.

I would take it one step further.

Word-of-mouth is an actual marketing behavior, like executing a call to action.  It’s a marketing conversion that can be measured.

Buzz is the perception of word-of-mouth activity.  You can manufacture buzz, much like McConnell shows in his post, but it doesn’t have to be real.  While buzz can be the result of widespread word-of-mouth activity, it can also be created in a void by PR and advertising.  How often does a film having “Oscar buzz” actually result in an Oscar?  There’s often no delivering on the buzz promise, which is a pretty good sign that it’s been manufactured.

It will be a good day for all marketers when terms like “viral” and “buzz” are put to bed and we can finally focus on measurable behaviors that actually support quality brand values.

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A Whopper of a Facebook Campaign

app_3_33988778285_984Today a colleague posed an interesting question to me.  She asked “are there any brands you can think of that have done a good job with Facebook?”  I genuinely want to be helpful in these situations but absolutely nothing came to mind that I would be willing to defend in a presentation.  Yes, Facebook is a valuable media property with some pretty intriguing demographics for a lot of different brands but have I ever seen a brand interaction on Facebook that I actually thought was valuable?  Nope.

That’s when I remembered a little buzz I heard about a Burger King promotion called Whopper Sacrifice.  The concept is simple, if you delete ten of your friends you can get a coupon for a free Whopper.

Here is how Burger King describes it:

What would you do for a free WHOPPER®? Would you insult an elected official? Would you do a naked handstand? Would you go so far as to turn your back on friendship? Install WHOPPER® Sacrifice on your Facebook profile and we’ll reward you with a free flame-broiled WHOPPER® Sandwich when you sacrifice 10 of your friends.

It’s meant to make people think about what the value of a Whopper is to them.

There is a lot I like about this campaign:

  • The tone of it is right in line with the rest of the creative that BK is pushing out right now
  • The fact that a lot of people are participating reinforces that a Whopper has value to this demographic
  • BK takes advantage of the discrepancy between the real value and perceived value of the word “friends”…you wouldn’t stop talking to real friends for a hamburger but Facebook allows BK to make this claim with a degree of validity
  • The company is relinquishing some control and letting their stakeholders police “the Wall,” which is resulting in as many people defending the brand than there are people criticizing it

I haven’t eaten at Burger King more than two or three times in the past ten years but, aside from the health concerns, I know I do like Whoppers.  I’m a tough conversion for this campaign but it has made me think about the call to action.  Are there ten fringe friends of mine on Facebook that I wouldn’t mind deleting for a coupon for what is essentially a free lunch?   Maybe some people from third grade that I’m not really friends with.  I’m not going to do it by Burger King is making me think about it, which is a win by itself.

This raises another question about the value of “friends” on social networks but that is a topic for another blog post.  I’m going to lunch.

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A Whopper of a Viral Campaign

Burger KingIt’s not easy to be a hamburger these days.  You’re high in saturated fat, served in some of the dirtiest restaurants in the country and you’re generally the icon for America’s obesity problem.  However, people still love you.

Burger King really nailed the concept of how an online video with viral appeal can be used to reinforce brand affinity in a new campaign called Whopper Freakout.  Based on the simple idea that people will freak out if you take away their favorite product, regardless of whether or not they would otherwise be vocal advocates for it.

The campaign reminds me of my favorite feature on the Brand Autopsy blog, Would You Miss…  The feature poses an important question to gauge the value of a brand.  If you can get the product somewhere else and wouldn’t care if it went away, then the brand is essentially worthless.

Burger King probably faces this a lot with the plethora of options people have when it comes to hamburgers.  What this campaign proves is that people can’t get their Whopper anywhere else and, in many cases, they will go to great lengths to get one.  This reinforces the value of the brand and prevents the commoditization of the product.

It also might make you want a Whopper.

Where’s the Beef?

I stumbled across this video on Dethroner yesterday and didn’t think much of it (apart from it being hilarious) but it has since got me thinking about what this means to a company like Jimmy Dean. Sure, well executed viral marketing can be great for a brand but what if you customers decide to go viral with their own idea? What if that idea is basically all about exposing a flaw in your product that would’ve otherwise gone largely unnoticed?

