Viral Marketing to Become the Norm? 213
An anonymous reader writes "One of the oldest advertising companies in the U.S., JWT, has just bought up all the Huffington Post's front-page ad space for a whole week. They are taking the unique approach of trying to create ad content interesting enough to make people want to watch, instead of the traditional ad agency approach of bludgeoning the user base over the head through interstitials and other forced ad techniques. Will the ad companies be able to put forth enough continued effort to make good ads that become viral, or is this just a short phase to gain publicity?"
What a concept! (Score:5, Insightful)
MPAA, RIAA: you taking notes?
Re:What a concept! (Score:2, Funny)
It'll never work! Madness, I say!
Re:What a concept! (Score:2)
now i changed channels again ahh pbs... now i want to pledge $50 to get that bag with the sesamee street character on it isn't is soo cute!
damn.. i guess i shouldn't watch so much tv when i'm living in my parents house like a good comp
Re:What a concept! (Score:2)
Re:What a concept! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What a concept! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What a concept! (Score:4, Funny)
I think we all remember the great alum shortages of the mid 90's, and the deaths of millions as they ran out of precious, life sustaining deodorant.
Re:What a concept! (Score:2)
Per a recent Economist article, only 11% of the population of India use shampoo. That statistic probably covers some more of the items you mention. That's nearly a quarter of the planet's population that doesn't need at least some of those personal hygiene products
Somewhat ironicaly, the Economist was pointing out that Uni-Lever (and their local subsidiary Hindustan Lever) sees that shampoo-free 89% as a huge potential market.
Re:What a concept! (Score:2)
(Intriguing statistic, considering that the word "shampoo" comes from Hindi.)
Some years ago I heard, but cannot now find online evidence, that if you don't wash your hair for several months it naturally self-cleans, and that after that point you just need to brush dust out of it occasionally. Can anyone confirm/deny?
If true, this would certainly confirm that no one needs shampoo, whether they live in India or elsewhere.
Re:What a concept! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What a concept! (Score:2)
Re:What a concept! (Score:2)
Re:What a concept! (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of advertizing has morphed from a way to educate to a way to associate it with a feeling or a mood. I think this defines the difference between a capitalist society and a consumerist society. We crossed that a long time ago.
But I won't go along with it. Maybe that is why I am (generally) happy with life.
Re:What a concept! (Score:2)
So do I, but if this were the only way products were presented, then people would only buy what they really wanted or needed, and consumption/sales would be down drastically. Capitalism will never settle on this as an exclusive solution, since it contradicts the principle of maximizing profit.
I agree that if you make the personal choice to ignore any emotional advertising and only look for information, then you find yo
Re:What a concept! and by the way (Score:2, Informative)
I really don't care to become personally familiar with ANY product whose last sentance contains the last three words
Does anybody remember (think it was BBC) Comedy show used to run on Canadian T.V. "This Hour Contains 22 1/2 Minutes". IIRC
Content from Ad Agencies? I don't know. We can't get CONTENT from the mass news media...repetition, propaganda. and plenty of bull, but meaningful content is in serious short supply anywhere.
Re:What a concept! (Score:5, Insightful)
Guess what? I do not want my advertizing to be entertaining. I want it to be informative.
Then you're statistically irrelevant to the advertising industry. Thanks for playing.
I do not need to think of McDonalds as a hip place for youngsters.
The point of advertizing has morphed from a way to educate to a way to associate it with a feeling or a mood.
Oh, please. Advertising that doesn't promote an emotional reaction is completely ineffective at selling things. This isn't a new thing - even the automobile advertisements from the good ol' days tried to appeal to your emotional side first before hitting you with statistics and facts and whatnot. You should looks at some of the classic Ogilvy car ads and pinpoint emotionally resonant language, even in the boilerplate. To believe that they were merely informative is a fallacy.
Re:What a concept! (Score:2)
Then you're statistically irrelevant to the advertising industry. Thanks for playing.
I think I will go home and cry.
Re:What a concept! (Score:2)
Don't cry, advertising will eventually be more entertaining than the television programming, oh wait they call that prime time.
Re:What a concept! (Score:2)
Re:What a concept! (Score:2)
Poland. Everyone forgets about Poland.
I ignore emotional ads and read labels instead! (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps I am mistaken but, personally, I do not believe that my purchasing decisons have ever been greatly influenced by all those advertisements which emphasize style, emotional needs and brand recognition over substance. I when I buy groceries, I read the labels and avoid anything that has the word hydrogenated in it, because I try to avoid transfats (which recent research has shown is even worse than saturated fats). I also check the label for details such as saturated fat and calories. I then compare
Re:What a concept! (Score:4, Insightful)
We've reached a level where all products are essentially equally good. There is a point at which production cost and quality level off, and there's nothing you can do to make it better without making it also more expensive. Which means that your product is as good as the next one.
