Viral Marketing Is Plaguing Viral Marketing
July 16th, 2007 by tom
An article in this morning’s Advertising Age asks “What’s plaguing Viral Marketing?”
The article points to a sociology professor’s work that suggests influencers aren’t as important as folks once thought they were. Meanwhile, the elephant in the room is that advertising messages are at a huge disadvantage as compared to things that are, well, cool when you’re talking about something “going viral.” Yet clients have no problem telling their agencies to “go create a viral video” and there is no shortage of agencies willing to take up the challenge, despite the notion that the overwhelming majority of them will fail and never deliver on the client’s expectations.
Check out this list of well-known Internet phenomena, all of which have spread virally. How many of them are commercial in nature? Just three of them, by my count. The Blair Witch stuff was a hoax, and hordes of marketers tried to use the same tactics to replicate their “success” and failed. The Snakes on a Plane stuff was grassroots until New Line decided to get involved and turn it into their new marketing campaign – and it didn’t translate into butts in theater seats because New Line failed to realize the difference between laughing with and laughing at. There’s a local commercial on the list, but local commercials are funny. (Again, there’s a difference between laughing with and laughing at.) Note the absence of campaigns from national advertisers, despite all the money and effort sunk into “going viral.”
The fact that the square peg of commercial communications can’t fit into the round hole of viral success doesn’t stop marketers from trying. They do it all the time, in defiance of the notion that they can’t possibly be as cool as Numa Numa. And they blame their agency when the effort fails.
[...] Advertising Age’s “What’s Plaguing Viral Marketing” is an interesting counterpoint to the excitement about viral marketing. Based on conclusions of research that discounts the importance of “influencers”, the article presents the idea that marketers are headed in the wrong direction focusing on finding the few people with disproportionate influence that will transform a campaign into a phenomena. It is true that majority of such campaigns fail to catch on, and too many marketers try to catch lightning in a bottle with me-too tactics that have worked for others without considering that what worked for sneakers might not be right for pet care. But this article goes even farther based on what I am sure is a very elaborate computer model. Tom Hespos gives a good overview on why creative shortcomings might be responsible for most viral campaigns falling short, versus concluding that good ol’ mass marketing is what brands should consider (which is oddly enough what the article seems to suggest). I think there is an even bigger hole in this line of thinking, however, and it is based on the assumption that influencers are solely individuals that interact with one community. [...]
Well put, Tom.
But in a way, it IS the agency’s fault if the thing doesn’t go viral. And where I think the agency fails is in hoping that they can convert the success of viral to dollars. Creative gets lost in traditional messaging and call to action.
Viral is about viewing and laughing for the most part. Give me something crazy or WTF enough and I just might tell my colleagues and friends about it. Keep your brand involvement to a bare minimum – and by that I mean you have to settle for name recognition only – and let me enjoy the piece without a 10% discount if I ACT NOW.
Agencies can do these things easily – create wild ideas that get a name out. The recent Ray Ban glasses-catcher-guy comes to mind – and if an agency was behind that one, they did a great job of not telling us about it.
Consumers are running from marketing. Chasing after them with the same tired methods isn’t going to change a thing.
[...] But this article goes even farther based on what I am sure is a very elaborate computer model. Tom Hespos gives a good overview on why creative shortcomings might be responsible for most viral campaigns [...]