Bloggasm

Even though viral advertising–what some have labeled “guerrilla marketing”–is very effective when it actually works, at least you can say one good thing about traditional advertising: It’s honest. Since viral marketing usually works to be misleading or vague in some way in order to create word-of-mouth, it’s understandable that people get pissed off when they find out that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. And since viral marketers often target bloggers to start their campaigns, they’ll often find out that Hell hath no fury like a blogger’s scorn.

First, let’s look at cases where viral marketing worked. Before Donnie Darko came out, people involved with the film began putting up posters in crowded places. These posters were deliberately vague, saying things like “Where’s Donnie?” which then caused people to talk about them as they wondered what it was all about. This created some buzz about the movie and probably contributed to its cult success. 60 Minutes did a report some time ago about the new marketing target called the “Tween,” (girls who are almost teenagers but not quite) and how companies trying to create word-of-mouth amongst Tweens have hosted parties where the tweens would get to test out their product and then later tell their friends about it. And then there’s Snakes on the Plane, which was one of the most hyped movies of the modern internet age.

This “viral marketing” scheme is a company’s dream, because it means that it can essentially go without paying big advertising dollars and at the same time produce real results. Naturally, this has caused them to try and dupe bloggers into promoting their products, and we’re not falling for it. What’s worse, when a blogger gets wind of a foul marketing scheme, he or she often doesn’t just ignore it, but uses it against the company in what amounts to negative advertising. Below I’ll outline three recent instances where the viral marketing blew up in a company’s face.

1. Brody Ruckus: As I blogged about extensively, a person claiming to be a college student named Brody Ruckus used his facebook account to create a facebook group that said that if the group reached 100,000 members, his girlfriend would allow him to have a threesome with him. The group quickly grew viral and reached 100,000 people in a few days, which led him to change the rules: If it reached 300,000, then his girlfriend would let him take pictures of the threesome and post them online. If it became the largest group ever on Facebook, she’d let him post the video online. In the meantime, “Brody Ruckus” began posting links where you could buy T-Shirts from him and started linking to his own website and encouraging people to sign up to it.

Within mere days after the group caught on, dozens of people who went to the school Brody claimed to attend came out and said that there was no such person as “Brody Ruckus” that they knew of. Nobody had heard of the guy. Several other keen facebook users noticed that his facebook account was created right before the Brody Ruckus group was created. Something was off.

After it became apparent that this was some kind of marketing scheme to sell t-shirts and/or sex videos and/or music (a lot of people noticed that there was a music site called Ruckus Music, and the school Brody supposedly went to had several alumni who worked for Ruckus Music), I posted that Brody Ruckus was a fake on this very blog, and since a lot of people linked to my post about it, it became the #1 post on Google whenever you searched for “Brody Ruckus.”

Immediately, I started getting thousands of hits a day from people google searching Brody Ruckus. People who might have been duped to going to his website and buying whatever product he was pushing, were instead coming to my post bashing him and likely weren’t going to be tricked into later buying his stuff. In fact, my post created a negative word-of-mouth campaign against Brody, and several facebook groups started linking to me to prove that he was a fake, increasing the number of people who would find out that it was a sham.

So what originally seemed like a succcessful marketing campaign ended up blowing up in their face. By now, it’s well known that Brody Ruckus isn’t the real thing, and the entire ordeal has died down to a few hot coals.

2. Napster Music: Hmm, another online music site being the victim of bad viral advertising. Notice a pattern here? Back in July, a PR firm working for Napster Music contacted blogger John Scalzi to get him to promote the Napster site. Scalzi thought that the PR firm’s email was incredibly lame and posted about it in his blog. He took the time to outline every reason why he disliked the email and juxtaposed it with a PR team working for Tower Records who he thought did an excellent job with their pitch:

As I think I’ve mentioned before, I am apparently enough of a high-profile blogger that I get people sending me stuff and wanting to do business with me in my capacity as a blogger. People sending me stuff is always fun (it’s stuff. And it’s free), and that’s why I have my publicist guidelines over there on the side bar. Wanting to do business with me is a tricker proposition. This site is (until I am hard up for money, at least) resolutely not a commercial site, and I’m not particularly inclined to ‘ho out my readership for a few shiny baubles or whatever. Also, as someone who makes at least part of his money crafting marketing messages for various clients, and has for the better part of a decade, it’s not like I don’t know how marketing works. I know the difference between a good pitch and a bad one, particularly when it’s directed toward me. I get annoyed at the bad ones.

After he posted the bad Napster email, the head of the PR company came onto his comments thread and personally apologized. Not only was he sorry, but he also admitted to terminating the employment of the person who had sent the lame email:

I am glad this was brought to my attention, as it enabled us to correct the situation. We concur with your assessment and strive to continually have our entire staff practice the recommendations you scribed. To reduce the risk of future similar incidents, this GPR rep’s employment has been terminated.

Ouch. In this case, not only did the person create bad PR, he or she also got fired in the process!

3. The Science of Sleep: Tisk tisk, we would expect something more from a movie that looked like it had so much promise.

As Making Light points out, an LJ community was created a little while ago that was supposed to hype the movie The Science of Sleep. LJ users, however, quickly noted that the entire thing seemed rather plastic and fake. There were dozens of “users” who were saying incredibly cliche positive things about the movie like

I saw it two days ago and it changed my life forever…

thank you Michael Gondrey… not only did you bring my dad and I closer, but you made me a different person

and

I am soooo looking forward to see this movie!!! I really liked the idea and I adore Gael Garcia Bernal! So it changed your attitude? made you a different person? That makes me want seeing this movie even more

Looks fake to you? It gets better. Several LJ users took the time to investigate and they noticed some odd things. For one, all the positive posters were relatively new LJ users who had only created their accounts mere days before the LJ community popped up. Secondly, every one of these Livejournals were either friendslocked or had a few fluff posts in order to make them look legit. And the kicker? The fact that all the positive posters happened to be friended mostly only to each other.

Now, LJ users not only are not fooled by this fake viral advertising, they’re claiming that it has made them decide not to see the movie:

insomnia: And just to think, I was actually curious about seeing The Science of Sleep in a movie theatre before this unwanted ad sellout in LiveJournal. Now I’m going to have to give the movie a pass, simply for ethical reasons… and I will use my journal to encourage others to do the same.

Sorry film-makers. If you want to create blogger word of mouth, talk to the Snakes on a Plane guys. Now that’s what I call viral marketing.

Digg This

Related posts: Garden State 2 aka The Last Kiss, Anti-Facebook group members are now using it to solicit phone sex and other commercial ventures