Now, how do you want to sell that to your customer? "Buy mine 'cause it doesn't matter?"
Not necessarily a good selling point.
Advertising has appeal to your emotional side. It has to tell you that with some deodorant you're more attractive or you're more entertaining or, hell, in WHATEVER way more interesting to be around. There is no tangible difference to competing products.
Re:What a concept! (Score:2)
Guess what? I don't even want that. I want my advertising to be invisible, unless I actually want a product in that domain. Anything else wastes my time and the advertisers money.
That's the Holy Grail of advertising...
(I'm well aware that some people want advertising, though. Hell, I have a neighbour who, whenever I see her, asks for all the crap-mail out of my letterbox - because she wants two copies of it. And, as
Re:What a concept! (Score:2)
Either spelling is acceptable [princeton.edu].
Want? WANT? (Score:2)
I need a chair to throw.
Re:What a concept! (Score:2)
Re:What a concept! (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, viral marketing might lose even more effectiveness as it proliferates. Viral marketing works great when only one or two products/companies are using it, because everyone talks about those two products - but when each person remembers or is interested in only one of many different viral marketing campaigns, they all lose effectiveness. Traditional marketing is probably a much safer bet.
Re:What a concept! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What a concept! (Score:2)
I have no idea what the hell they were selling, but whatever it was I probably bought a ton of it over my lifetime because I still love those commercials. Heck, I went out and bought a DVD with nothing more than those commercials on it. No actual content - just commercials.
Maybe some company needs to buy up the rights to those, go in by hand and do some product placement magic - I'd s
Re:What a concept! (Score:2)
I don't care. (Score:3, Insightful)
As a consumer, that's really the Grail for me -- get rid of the bludgeon-you-over-the-head ads. No more spam, no more commercial breaks (or maybe one at the start and halfway through a show, instead of every 10 mins.)
I really do wish
Re:What a concept! (Score:2)
There's a mildly silly ad that runs on a smalltime local TV station, for a local used-car dealership. The ad is of local make and isn't polished, but it's pleasantly funny, enough so to remain amusing through multiple viewings. More importantly, it's entertaining enough that when I had someone over watching TV and the ad came on, instead of going off to get a beer, I told them, "Hey, watch this funny ad!"
So even tho I'm not likely to become a customer, th
Sorry, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sorry, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Sorry, but... (Score:2)
So if they beat your ass when you don't buy their product, and you warn all your friends, is that also viral marketing?
I think there's a conflation of concepts going on here.
Re:Sorry, but... (Score:2)
Do you really expect marketdroids to leave it at that?
I bet they're already planning ways to infect you with a disease that makes you have to buy their products.
Works only if it's not overdone (Score:2)
When it's overdone, people get fed up with it. It's like those joke-mails. Remember them? You got them, some mail where someone told a witty remark or a joke, you'd forward them to your friends 'cause, well, they should have some fun too.
Yes, it's funny for the first 100 or so joke mails you get. Then it starts being annoying.
Re:Sorry, but... (Score:2)
I can mention a couple examples.. Anybody in the US seen the Japanese advert for a paricular tea. Look up Rube Goldberg and you are sure to find it. The other one that comes to mind is one made by Honda. It ran 2 minutes in length and as such was too expensive to air in the US. I have seen it several times and enjoyed it. Do a search for Honda and Cog an
Re:Sorry, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Pure sales gold.
Re:Sorry, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, he was making a pun on the virus in the movie.
Or, he's an idiot.
Or, all of the above.
Re:Sorry, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Viral marketing it something that is spread by people, not by advertizing agencies. It behaves like a virus - once you release the ad into the wild, it spreads without your control, because people think it's interesting/funny and send it to their friends.
Re:Sorry, but... (Score:2)
Just give your 5 best friend's email address to the spammer and
Re:Sorry, but... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Sorry, but... (Score:2)
Re:Sorry, but... (Score:2)
Usually how these stats work is you log all the different IP addresses that access your site during one day. This gives you an idea of how many unique visitors you have. Of course, the same visitor logging in the next day is again a unique visitor. So divide by 31 (the number of days in May) and you have the lower limi
Re:Sorry, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't see the connection either. But I've got good news! I just saved hundreds on car insurance...
It's already working! (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sorry, I must have got something wrong...
You're not saying some time in the future I won't be forced to watch commercials because some gizmo or another preventing me from switching channels? I'll watch commercials of my own free will?
I don't believe a change of this magnitude throughout the marketing industry is possible.
It would be nice, though.
However, I fear that if I start watching commercials thinking I like it, I'll have been brainwashed. And they won't have changed.
