Showing Viral Marketing Who’s Boss
Was at the WWDC Ars Technica/Gizmodo party that went down tonight at Harlot, just down the street from Creative Commons HQ. Didn’t have much to do after work, so a bunch of the interns ended up grabbing dinner and meandering over to get into the party. Ended up being an awesome time: ran into Scott and a bunch of the good folks I hadn’t seen since ROFLCon, and got to talk to people to hear all the developer buzz after Chairman Steve’s typically solid work this weekend. Seems like iPhone’s readying itself for global burnination. Looking forward to seeing how Google’s Android plays out in this enviroment.
In any case, while waiting in line, a bunch of people started handing out free stickers for an anonymous Web 2.0 service called Dawdle. When asked what you do, the rep playfully responded “I don’t know — I can’t tell you.” Cute.
Dawdle, if you’re reading this, I’m sure you’re an awesome service, but I’m formally resisting you and NOT talking or searching about it until forced to by mass adoption. With anyone. Ever. In fact, I’ll be drinking heavily and then passing out in a few minutes after this post to vigoriously erase any memory of our interaction.
I dunno, in some sense, I think viral marketing is to business what Wikipedia is to internet studies. No doubt, both are beautiful, awesome ideas. And where it works well, it’s a really remarkable representation of a new approach. Both are amazingly effective when done right, and we’d be wrong to ignore them as potential models for what’s to come.
But, somewhere along the line, the spiel got a little tired. I feel everyone’s bored with the simple “gee whiz Wikipedia” message as much as the “viral marketing wow lol” strategies that seem to eat up lots of advertising time. Perhaps worse, people now know the tricks and accept them as established fact. In some sense, this makes them both less effective as blueprints for activity: viral marketing because we know what game they’re playing, and Wikipedia because it sometimes seems like it’s the only revolutionary kind of organization the internet has to offer.
This is not an A+++ would buy again scenario for anyone.
I’d be great to start seeing some viral marketing that defies expectations about what makes things viral. How about they reveal exactly way, way too much about their product? I’d love for once to see an ad that seems to be viral, but actually is completely upfront about itself.
Sticker: “This is a viral ad which is supposed to get you to go visit dawdle.com to learn about our product. But we’ll tell you about it here, it lets you blah blah blah”
I can totally see the expectation (built up from previous bad viral campaigns) that there should be more to see actually spurring buzz. Or a long, boring little brick of a book of tech specs in tiny font that comes with a magnifying glass — “for less, see dawdle.com.” That would be awesome.
