Archive for the ‘Viral’ Category

Viral marketing news and other viral happenings in Denver Metro, Boulder and beyond.

This month I am going to dedicate Rocky Mountain Viral to the victims of the Fourmile Canyon fire in Boulder, my hometown. The fact that no one died in the most destructive fire in the state’s history is a testament to the professionalism and hard work of the many firefighters and rescue workers involved, but social media has played an important role during and after the fire as well.

Spreading Information

On the morning of Monday, September 6th, my wife called on her way back from the gym to tell me that a fire had broken out west of Boulder. I checked news sources and found nothing, so I decided to head up to open space  and take a look. Here was my reaction to what I saw:

Before my tweet and less than an hour after the fire had broken out, conversation about the fire was well under way on Twitter. People were using the hashtag #boulderfire to identify their tweets. Like many people, I spent the afternoon nervous about how much the fire would spread and concerned for friends that live in the canyons west of town. News media was slow with updates at first, but sources like CU instructor Sandra Fish, grad student Amanda Pingel and resident Andrew Hyde were right on top of what was happening. Fish was listening to the Boulder County police scanner and following other sources and tweeting real-time updates. Pingel created a collaborative Google Map of the area with the fire perimeter marked out and people were posting photos and other info to the map by Monday afternoon. By Tuesday, uber-social Andrew Hyde had created a mashup of social coverage of the fire on his blog.

#boulderfire tweets by hour, 9/6/2010 (source: Topsy)

There has been some debate about whether the news media should have been providing more real-time coverage. Like most people, I looked to the Boulder Daily Camera, the Denver Post and other media channels for information in addition to my social media sources, and to be fair they were updating news frequently, if not as real-time as the Twitter stream. In any case, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and numerous blogs kept me and many others informed. And we could ask questions, send our good wishes and feel part of what was happening in a way that traditional news media does not allow.

Connecting

As events were unfolding, I had several offers in Facebook and Twitter of places for me and my family to stay if we were evacuated, though we were well away from the evacuation zone. People I hadn’t heard from in years came out of the woodwork offering help and expressing concern. And we, too, offered our support and help to friends. Many people in the community opened their homes to strangers, and I know first-hand of several new friendships that were formed during the fire. It is not to say that these things couldn’t have happened without social media, communities have banded together in crisis for time immemorial, but my experience was that the Internet played a role in most of these connections. I suppose one thing that’s changed is that our network of human connections is much larger than it once would have been. The “community” that has helped during and after the fire includes people from all over the metro area and beyond.

Rallying Help

While the fire was still raging, local technology firm Sparkplace launched the Fourmile Fire Help Forum, where people could find or offer a place to stay or food or supplies. It has also become a clearinghouse of information for people trying to navigate the aftermath of the disaster, with topics like “Insurance Help and Issues” and “Animal Help”.

Another community effort that has pulled together blazingly fast is the 4 Mile Community Store. The store takes donations of clothing, furniture, housewares and other goods and provides them to people affected by the fire. It was organized by a moderator of the Boulder Rock’n Moms Yahoo Group. She’s spread the word about the store to the group’s 2,500 members, who have spread it throughout the community. My wife heard about the store through the group, and she and my daughter volunteered there last weekend. The store could use more volunteers and they’ve also got a list of things they need on the site, if you have anything to donate.

I would like to list the many other organizations and people who have helped or need help after the fire, but there are just too many. It is inspiring to see how people have stepped up, in small and large ways.  I have focused on the positive things that happened for me and the community as a result of the fire, but I don’t mean to downplay the tragedy of the event. I cannot imagine what it is like to lose a home and all the memories inside so completely to such devastation. Those of us who were not affected are very fortunate, and we all owe a great debt to the men and women who worked day and night battling the fire.