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Funny)
Enough scantily clad women and I'm there!
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
Just the other day I saw an ad for some coffee-type beverage. If I'm not mistaken, coffe+milk. In a tin can.
Featuring a girl squeezing said tin can between her boobs.
It's a nice poster, but the product is totally uninteresting to me: I drink neither coffee nor milk.
I admit, it's a sight... but to me, it's not advertising: no message is getting through.
I just see the boobs.
This kind of marketing can only get people to see the ad; nothing more.
And seeing it isn'
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately, that's demonstrably untrue. The whole point of most advertising since the mid-20th century isn't to appeal to people's conscious judgment, but to achieve an effect at a non-conscious level. Just because you don't think it's having an effect doesn't mean that it isn't.
Take a look at this [wikipedia.org], this [wikipedia.org], snd this [wikipedia.org] -- the last link is to an article on Edward Bernays, who pioneered the deliberate use of psychoanalytic techniques in advertising, with the specific aim of bypassing people's conscious judgment.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
No, the idea is that you'll succumb to peer pressure and watch commercials because all of the cool kids are doing it.
It can happen, sort of (Score:2)
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
There used to be shows like Carrot's Commercial Breakdown...
I actually wouldn't mind shows which only showed commercials.
Hey, what the hell, put in an SMS-based rating system; I'll bet sheeple'll vote.
Just don't interrupt me when I'm watching something else (although sometimes I do appreciate a commercial break, though I call it a toilet break).
And especially don't interrupt me in the cinema.
The way things are going now, I just build lists of products I'll do my best to avoid buying. Just because the c
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
The Price is Right, etc. How much more of a commercial can it be to say "If you can guess which price is right for this bottle of Palmolive, you can win this New Car, a blah blah blah blah ... blah blah blah ... Aren't you excied?!?"
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
Re:Hmmm (Score:2)
-matthew
Very effective. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Very effective. (Score:3, Informative)
Remember, you don't sell the steak, you sell the sizzle... marketing revolves enti
Re:Very effective. (Score:2)
'80's ad buyer
00's ad buyer":ies, damn lies, statistics ..."
Re:Very effective. (Score:2, Interesting)
So yeah, if you're patient enough check it out.
Erik
Virual works... (Score:5, Insightful)
-matthew
Re:Virual works... (Score:2)
Sadly the response from marketers to that diminished effectiveness is typically to increase quantity even more. Witness spam, popups/unders, flash ads etc on the internet.
Re:Virual works... (Score:2)
Re:Virual works... (Score:2)
Re:Virual works... (Score:2)
That;'s not at all true; if the ad itself is interesting and gets passed on for its entertainment value, that's clearly a success; if the ad contains information that gets passed person-to-person independently of the ad, in a sense that's a kind of successful viral advertising itself; spreading FUD that gets accepted as conventional wisdom and spread around and repeated in person-to-person
That's the point (Score:3, Interesting)
With traditional advertising, people filter it out, but still have to watch it, wasting their time, their power (having the TV on), the broadcasting company's time, etc. With viral advertising, only people who actually want to watch it will waste your resources pulling it down.
I've never seen anything conclusive to say that subliminal messages work, or that in-your-face ads work. I only have my o
Re:Virual works... (Score:2)
Publicity Stunt? (Score:3, Funny)
It worked.
Mass marketing has been dead (Score:5, Insightful)
if anyone is trying to market their business, i suggest they read "PyroMarketing" good stuff.
As a mass marketer... (Score:3, Informative)
I have a minor in marketing and have been invovled in marketing in some form or another since the age of 16 (I'm 24).
There are different types of marketing, direct marketing and "top of mind" marketing.
Direct marketing is designed to generate sales or leads. Top of mind advertising, sometimes called branding, is more modest but designed to have the potential customers keep the brand or company in the top of their mind. Budweiser commercials are a good example. Seeing a
Re:As a mass marketer... (Score:2)
Re:As a mass marketer... (Score:2)
The trick is to target and segment the market such that your ads are focused and aimed at the demos you are trying to reach.
For example, if
Dilbert's dead woodchuck. (Score:2, Insightful)
In other words, the second thing- this is a short-term thing to gain publicity. First, there are barely enough agencies making good ads now, let alone sustain this kind of campaign. Second, if anyone does find anyting new and different, it only takes about 30 seconds for other marketing types to glom on. Then we're bombarded with the "new and different" for a few years.
Besides- "viral marketing" is a flawed premise, at least as far as adult audiences go. Yes, viral co
too late (Score:3, Insightful)
It is a fad. Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
What they want is for your primary goal in life to be to consume their product. (This is especially difficult in that several hundred or thousand products all share this same goal, and best case scenario is still that only one can "win".)
