The Viral Virus
I read an article today which reminded me of one of my greatest Marketing Peeves of the era. Viral Marketing. That’s not to say that I have so many Marketing Peeves that I forget them sometimes and need to be reminded of them, but rather that I have been meaning to talk about it and simply have chosen not to.
I’m 100% positive you have at least heard the phrase Viral Marketing at least once in your life. Maybe about 25% certain that you know what it actually is. Viral Marketing, to be brief, is the tactic that Marketeers use to generate buzz via word-of-mouth-esque methods. Nowadays, this refers specifically to the intarwub. I’m sure you’ve seen at least one of the bigger name viral runs, like the oft-referred Subservient Chicken. Here, I’ll break it down further. You know what marketing is, so I won’t get into that, but let us now dissect the word “viral”. It means that it will spread out amongst the masses on its own; you don’t have to do anything to get it going besides just putting it out there. Such things include viral videos, which often act as a sort of gateway into Viral Marketing. Still don’t know what I’m talking about? How about the video of the water buffalo, crocodile, lion combat titled The Battle at Kruger?
That’s viral. People liked it, showed it to other people, who showed it to other people. Tada! Just like the disease viruses!
Okay. Now you know what Viral Marketing is. Here’s the problem: it doesn’t really have any return. Granted, the investment may be small, but you’re not getting anything in return besides maybe some laughs and bragging rights to how many hits you received. The claim is that you increase awareness and therefore increase sales, but, let’s be honest: there’s no correlation between the epidemic and the profit, which I suppose is where the similarities between viruses and marketing ends. Most deadly viral epidemics successfully kill, but marketing does not. Or maybe we just haven’t been trying hard enough.
So next time you hear your manager say “Hm, we should get on board this viral marketing thing”, laugh internally because a.) they most likely have no idea what it is, and b.) it does not really have any direct correlation to success regarding sales numbers as of yet. Now, this isn’t definite. It could change in the future where Viral Marketing ends up being a fantastic thing.
But please: for now, stop looking for Viral Marketing experts. There is no such beast. It’s really luck of the draw.
Oh. Here’s the article. Viral Marketing
Video Games, Clios, Abowoah?
So, the Clios came by again with its self-important congratulatory tone as per the usual. Those of you not familiar with the business will not know what I’m talking about, which is exactly what I’m talking about. The Clios is the annual award show for advertisers. They make a big to-do about how creative and brilliant their ad campaigns are, but no one besides advertisers care. The main flaw of the Clios lies in the fact that it consist solely of the creatives department.
Now, I’m going to act under the assumption that you have no clue how the creatives department acts. Let me give you an example of the typical creatives/market research struggle goes. Typically, the intelligent approach when drafting an advertising campaign is to test the effectiveness of each creative copy with a sample market prior to releasing it to the public. Which makes sense. Now, every other division of marketing is fully on board with this as it is a logical and organized way to determine the effectiveness of a campaign before you dump several million dollars into it to later find out it is a complete failure. However, the creatives department, on average, loathes this process. Specifically when you tell them to change something. Anything as minute as “hey, most people can’t read this copy font, why don’t you change it to something more serif and legible” or “fuchsia and sea foam green do not mesh well for this particular insert” will drive a creatives member to the brink of utter madness. Now, I’m usually with you creative people when it comes down to subjectivity of art. I hated it when artistic classes graded you on creative aspects because it was a subjective field overall; however, this isn’t art class. It’s business. And such, it is vital to obtain a generally universal appeal (per target market, of course). Creatives will fight with a decision because it goes against their vision. The creatives department can consist of a sort of diva-istic population.
Now to complete my circuitous explanation. The Clios are based solely on creatives and what they like regarding the work of other creatives artistically. The Clios are not a measure of resulting sales or increases in brand awareness or changes of brand perception, etc. It’s just what they thought was pretty and artsy. Now, again, I pretty much don’t have an issue with this, except for the fact that they utterly adore throwing around the fact that a firm has won Clios when they are bidding for an account. No. Bad marketeers, bad! You should sell yourself by your results, not by your art awards.
Enough of that. So. Clios. This year there was a big applause for Microsoft’s Xbox division of marketing, which won three gold awards at the Clios. They’re admittedly interesting and entertaining if you’re within their realm of targeted demographics! I managed to find one example in Adweek’s article about the Clios which caught my eye with the oh so clever title “Halo Effect”, which naturally refers to Xbox’s quintessential star Halo series. Watch it, judge it by its artistic value, then reflect on the fact that they didn’t need to do a thousand of these different commercials to generate hype for a game which everyone was already pining for. Honestly, I could have made an equally effective campaign. It would have gone like this:
[black background, bold white text]
HEY.
YOU.
YEAH
HALO 3 IS OUT
JUST IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
IT IS OUT AT STORES
GO BUY IT
HALO 3: ON SALE NOW
Thank you. I’ll be accepting my Clio now.