Here are some good sources I found on the topics of social media and the fire:

• Columbia Journalism Review – Tweeting a Wildfire
• Denver Post – Evacuees use social media to keep up on Boulder wildfire disaster developments
• Politics Daily - Colorado’s Fourmile Canyon Fire: When Community — and Twitter — Matter
• Andrew Hyde - Fourmile Canyon Fire 2010
• KWGN Denver - Harness The Power Of Social Media In A Disaster
• Huffington Post - Boulder Fire Stokes Community Through Social Media
• Colorado Public Radio – Fourmile Fire Highlights Social Media’s Value
• Orange Insights - Community During Crisis: What Governments can learn from the Boulder Community’s usage of Social Media during the Boulder Fire

If you’d like to help in some way yourself, check the How You Can Help forum on the Fourmile Help Forum site.

Viral marketing news and other viral happenings in Denver Metro, Boulder and beyond.

After too long a hiatus, Rocky Mountain Viral is back! My goal is to get these out monthly from now on. Here’s hoping.

Colorado Girls – one of the most tried-and-true ways to get YouTube traffic is to parody another very successful video. Anthropomorphize a cat or work in some South Park characters and you’ve got yourself a viral hit. Katy Perry’s wildly successful “California Gurlz” video has been this summer’s favorite target, keeping hundreds of parodists busy. At least 37 states have weighed in so far, but it turns out that Colorado girls are among the most popular, with this video garnering over 600,000 views on YouTube. The video was created by three friends in a couple of weeks with no budget. The lyrics are clever and it is well put together, but the real star of the video is our Front Range. The tourism board itself couldn’t have done a better job of stitching together all the quintessential details that make us, well, not California. See for yourself:

Cherry Creek Dance – In another story of native talent, I love this video featuring Emily Sasson of Cherry Creek Dance. The video is promoting her Wednesday night hip hop class, and has received over 4,600 views in just a few days. Sure, that doesn’t compare to Colorado Girls, but this is no parody and includes no South Park characters, just great dancing and great local business marketing.

And then there’s whiteboard girl – in a perfect case study of the is-it-real phenomenon,  ”Jenny” took the internet by storm early this month with her very public and scathing announcement that she was quitting her job. She emailed her coworkers photos of herself quitting with a whiteboard commentary on her boss and his Farmville habit. The photos were leaked to the website thechive.com:

We received the following photos last night from a person who works with this girl. Her name is Jenny (not confirmed) – we’re working our contact for Jenny’s last name…

It turns out that Jenny’s last name is Porterfield and her first name isn’t Jenny, it’s Elyse. Porterfield is a Glenwood Springs native and recent UNC graduate who did not quit her job, but is an aspiring actress who did a photoshoot for The Chive. She has a pretty face and was given a funny set of whiteboards and is now a hot commodity thanks to the hoax. Oh, and she’s a California girl now too. I think that’s fitting.

Do politicians just automatically count as viral? – wanting to get a jump on the competition, Time Magazine has already announced the best viral campaign ads of 2010. Among them is Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper trying to wash away negative campaign ads on his path to the governor’s office. I like his sentiment, but it seems like an ad should be viral to earn that distinction. With only 40,000 YouTube views for such a prominent campaign, I’m thinking Hick should hire the Colorado Girls crew to shoot his next video.

This post is part of a series of posts describing the ingredients that cause media to go viral: Viral Marketing Ingredients

Virtuosity describes when a story or video captures sheer, remarkable talent. From a viral standpoint, it also helps if the talent is coming from someone we have never heard of. For example, we all know Eric Clapton can play the guitar, but have you ever heard of Funtwo? I hadn’t either, but a video of him playing Vivaldi is one of the most-watched on YouTube. And the words “I learned to play guitar with GuitarMasterPro.net!” that accompany the video have driven many aspiring Funtwo’s to the guitar instruction site/service. The low-fi clip was produced by GuitarMasterPro, and markets their services as well as Clapton ever could.

While the GuitarMasterPro video captures what the site is offering, this one is about as subtle as advertising gets. Can you tell who produced this video?

Watch for it … watch for it …

Ok, did you notice the Gatorade bottle sitting next to her chair right at the end? Unfortunately, the clip is a fake and no matter how much Gatorade you drink you won’t be able to defy gravity. The ball girl was a stuntwoman assisted by wires. But for a while people passed the clip around, wondering at her achievement.