What they can get at best is "an interesting commercial", at a much greater expense than just creating a standard annoying-as-hell commercial.
They'll be pleased with the initial apparent progress towards their goal, but when it caps out long before it gets to making consumption your primary goal in life, they'll become disillusioned and go back to the cheap-but-annoying model, as it has better bang-for-the-buck.
Advertising's primary problem is that they were able to fool themselves in the past that they were making progress towards making their products our overriding concern, because of the very fuzzy and indirect nature of the feedback they recieved. As they become better at figuring out the real effects of their advertising, they are becoming more desparate to "recapture" their old progress and stature, which is especially difficult as it never existed in the first place. Until they realize that it was always an illusion, and re-align themselves to think of themselves as an investment instead of an attempt to create little quasi-religions centered around products, they are always going to have this problem.
(Note that most business people already correctly think of advertising as investment and have for a long time. It's "Big Advertising" that has a very wrong mental model of their own importance.)
I only watch TV shows on DVDs for this reason (Score:2)
I keep telling everyone... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I keep telling everyone... (Score:2, Funny)
ADMEN, STOP WASTING OUR TIME!!!! (please read) (Score:2)
Consumers get longer programs/movies/whatever with real content to watch making them happy. They also don't have to watch conventional advertising which is mostly assinine, repetitive drivel with only a handfull of exceptions such
Re:ADMEN, STOP WASTING OUR TIME!!!! (please read) (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean, when I need a new car, I know that Family Auto Mart is just off the corner of New Haven and Main Street. They finance anybody!
Superbowl (Score:2)
For those people not into the sporting event, it is something for them to watch. Companies kick off their ad campaigns, and a lot of money goes into producing and airing them.
It is the TV advertising industries day to shine as well.
Re:Superbowl (Score:3, Funny)
Yes (Score:2)
Occasionally some small time advertising agency will come up with a good idea but mo
I think it's slimy (Score:3, Insightful)
The key thing I want to know about any "viral marketing" is WHO engineered the virus in the first place? Was it a stealth marketing [wikipedia.org] shill trying to "subvert the cluetrain [cluetrain.com]", or was it a truly grassroots meme like the Mentos+Coke thing?
If it's the latter, I'm fine with it, because it's genuine, but the former is just dirtier than even massmedia ads because the manipulation is sneekier and you KNOW the bastards are laughing all the way to the bank. At least with conventional ads you know someone's trying to sell you; with viral/stealth marketing it *could* be authentic, but it's more likely to be just some smirking jackasses taking everyone for a ride.
Repetition (Score:3, Interesting)
full disclosure: I work in advertising.
There are a lot of entertaining ads out there, the problem is they're only entertaining the first few times you see them, then they get boring. Then annoying. Then grating. I've seen some (supposedly) good products strangle themselves with over-exposure, and the thing is, while showing an ad more often gets you more impressionable eyeballs, it also alienates the customers you might've had, had you not bludgeoned them over the head with your thirty second spot.
The solution to this is tricky. Rather than producing a larger variety of ads, I think companies should move the bulk of their content to the internet - if people are actively looking for your information they're less likely to be annoyed by it. (Please note that I'm not talking about banner ads, here, I mean sites dedicated to providing product information in as friendly a way as possible.) There are all sorts of reasons why this won't work, namely that most people (unlike this crowd, I'm sure) don't watch TV with a laptop nearby just in case an interesting URL pops up on the screen, but it'd be a nice thing for them to consider.
Publicity (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure that most ads are made in an effort to gain publicity.
It's just the latest fad in ads. (Score:2)
"Viral marketing" is the
Be grateful we don't have real viral marketing (Score:2)
Some viruses and parasites will rewire the host's brain to help them propagate themselves. The rabies virus is an obvious example. What if someone used real genetically engineered viruses for "viral" marketing?
Vernor Vinge, in _Rainbows End_, imagines an all-too-plausible future in which tailored viruses are released into the population to make people more susceptible to ads for honeyed nougat. Honeyed nougat was j
Huh ?? (Score:2, Insightful)
PenGun
Do What Now ???
Viral marketing - blah (Score:2, Funny)
p2p (Score:2, Funny)
So this article is an ad right? (Score:2)
Halo 3, The Legend of Simon Conjurer...what?
Slashdot cliche (Score:2)
Close, but no quite. 00s students recite Ruby.
Where do I sign in to become an ashtray?
Re:First cliche (Score:2)
Re:First cliche (Score:2)
By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself
Re:What about the product? (Score:2)
Advertising definitely IS helpful.
Top 3 benefits of TV advertising
In other words, an intemission.
Top 3 benefits of Radio advertising
Top 3 benefits of Newspaper a
Re:Ironic... (Score:3, Informative)