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 Forum index » Meta » General META Discussion
Viral Marketing that rubs me the wrong way...
Moderators: imbri, ndemeter
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thebruce
Dances With Wikis


Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 6899
Location: Kitchener, Ontario
rose wrote:
I see. I honestly didn't know this. So this event may be designed to reach people who wouldn't pay attention if they used the term "Christian." That would explain why they left it out.

Well, again, I'm not sure on their actual intent or demographic, so don't quote me on that Wink to my own fault, I still haven't looked at it to read up on what it's about... but ya, the point still remains, I hope Smile

Quote:
I'm trying to think of a more content-neutral promotion to discuss here but I'm drawing a blank. I can see that religion is probably not a good basis for discussion about marketing and rabbit holes.

I think we'll find that more and more though as other demographics and markets start getting involved that we don't really know much about. That's one of my favourite things about ARGs - learning about pretty anything under the sun, depending on who runs them, how and when... it's a mind-opening and expanding genre of gaming and entertainment.

yay arg Dunce
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 16, 2007 7:04 pm
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rose
...and then Magic happens


Joined: 26 Nov 2003
Posts: 4117

 		Here are some related articles on my points:

Steve Ballmer:

Quote:
Ballmer predicted that all media will be digital, delivered digitally, and created digitally within the next 10 year. This will force the forms of creative in media and advertising to be fundamentally different. Hardware and software will change the landscape completely – becoming very functional.

If you deliver messages in context, consumers will pay attention. This can be done through the use of a rich database of information and should be integrated into all communications. As soon as marketers assume everything is deliverd digitally all media and advertising will have to adapt.


----
About page views
Quote:
So debating which sites drive the most traffic is really meaningless. A more fruitful discussion should be around what metric succeeds the page view. A lot of people are measuring by traffic, but those days are coming to an end - slowly.


Heck I can see this and I'm not even in marketing. Maybe I'm smarter than I thought. Wink
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Mankind was my business, the common good was my business.~ Dickens

PostPosted: Tue Oct 16, 2007 11:05 pm
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BubbleBoy
Decorated


Joined: 16 Jul 2007
Posts: 271
Location: United States

 		A long, long time ago in a galaxy not so far away...
Seven years ago my boss walked up to me and told me about some "game" that he had heard about and wanted to know what I knew about it.

"I will look into it", I responded.

"The Beast", as it was called, for all of its positives, created a lot more work for me then I had hoped for at the time. Now I am part of a team within a marketing company, working closely with another team of advertisers, that devotes its time to researching "ARGs" and their impact on both the internet and the business of marketing/advertising as we know it.

I receive a minimum of one package a week on my desk that includes a request for information regarding what those within my group have dubbed "hit and runs".

High numbers - low cost, these are what attract the uninformed to these types of scams schemes.

After I storm into my boss' office in order to throw a tantrum about how I don't want to receive any more of these packets (and yet I still do) I place a phone call to the person who sent it. What I tell them is that what they are proposing does more harm than good.

"If you are trying to grab their attention I could just throw poop at your audience and get the same result", I state. "And I'd actually do it for free" (they like when you use the word "free").

You essentially have two things in play here:

1) People who want to get the word out about their product who don't know any better, and

2) Marketing and Advertising companies who have only heard about "ARGs" but have not actually tried to create one or spend the time it takes to try and understand them.

It's like the blind leading the blind and what you end up with is trust being broken on many ends of the promotion without anyone to really take the blame while a lot of fingers are being pointed at everyone else. The company that hired the marketers have lost their trust in the marketers, the audience loses its trust in the company and the marketers just sit there with their butts in the air with a "Kiss This" sign attached - then they show you the check.

The way the request is made by the companies who are interested in this type of promotion is also part of the problem. Most people are still stuck in the era of "numbers equals sales" (ie., the more people you can reach, while still trying to reach your "target audience", the better your odds of getting a hit become). What this means is that the company that is hired to do the job only needs to focus on getting the numbers.

Where "ARGs" differ then most conventional means of promotion, and what makes them perfect for these types of requests (even the "hit and runs"), is that you are trying to create interest rather then sales - and, no, one does not equal the other. But this is also the "grey area" that these marketing companies use in their own defense when things don't pan out the way the company that hired them had hoped.