This last one is not marketing any business or product, but the Evolution of Dance has to be included for the fact that it launched the talented but otherwise unknown Justin Laipply in to viral stardom. This video is one of the most watched ever on YouTube.

As a marketing technique, virtuosity works best when it is relevant to the nature of your business. Does your product or service enable people to do remarkable things? If so, think about capturing some of your customers doing what they do on video. Not only does this showcase what you offer, it is a way to celebrate your customers.

Two Octobers helps businesses in Colorado’s Front Range with low- and no-cost marketing. For more information on our services, click here.

This post is part of a series of posts describing the ingredients that cause media to go viral: Viral Marketing Ingredients

Before reading on, watch this video and see if you can count the passes:

And this Berlitz ad:

I put the Berlitz ad in so that you wouldn’t read this before watching the first video, but it is also a good example of misdirection. If you’re like me, you were totally had by the first one. I counted all of the passes and I completely missed the moonwalking bear. Misdirection occurs when a video or story takes us down one path, then surprises us with an unexpected ending.

We like to share things like this because they are clever, but also because we feel duped, and we want to see if others will fall for the same trick. What makes the Test Your Awareness video particularly effective is that the trick is also the message.

Here is another brilliant example:

To summarize, the protagonist is relentlessly annoying until at the end you realize that he is the wind, and that the wind can be harnessed for Good. A perfect message coming from Epuron, which is a German wind energy company, and the company has generated over 2 million views with the video. I also like that a German company chose a Frenchman to be the embodiment of annoying, but that’s another subject.

Please comment if you know of other good examples. For other posts in this series, click here.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the piggyback effect, where a video or story piggybacks on the success of another story or video. Well, here is an example of piggybacking genius. This video parodies OkGo’s This Too Shall Pass video with a story about how the game “Mousetrap Never Works.” Brilliant.

Here is the OkGo version, also brilliant:

This is one in a series of posts describing some the ingredients that cause media to go viral. I am presenting a variety of examples, but I am most interested in how local businesses can create viral media for marketing purposes. As you read this, think about ways you can leverage these ingredients to tell your story.

The Dancing Baby – I don’t know if it is just coincidence, but two of the most successful viral marketing campaigns of all time don’t involve anything amazing or hilarious, they are just patently absurd. But before I discuss those, I’m going to rewind back to my first experience with viral media, the dancing baby. The dancing baby was an animated video clip that first landed in my inbox in 1996, and is still making the rounds today. It jumped from internet phenomenon to mainstream icon in 1998, when it made the first of several appearances on the very popular Ally McBeal show. Since then, the baby has been referenced and parodied many times, to the point where Homer parodied the parodies on an episode of the Simpsons. What drove a short, mediocre animation to such infamy? The music is certainly catchy, but most of all it is just too ridiculous to be believed. If it is not already burned in to your consciousness, see for yourself.

The “ooga chacka baby” version is the one I remember, but many variations exist.

The Subservient Chicken – It would appear that nothing evokes the “you’ve just got to see this!” response more  than absurdity. Which brings us to the Subservient Chicken. The Subservient Chicken was conceived of by ad agency CP+B to promote Burger King’s TenderCrisp Sandwich. The Subservient Chicken is one of the most successful branded viral media campaigns, and possibly the most successful interactive viral media campaign ever. The Subservient Chicken appeared in television ads and in other guises, but the real catalyst to fame was the Subservient Chicken web site. On the site, you can type in commands and have a person dressed in a ridiculous chicken suit respond in some fashion. Some responses are truly subservient, such as “sit”, “spin” or “walk like an egyptian”. But the chicken does become less subservient if you tell it that you love McDonalds, and becomes positively defiant if you make any lewd suggestions. The web site launched in April of 2005, and has received over 450 million hits. It doesn’t make me hungry for chicken, but Burger King’s sales of chicken sandwiches did increase significantly after the launch of the site.

