Influx Insights led me to an interesting post from a marketer (Dan Germain) at the UK's Innocent Drinks, pondering what makes viral content "take off." He reveals an interesting story which dramatizes viral's new role in agency/client relationships (though I'm not sure that was his intention).
He got a visit from an agency wishing to work with his brand, the agency had prepared a spot that wasn't quite their cup of tea, the spurned agency then posted the spot on YouTube and as of Sunday at 3:03PM it had 4,480 views. Innocent Drinks also posted it on their blog, asked brand fans to comment, and got many pro and con posts about the spot.
A few interesting points in my mind. First, posting on the blog brand lovers frequent seems like a great way to test a creative idea. Cheap, low risk, and probably providing a pretty reliable read.
Second, it takes some guts to pull this off, both as a brand, but perhaps moreso for the rejected agency that posted their spec online. (it's not clear from the posts whether the agency requested Innocent's blessing before posting).
Germain makes an interesting argument about what makes viral efforts successful in the current atmosphere where clients demand viral campaigns that are "sure bets:"
- "Of course, I'm still extremely wary of those who talk about 'viral'. I believe that the people who email me every day, telling me that they can make us excellent viral clips at the drop of a hat, are missing the point. You can't make things viral to order. But you can do something else if you want to make stuff that people will send to their friends and post on their blogs. I think it's fairly simple. The more stuff you make, the more chance there is of something turning out to be good. And then people will watch it. So in 2007 we will be making more stuff, writing more stuff, posting more stuff and filming more stuff. Some of it will be rubbish and some of it might work. And seeing as we don't know which bits will work until we've done them, I guess we'd better get cracking."
His point about experimentation really makes sense to me. But I think it's hard for the average client to acknowledge the uncertainty of marketing investments, much less put ideas out there for customers to comment on. The smart clients will do both - if they want to make the new world of viral work for them.
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