Viral Marketing Manifesto. I
made a mistake. My religious fervor about RSS blinded me to something
bigger that I should have commented on. That's the downside of being an
evangelist. It can make you look at only one thing: adoption of what
you're evangelizing and can blind you to what's really important. I
screwed up. Can we reboot this conversation?
What am I talking about? Viral marketing campaigns.
I am hearing that there'll be a bunch of viral campaigns coming,
both inside and outside of Microsoft. Why? Because of the success of
ILoveBees and Burger King's Subservient Chicken sites.
ILoveBees was a game that was aimed at getting people interested in
a game (Halo 2). Subservient Chicken is a site that was aimed at
getting buzz going around a new sandwich at Burger King.
These things are designed to "light up" word-of-mouth networks.
Translation: they work if they get you to talk to your friends about these things.
Subservient Chicken, for instance, was hugely successful. I saw it
discussed on tons of blogs. Hundreds, in fact. And Burger King's CEO,
on CNN, said it increased sales more than he expected it to.
I heard the Halo 2 marketing team talk recently about their
successes and they list their ILoveBees site as something they did
right to get their core customers to talk more about the coming launch
of the game.
Recently MSN tried a different viral campaign.
I haven't seen that one be successful. In fact, many people have
derided it. Why didn't that work when the same company did the popular
ILoveBees site?
I think it's because the viral campaign didn't match what people
thought the end product should stand for. With ILoveBees, it was
pushing a game. A game about a game. That makes sense. But with MSN we
want a search engine that's reliable. Trustworthy. Valuable. The MSN
Found Campaign didn't match those beliefs. MSN Found used fake actors
and inserted itself into the search engine itself.
You've gotta go back and understand where blogging came from. We
were disgusted with how corporations were behaving. Blogging started
really taking off after the dotcom boom and bust. It started taking off
after WorldCom and other corporate scandals.
It started taking off because corporations seemed to only care about
themselves and didn't seem to be listening anymore to anyone around
them including the government or even other corporations.
It started taking off because we are always being marketed to, but
rarely listened to. There are so many commercial messages raining down
on our heads that we wanted to have our own way to talk back to the
world. A way to push back on the marketing and the lies and the hype.
Look at last night's comments on this very blog. People don't like it
when I hype something up. They want to be in control and hate it when
those of us in big companies try to manipulate them.
Why do you think so many people have been cheering on the blogging
movement at Microsoft? At least now there's a start of a conversation
between the people who work at companies and the rest of the world.
So, viral campaigns need to show they are sensitive to those values.
Here's some ways to judge a viral campaign. Do you have any others?
1) Make sure the "brand" you're building in people's heads matches what you actually want people to think about.
2) To have something go viral, you actually need to do something
that will make people talk. Games that are fun are generally good, but
won't work for all products. With Honda their "cog ad" for the Accord
went viral and that was only a video.
3) Be sensitive to the leading "connectors" -- they'll be the ones
who'll really kick off your viral campaign. Convince them to link and
you're really on your way. Know who the connectors are in the
communities you want to reach. Want a political community to talk to
you? Glenn Reynolds. Gadget freaks? Engadget or Gizmodo. Tech Geeks?
Dave Winer, Boing Boing, MetaFilter, or Slashdot. Etc.
4) Test the campaign with 40 leading connectors before embarrassing yourselves. Listen to the feedback you get.
5) Make sure that the viral thing matches the image you're trying to
build. A VW ad (not commissioned by VW) went viral, but because it used
a terrorist blowing himself up it didn't match the image that VW was
trying to build for itself.
6) A good test is whether employees like it or not. These things can
be used to increase morale. "Look at my cool company, they even have
cool viral campaigns." But, they can decimate morale too. "What a lame
campaign." Be careful here. Ask coworkers if they would be proud of
sending this to mom.
7) A good viral campaign lets those who talk about it manipulate the
campaign. If it is designed to manipulate those who are talking about
it, be wary. We hate being manipulated, but we love to manipulate.
Translation: can I add something to the campaign? Even a comment of my
own? If it's a game, does it listen to me, like the Subservient Chicken
does?
8) Be wary of doing fake blogs. That gets bloggers fur to curl up.
You might get away with it (ILoveBees, for instance, did) but if done
poorly you'll just get derided for your fake campaign. Be especially
wary when what you're advertising is actually real-life stuff. Search
engines and blogs, for instance, need campaigns that accentuate the
image of "reliable, trustworthy, always up, relevant to real life,
etc."
Any others? Let's build a list and help out marketers who are trying to get into this new world.
Also, what viral campaigns (er, word-of-mouth marketing) did you like? Did you even realize they were marketing campaigns?
My favorites: Subservient Chicken.
Honda Cog Ad.
ILoveBees. [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
1:47:58 PM 
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