Will It Blend? – While the Subservient Chicken demonstrated to big brands and big agencies that viral media can work, this story is closer to my heart. One day, the marketing manager of high-end blender manufacturer BlendTec thought to capture his CEO’s blending experiments on video. The CEO and blender inventor, Tom Dickson, liked to test his blenders with 2X4′s and other difficult-to-blend objects. Tom’s deadpan style and the absurdity of what he puts in the blender quickly launched the small Utah-based company to internet fame. Blendtec’s YouTube channel has received over 100 million views, and Dickson has appeared on the Tonight Show, the Today show, and has been written about in just about every major news publication. The expression “will it blend?” has become a cultural meme, making it’s way in to chat rooms, plot lines and all manner of popular media. I like this campaign as an example because it didn’t have a big budget or agency behind it, but most of all I like it because the videos tell the story of Blendtec: these blenders never give up! It is also worth noting that the company attributes an increase in sales of over 500% to these videos.

In the nearly 100 ‘Will It Blend?’ videos that have been created to date, Dickson has blended everything from an iPhone to a Ford Fiesta. In a rare case where something didn’t blend, he took on a Chuck Norris figurine. Here is the episode “Skis and Global Warming” as an example of just how absurd Dickson can be:

Tom Dickson clearly has a charismatic style, but what makes his videos infectious is the fact that he’s just a regular guy using regular every day objects to do something very irregular. Think about how you can juxtapose your products or services with the unexpected to entertain and inform.

Please comment if you know of other good examples. For other posts in this series, click here.

This is one in a series of posts describing some the ingredients that cause media to go viral. I am presenting a variety of examples, but I am most interested in how local businesses can create viral media for marketing purposes. As you read this, think about ways you can leverage these ingredients to tell your story.

The piggyback effect occurs when a story parallels, references or out-and-out mimics a recent  newsworthy event or other viral media. For example, most popular music videos that are posted on YouTube are quickly followed by spoof or cover videos that piggyback on the popularity of the original.

A good illustration of the piggyback effect is the premiere episode of the animated series the Meth Minute. This clip parodies nearly every major viral video or story to-date. But it would appear that the producer’s ability to create original content does not match his ability to piggyback on other’s success. This clip has been viewed over three million times, while episode two lags far behind with 700 thousand views, and episode three has just 400 thousand views.

Another classic example is the abudance of spoof videos that followed the train-wreck performance of Miss Teen South Carolina, which has been viewed over 40 million times on YouTube. One of many response videos was Miss Teen South Carolina Calls 911, which promotes the comedy team Quiet Library. The spoof starts with the beauty queen shouting “What’s the number? What’s the number?” when she is asked to call 911. It is a funny video, but they have the unfortunate original to thank for their nearly 7 million views. This example also illustrates part of why piggybacking works. The Quiet Library video comes up when you search “Miss Teen South Carolina” in YouTube, which means that the millions of people who search for the original also see a link to the spoof.

I find this effect particularly interesting when it is inadvertent. For example, a coffee shop in Aurora Colorado recently got a lot of attention because it was forced to take down a banner that featured the bikini-clad servers that work in the shop. Nearly every reference to this story also mentioned a story the week before involving a billboard that was taken down in Colorado Springs because it featured puppet cleavage. Two Colorado cleavage stories just a week apart was too much for the media to resist, even though the second event was pretty unremarkable.

Another good example is a video produced by the company Bullet Blocker, promoting a bulletproof backpack for children. This video doesn’t spoof other stories, but includes somber reminders of some of the tragedies that have happened in our schools. The tragedies it references are some of the most searched-for news content on the internet. The owner of the company says the video accounted for a dramatic increase in sales.

Please comment if you know of other good examples. For other posts in this series, click here.

This is one in a series of posts describing some the ingredients that cause media to go viral. I am presenting a variety of examples, but I am most interested in how local businesses can create viral media for marketing purposes. As you read this, think about ways you can leverage these ingredients to tell your story.

“Do you think his hair is real?”
“Did she really just do that?”
“Scientists at so-and-so university examined the photo and say it hasn’t been doctored.”

