Having some message (video, photo, app., whatever) related to a product or company go viral has been the Holy Grail for marketers for several years now.  Despite countless attempts and millions of dollars spent there is still not a science to making the exponential spread of a firm’s message over the ever-growing universe of web, mobile, and yes, personal platforms.  Very few have had the success at attempts at “virality” as say, Carlton Draught’s “Big Ad,” but the handful that do tend to have a handful of things in common.  As noted by my friend Mark Rogers of Dolcinema.com an ad needs to be:

·         Creative, in a way consistent with the brand’s image

·         Released by a company that is committed to being part of the “conversation”

·         Easy to share

·         Complete with a hook that resonates with the target audience

You’ll notice that Cartlon’s ad hit all the high points here.  As an exercise in sorting out what makes a video viral, I like to give my student a few ads, some that have clearly gone viral, and others that are also-rans and ask them why a particular effort was or was not successful, and relate their thinking back to principles of marketing that they are studying.  Once they seem to have a grasp on this, I’ll send them to an innovation monitoring website like www.likecool.com and ask them to conceive a viral campaign for one of the interesting new products that are highlighted there.  (I have them do a storyboard or script, but if you’ve got the time and hardware actually producing something would, obviously, work too.)

You’ll be pleasantly surprised as to the quality of the teaching moment this provides.  And, yes, it works for adult students as well as traditional 18-21’s.


From:
 http://www.pearsoninsideguide.com/marketing/dashboard

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If I had a nickel (ok, maybe a quarter) for every time someone said to me, “Yeah, Twitter is interesting, but I don’t see the marketing value in it,” I would be quite well off.  Well, here I have an outstanding example of a business using Twitter to its benefit-Kogi Korean Barbeque.

This is a mobile restaurant based in southern California that announces its location by tweeting.   Yes, they deliver a good product, but they add to the mix by making the meal an adventure, because you have to find them.  This creates a type of scarcity, which we know from Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: Science and Practice that can make a product seem even more valuable to us.  In addition, they have used this new marketing format to drum up lots of MPR.  They have been featured on the Food Network, you can be one of their 50,000 plus followers on Twitter, read over 1200 overwhelmingly positive reviews on Yelp, and even read more about their next venture in the Wall Street Journal.

This, my friends, is Twitter done right.

(Become a fan of the MPR Facebook page.)

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Ping! 10/16/2009
 
Ok, I know I may be a little late to the party on this one, but I just started using Ping.  I am finding it to me a great way to broadcast a status update to all of my social media platforms.  Yes, I know, you can do a lot of the same with Twitter, but this just seems more user-friendly to me.  Plus it updates LinkedIn easily.
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Find the killer 10/14/2009
 
 Dexter takes interactive viral video one step beyond the "Elf Yourself" model.  I found this when one of my students, Heather Waber, sent me a link.  Pay attention to the evidence bag at the end of the clip.
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Thanks to the most creative Creative Director I know, Bill Childs (Morning Call/Tribune) for sharing this.
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