Flirting with disaster
Procter & Gamble launched a Facebook campaign targeting college students called, "What Stinks?" The new media campaign had audio, video, animation and downloadable games aplenty, and Facebook is an ideal medium for this sort of campaign, given its status as the most popular social networking site on the internet. More than 64 million users, the majority of them young, on a site that originally was available only to college students? Sounds like a slam-dunk.
Of course, what P&G may not have factored in is that young, educated consumers also tend to be very opinionated, very sarcastic and very quick to jump on the contrary bandwagon the minute someone tries to cleverly market to them. Especially when that bandwagon represents a popular ethical cause like animal rights. Almost immediately Facebook’s unmonitored comment board lit up with postings, and an anonymous "I'll Tell You What Stinks" anti-Febreeze Facebook page was created. As effective as the campaign was in creating brand awareness, it also inadvertently created a lot of awareness of the ongoing controversy of P&G's use of animals to test its products.
Not that trying to be hip can only backfire in the virtual world. Sony got busted for orchestrating a guerilla marketing campaign in which they hired a bunch of graffiti artists to spray paint PSP-inspired images on walls around several major cities. Mind you they didn’t get busted financially (they learned from IBM’s mistake a few years ago when it got fined for defacing city streets in Chicago and San Francisco with Linux logos); they paid the building owners for use of their walls. But the campaign left a bad taste in the mouth of a number of consumers who were turned off by the idea of a company using underground street art as a means to advertise. When combined with their poorly executed attempt at faux grassroots blogging, it had a decidedly negative impact on word of mouth.
Then there's the marketing bomb of a whole other sort. To promote the edgy "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" movie in an equally edgy way, Cartoon Network embarked on a guerilla campaign, canvassing the streets of cities like Boston with strange boxes covered with lots of blinking lights, placing them randomly next to major tourist attractions and public areas. When the snarky advertising campaign was discovered in the city of Boston, it caused a panic, resulting in the involvement of Homeland Security, the resignation of the campaign's creators and a hefty fine for Cartoon Network. Note to marketers: you don't build consumer loyalty by terrorizing four million people and shutting a major city down for several hours.
Conclusion
Viral marketing is hard to pull off. In fact it may be the hardest thing to pull off in our field. Trying to create content with just the right amount of goofy appeal to attract the easily distracted is almost impossible to do, especially if you try too hard. Marrying that content to your brand can be hit or miss at best. Tying the whole thing together without looking manipulative is incredibly difficult. And if you’re trying to look cool, chances are you aren't. It’s not an impossible task to accomplish, but it requires a lot more careful thought, time to develop and ingenuity than most people put into it.
Similarly, marketing efforts which rely on being "edgy" or on clever stunts frequently end up like novelty acts, fading from the collective memory quickly. These sorts of tactics also can't be reproduced or sustained. You only get to be edgy the first time.
The moral of the tale of viral marketing is that we live in an increasingly small world. As much as we want to make use of the internet as a tool to reach consumers, we must remain aware of the wildly unpredictable risks and wrinkles it presents. The general public is minutes away from finding out almost any piece of information (or disinformation). And consumers are just as capable of adding their own two cents to whatever they find, enabling a potential freight train for your marketing campaign to hop on… or get run over by.
John Conroy is a marketing consultant with Los Angeles-based Cooperson Communications. Read full bio.