Word of mouth works both ways
Faking a blog is becoming more and more common in the marketing world. Given the immense weight the blogging community can have on consumer choice and behavior, appearing to have an impartial third party endorse your product (or slam your competitor) is a canny idea. But it requires an enormous amount of effort to pull off. You have to create a back story, establish a track record for your blogger, and absolutely ensure that you've covered your tracks.
American Express got burned when a blogger who touted a "great" new Amex interactive billboard turned out to be an employee of the company's advertising agency. Negative word of mouth rapidly spread around the internet. Similarly McDonald's created it’s ill-conceived LincolnFry blog, which was initially received with adoration by people who like to find amusing weird things on the internet…until word got out that everything on the site -- including the blog comments -- were fake. Pageviews fizzled and bad word of mouth spread. Sony utilized an army of fake bloggers who wrote in falsely authentic styles (heavy use of street slang/spelling and text message speak -- OMG LOL) to run an underground campaign for the PSP which, once exposed, made the company look about as hip and relevant as a Bob Haldeman joke. These examples all demonstrate how hard it is to fake honesty; but more importantly, they show us that when it’s all said and done false authenticity is not only a recipe for disaster…it's also totally unnecessary.
One of the best examples of creating great word of mouth came from Google when it launched Gmail. The company announced it would start offering a free email service, but only to an exclusive number of people. They created an unknown number of "power users" who would selectively choose members of the public to "invite" to use Gmail. Each new user would be granted a number of invitations to give out to friends and loved ones. By the very nature of the campaign Google obviously didn't see massive adoption of its email service overnight, but it still caused an overnight sensation. Sometimes the easiest way to get someone to want your product is to tell them they can't have it. Over the next several months people were scouring the internet asking for an invitation from a power user. People were chomping at the bit to get their hands on…free email? A commodity service they already had from another company? Now that’s good marketing, good word of mouth and proof that authenticity trumps deception.
When your brand goes from subtext to notext
We have to give Burger King credit for aiming high. This is a company that is so relentless in its pursuit of new media marketing that it has succeeded in hatching several turkeys in short order.
The company's Subservient Chicken, an online gimmick in which users could make a guy in a mildly creepy chicken outfit move around his bland apartment, dancing, bowing and doing all sorts of goofy things, was a popular site because of its kookiness. It also generated a lot of press…for the marketing campaign -- not so much for the restaurant chain.
The company's WeeMCee.com campaign involved a crude hand puppet that dances to music you select from a very narrow menu of songs. This time the intentional amateurishness fell flat and the lack of real interactivity failed the three-second rule of holding anyone's attention online. The fact that neither of these campaigns bore any apparent connection to the Burger King brand means they also failed the "sell more chicken" rule of successful fast food marketing.
Here's another example: Doritos' big spot for the 2007 Super Bowl put its focus on amateur filmmakers, which turned out to be charming and entertaining to watch but did nothing to target Doritos fans. On the flipside, Heinz and Chick-Fil-A have run successful user-generated media campaigns that set parameters locking in true fans of the brands and still resulted in highly creative and amusing spots.