If I only want to inform you of something, a "hit and run" is a perfect way to communicate that information. I COULD create more content, but why? The interest has been accomplished.

And this is why I turn those offers down. I realize the problems that these cause the community, the genre and the businesses that use these types of promotions. My boss doesn't like it and I can only hope and pray that he fires me for it, but my luck isn't that good.

On a side note: A religious group using information to mislead you is not new. Evil or Very Mad

PostPosted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 1:13 am
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Rogi Ocnorb
I Have 100 Cats and Smell of Wee


Joined: 01 Sep 2005
Posts: 4266
Location: Where the cheese is free.

 		One thing I'm kinda glad to see, lately, is a lot of posts in various areas around the forums that make me think the marketers are here and they're ready to listen.
Maybe they're coming to understand that a lot of us COULD be salesmen if we wanted to, but don't. And that we don't HAVE to put up with whatever hastily thought out, "revolutionary" but usually cheesy promotions happen to fall out of their heads.
There's probably nothing that can be done about the lazy marketers, like spammers, that have no intention of understanding their target consumers or the zealots with a cause that feel like everyone else must be made aware, at any cost, that the world is ending in 2012.
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 1:28 am
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BubbleBoy
Decorated


Joined: 16 Jul 2007
Posts: 271
Location: United States

 		Just so we are on the same page...
Personally, I don't like the term "Viral Marketing". Maybe it's because I am in the marketing industry, but it seems to me that we are talking more about advertising then marketing.

Marketers come up with the idea, advertisers execute it.

That brand new upgraded razor, the one with 4 blades instead of 3, was a marketers idea. The fact that you bought it is the advertisers fault. Laughing

I know that it is a widely used term, but I just don't like it. It's misleading, IMO.

Anyway, you are right that we are here. In fact, we have always been here. We just don't come forward and register an account. For a good 5 years I was a lurker here. I only recently decided to join the community that I was getting paid to stalk.

I have an ego and an attitude that most in my company don't. If a bad proposal ends up on my desk, you don't want it to be me on the other end of the line. I think I have turned more people onto voice mail then the phone companies (and I'm still waiting for my check from them for all of my efforts).

The thing that triggers my attitude more then most is telling me how to do my job. I have been known to tell people to go somewhere else if they don't like how I do things. I will argue with you 3 days from Sunday, but that's what keeps me where I am.

PostPosted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 2:24 am
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FLmutant
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Joined: 29 Oct 2004
Posts: 244
Location: Orlando, FL

 		Re: Just so we are on the same page...
Viral is one of those really interesting words. In way, you can look at the history of "viral marketing" and get a preview of what might happen to "alternate reality gaming."

Once upon a time, viral meant something very specific in the "memetic model" of information flow -- it meant that it had a hidden, difficult to detect intentional message hidden in an irresistible wrapper (Rushkoff's "Media Virus" is a good primer on that perspective.)

Then the marketers got ahold of it. By the time I was leading the "Viral & Buzz Marketing Association" I was already in the extreme minority holding that more subversive definition of viral. Instead, "viral" started to have the pop marketing meaning that under the memetic model we would have called "infectious" -- the difference being that when you touch infectious media, you kinda know what you touched. Viral media hides something inside the infectious agent.

Once people started using "viral" as "infectious," though, it meant that viral meant "cheap" and "large reaching". As it continued to expand and merge with "buzz" it became even worse -- now viral was something not too different from, say, "word of mouth" or "evangelization". I avoid the word "viral" entirely now ... and I note if any client uses that word too much, especially if they use it as a synonym for "successful" (as in, "We need this go viral! What are you going to do to make this go viral?") Instead, I stick the phrase we used way before that phase -- community media. I still haven't managed to extract "buzz" from my vocabulary, though, because it still has specific uses in measurement.

What does this have to do with ARGing? Well, look about you ... the definition is already being stretched and moved around. Don't like that messy concept that the audience should have an active role? Just call it an alternate reality branding instead ... even though there has a been a word around for decades that already describes that (branded entertainment). Don't like the idea that your media idea is subserviant to the real world? No problem ... just call it an extended reality branding (ERB!)

A number of communities of practitioners, though, have a word already for the sense of disappointment and backlash expressed in this thread:

DRINK MORE OVALTINE


B.

PostPosted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 6:31 am
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