People love musing over things that may or may not be fake, and this is usually a very social activity. The is-it-real effect occurs when some form of content gets forwarded or posted with the question: is it real? Debate over such content is a very popular activity online. As I write this, countless online forums and comment threads are ablaze with discussion over some stunt or oddity.

Perhaps the greatest example of this phenomena as a marketing stunt was the remarkable saga of lonelygirl15. The ‘Catcher In the Rye’ of our time, for the summer of 2006 lonelygirl15 captured the hearts and minds of teens and sympathetic adults around the world with her brutally honest video journal. Or was it brutally honest? As the summer progressed, people started to suspect that this girl was just too perfect, and the events she described a little too engaging. But she just seemed so real! lonelygirl15 was outed in September of 2006 as a promotional stunt, and that’s when the publicity really began.

It turned out that lonelygirl15 was an actress, and her journal was the beginning of a series created by a then-unknown production company. Many people were upset by the deception, but the debate and subsequent outing created the publicity the producers were after. This points out a danger of using is-it-real as an ingredient. Assuming it isn’t real (it usually isn’t), people will eventually figure it out, which can create a negative backlash. This may be fine for a movie or other form of fictional entertainment, but most businesses don’t want customers feeling like they’ve been tricked. Nonetheless, it can be a quick way to get a lot of attention.

A somewhat tongue-in-cheek variant on this phenomenon is evidenced by the following clip promoting Microsoft in Germany. I don’t know if this is real or fake, but I do know the question has been widely discussed. Either way, Microsoft is pretty safe because it really has nothing to do with their products. This clip also demonstrates an key element of the is-it-real phenomenon: if you own a tripod, leave it at home. We continue to fall for the idea that people who don’t own tripods must be honest. One would have thought that the Blair Witch Project would have done away with this illusion, but low-fi production equipment continues to be a staple of internet fakery.

Another great example of is-it-real is the following Nike ad featuring soccer star Ronaldihno. After an unbearably long build-up watching him lace on his new Nike’s, he remarkably kicks the ball across the field and bounces it off the crossbar time after time. The clip generated a huge amount of debate, and seemed pretty much designed to get people asking the question. In one of many forums, bigsoccer.com members voted for or against. So far, 1,327 people say it’s real, while 1,602 disagree.

The best local-to-Colorado example of this effect was the unfortunate story of the boy and the weather balloon. Last fall the world turned their eyes on Colorado as news broke that a boy had accidentally drifted away on an experimental weather balloon. Water-cooler conversation quickly turned to the veracity of the story, given that the parents are known attention seekers. The boy was later found hiding in the garage, but not until after the National Guard had been called out and Denver International Airport had been shut down. It did later turn out that the boy was told to hide by his parents, and that the whole thing was a disgusting publicity stunt. Marketing doesn’t get any more abhorrent than that.

Please comment if you know of other good examples. For other posts in this series, click here.

This is one in a series of posts describing some the ingredients that cause media to go viral. I am presenting a variety of examples, but I am most interested in how local businesses can create viral media for marketing purposes. As you read this, think about ways you can leverage these ingredients to tell your story.

I am using “pass-it-on” to describe what happens when we find a message powerful or heartwarming and want to share it with our friends. A classic example of this effect was a quote attributed to Kurt Vonnegut that got forwarded millions of times by email in 1998:

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’98: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded…more

It turned out that the text was actually based on a column by a Chicago Tribune writer and not Kurt Vonnegut, but the words went on to be the basis of a popular song and have been quoted many times since. I remember when I received it as an email, because it was forwarded to me several times in the course of a few short days. It is a well-written speech with a good message that people wanted to share.

Another great example is this video by Dove exposing the artificial representation of beauty in popular media. When it came out, I wanted my children to watch it so they could understand how much of what they see is engineered and not natural. Many millions of people felt the same way. The message creates a positive association with Dove’s brand, and is a direct affront to more style-focused health and beauty products.