I’m paraphrasing very liberally here but what the man in the video is trying to say is that he understands why Jimmy Dean would offer less sausage (to save money) but the amount of sausage in the package is no longer enough to feed his family. It’s a legitimate complaint done in an offbeat way that strikes a chord with many people due to it being a caricature of southern US culture, to put it kindly. The video has been watched more than 20,000 times and by the end of it’s run it will probably be voluntarily viewed by more people than any other piece of content Jimmy Dean will produce this year (television airings of commercials certainly don’t hold the same weight).

The question really is: should Jimmy Dean respond to this and, if yes, how should they do it?

This appears to be a great opportunity for Jimmy Dean to engage with consumers in an industry where genuine organic opportunities are few and far between. YouTube’s “Video Response” feature is rarely used by brands and I’m not sure why. As it turns out, Jimmy Dean offers 32 ounce packages of their sausage that could easily answer this man’s complaint. How about keeping the tone light and posting a video of a 32 ounce package feeding a family of large southern men? There are a few concerns here, namely the underlying theme of obesity, but the benefit of posting some brand-positive content to counteract the potentially damaging video I think easily outweighs the risk.

Disclaimer: I am a huge fan of Jimmy Dean sausage.

Viral Marketing with a Side of Spam

SpamYou know online marketing ethics have a long way to go when someone from a viral marketing company will all but endorse spamming on one of the top five blogs in the world.

Unfortunately, that’s what happened on TechCrunch this week. Dan Ackerman Greenberg from The Commotion Group guest blogged on TechCrunch about various methodologies that can be employed to push up viral content onto YouTube’s “most viewed” list and ultimately receive as many hits as possible.

Greenberg has since issued a clarification on his original post, which has already attracted about 450 comments, but his commentary doesn’t go very far to combat the idea that many online marketers still consider spamming, albeit of different degrees, to be a valuable part of marketing content online.

These kinds of ethical breaches are all driven by the old reach marketing myths that have been pushing bad marketers for decades. Yes, well in excess of 20 million people have viewed the Mentos videos on YouTube but what is the real brand awareness measurement that relates to selling more candy for the company? I find it hard to believe that millions of people watching Diet Coke fountains have really helped move the needle for Mentos. However, at least it was low cost and organic though and they never had to compromise their brand by spamming.

Greenberg is driven by this same kind of measurement.

So far, we’ve worked on 80-90 videos and we’ve seen overwhelming success. In the past 3 months, we’ve achieved over 20 million views for our clients, with videos ranging from 100,000 views to upwards of 1.5 million views each. In other words, not all videos go viral organically – there is a method to the madness.

Note that he’s not citing brand awareness surveys or product sales numbers. He’s justifying spamming message boards and creating fake “conspiracies” in his own YouTube comments by giving us the total number of views. How can you debate the tactics when you see “successes” like 100,000 or 1.5 million views per viral video? To support his “Content is NOT King” theory, Greenberg listed a few of his helpful hints for reaching wide audiences, like “make it shocking,” “use fake headlines” and “appeal to sex.”

It’s easy to point the finger at Greenberg and blame him for these kinds of practices but the real culprit are the advertisers that are fueling these kinds of behaviors with outdated metrics that aren’t suited for interactive media. Far too few companies are using legitimate key performance indicators (KPIs) in their online marketing strategies and, in turn, the majority are creating a market for unscrupulous marketers who will do anything to replicate the kind of numbers that impress them.

Greenberg concludes by saying “These days, achieving true virality takes serious creativity, some luck, and a lot of hard work. So, my advice: fire your PR firm and do it yourself.” If you’re looking for someone to buy blog posts, spam message boards and dilute social networks, then I really hope you do have to look beyond your PR firm.