These examples involve big companies or famous people, but the pass-it-on effect works very well for small organizations and companies too. A recent blog post by a Colorado writer celebrated the first birthday of a McDonald’s Happy Meal that had been sitting open on the shelf for the past year. Her post was written about on Consumerist.com, Fark, BoingBoing, the HuffingtonPost and many other blogs and news sites. The publicity drove over 75 thousand people to her site, as well as all the exposure she received on other sites. Given that her site is focused on selling her books about children’s nutrition, that’s a lot of qualified leads.

Sometimes the pass-it-on effect is made explicit, as when the Dictionary.com page defining the word “cult” was posted on the link sharing site Digg.com. The link was posted with the title: Digg this if you are sick of $cientologists burying articles – and is the 5th most dugg article on Digg and has been commented on over one thousand times. Another explicit example happened this January, when women began posting their bra color on Facebook. Like many, I was stumped by the status updates: “black”, “beige”, “blue”, etc. The original source of the phenomenon is not known, but one story that got passed on was that it was to raise awareness for breast cancer. Whether or not this was the original cause, the Susan G. Komen Foundation was shocked to find their Facebook following go from 135 on the morning of January 8th to over 135,000 by the end of the day. They insist they didn’t have anything to do with the campaign, but they were a significant beneficiary.

I’ll end with the bizarre story of the inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines. Byron Garcia, the manager of the jail, organized and choreographed the prisoners in to doing a performance of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. This is just one of many things he’s done along these lines, but the video of this particular event has had over 40 million views on YouTube. In his words, “Rehabilitation has to be anchored on bringing out the best in men instead of the worst in men.” Pass it on.

Please comment if you know of other good examples. For other posts in this series, click here.

For a little while now, I have been writing weekly blog posts summarizing viral media happenings in Colorado. I’ve been doing these posts in order to identify and point out techniques that marketers and others use to get viral attention.  They are also pretty fun to research. Along the way, I have noticed that certain ingredients help blog posts, videos or other media get forwarded from person to person. This post is the first in a series exploring what those ingredients are. Doing research for the series has helped me understand how businesses can benefit from and create viral media. I hope my findings are helpful to you too. I’ve also tried to use funny and interesting examples – some are probably familiar, and some surely not.

What gets me most excited is when I find a small company that has created a successful viral marketing campaign without big celebrities or a hefty marketing budget. For example, have a look at this video on the home page of Biota Spring Water. The video tells the story of how their bottles bio-degrade, and has been viewed many thousands of times. It is not shocking or hilarious, but it does communicate what is special about Biota Spring Water and has captured the interest of a lot of viewers. I believe that most small businesses have a compelling story to tell. If you can get at the heart of your story with a clever video, web site or email, you have a shot at going viral.

Here is my list of viral marketing ingredients. As I do example posts, I will link to them here:

• Pass-it-on – the desire to help someone spread a message because the reader agrees with its point of view. Click here for examples.
• Is It Real? – when something seems too freaky or amazing to be real. Click here for examples.
• The Piggyback Effect – an event that resembles or mimics another well-publicized event. Click here for examples.
• Absurdity – CEO’s with blenders, subservient chickens and other unlikely characters. Click here for examples.
• Ohmygod! – the sense of ‘I can’t believe I’m really seeing what I’m seeing’.
• Make-believe – we all like to play make-believe, we’re just not supposed to do it as grownups.
• Virtuosity – watching sheer talent in action. Click here for examples.
• Misdirection – the surprise ending. Click here for examples.
• Play – having fun with people, people having fun.

I haven’t called humor out as an ingredient, but it has to be said that most successful viral media makes us smile or laugh – the desire to share laughter is a universal and wonderful human trait. I am also not including celebrities, news events, sporting events and cute baby animals as ingredients. I don’t mean to downplay their effectiveness in viral media, I’m just not as interested in researching those topics.

If you know of other ingredients or examples, I’d love to hear about them in the comments below.

Credit where credit is due – these are some particularly good resources for tracking viral media:

• http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/viral-marketing-examples/
• http://www.marketingsherpa.com/ – Marketing Sherpa publishes an annual viral media hall of fame
• http://www.visiblemeasures.com/