World’s Dirtiest Commercial

AxeAfter writing about the preference most advertisers have for professional content versus consumer generated content yesterday, I stumbled across this new viral effort from Axe body wash that tries, with a fair amount of success, to combine the two. The goal was to create The World’s Dirtiest Film and you’re welcome to judge for yourself if they pulled it off.In a partnership with College Humor, one of the finest purveyors of high brow content on the Web, Axe invited consumers to submit videos of themselves getting dirty. The prevailing theme of the videos submitted by consumers generally involved some sort of food related gross-out or a lover’s food fight. Then the good people at Axe, with help from David Spade (so that’s where he’s been) wrap a four-minute slick commercial around the whole thing, post a trailer to YouTube and let the viral fun begin.

Yes, this is a fun campaign but what bothers me about Axe is how it fails to distinguish itself as a brand from close competitors like TAG body spray. With both brands targeting the same sex-obsessed frat boy with the same tongue-in-cheek sleaziness, how are these college-aged consumers supposed to remember which brand is supposed to get them laid? As if it wasn’t already confusing enough for these guys!

What I’d like to see is one of these brands take off in a new direction and distinguish itself. Judging by MTV and what’s been popular on the CW, why doesn’t one of these brands try to cultivate the faux-affluent image that this demographic seems to be obsessed with? I’m relatively certain that the value proposition of this product extends beyond Sigma Phi.

Viral Marketing: Advertising’s Monkey Pox

ViralI have some sad news for lazy marketers everywhere. It pains me to tell you that you will not be getting millions of free impressions for Christmas this year for simply asking your agency to make your campaign “go viral.” Sad, I know, but I’m pretty sure you’ll bounce back.
Yes, it seems simple enough but for some reason, and this happens about once a week, clients or prospective clients continually ask me “how do we make this go viral?” I understand their attraction based on all the misinformation around viral campaigns but it’s always hard to explain to them that “viral” is not a marketing strategy, it’s a word-of-mouth tactic. Yes, a few million views for a video clip that cost $5k to produce would be a lovely thing to take to your CMO but what is the real value of those impressions?

I originally wanted to tackle this after reading Ian McKee‘s post on how the ineffectiveness of viral campaigns makes a great case for engaging more heavily in WOM but the more I thought about it the more I actually found myself respectfully disagreeing with his premise that viral is not WOM.

Viral is a form of WOM. It just happens to be a weak and diluted form of WOM that specifically appeals to old school reach marketers.

The most common example that everyone uses is the Subservient Chicken. Millions of people flocked to Burger King’s microsite to try to make the creepy chicken do any number of odd things. The campaign was designed to promote a new chicken sandwich but there was no real way of finding that out, nor did the creative convey any of Burger King’s key messages. The follow up campaign was much better but enjoyed significantly less of the runaway success of it’s predecessor.

When someone sends you a “viral” campaign, you’re generally on a list of a group of friends that they feel comfortable enough with to send an unsolicited message to. It’s a level of access to a network of trust that is potentially extremely valuable to a marketer. However, like Ian says, the downfall of “viral” chains is that they’re promoting a creative and not recommending your brand.

What marketers must learn to do better is to find a way to engage consumers in a message in a way that is so compelling that the pass along isn’t merely the distribution of a creative but the amplification of a message.

Political Science

Global WarmingIn news that doesn’t make you feel too great about the power of viral ideas, there is apparently an effort underway by conservative blogs to get people to vote for Climate Audit as the Best Science Blog in the 2007 Weblog Awards. Basically, conservative sites are telling their readers that the award would be a great way to combat the idea that global warming is a scientifically sound phenomenon, which a vast majority of science blogs (and, um, actual scientists) seem to subscribe to.

BoingBoing was quick to jump on this since they believe that this is a politically motivated campaign that has little to do with science. Of course, once BoingBoing chimes in the fun really starts, as you can see in the 200+ comments on the most recent Climate Audit post.

The consensus amongst non-conservative blogs is that Bad Astronomy, a site that, among other things, talks about misconceptions regarding astronomy, should win the award. In fact, Bad Astronomy is playing hardball and actually embedding the voting application directly into their latest post. As of the time of this post, Bad Astronomy is behind by about 500 votes.

What do you think? You can go cast your vote here for a little while longer.

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