posted by Lee on Jun 14
Viral marketing involves making some quirky content and hoping people latch onto it, distributing it to friends. It’s so-named because of the way it spreads like a virus, with everyone exposed to it a potential disseminator.
I hate the concept, not because of the power of it or because of any questions of its efficacy, but because of the notion that you can engineer the viral quality.
Sure, it’s something to aim for, but to claim that you can carry out viral marketing is a big and inaccurate boast. The truth is, very few pieces of content become viral and as soon as you try and identify the qualities needed, you destroy them.
Viral content almost always comes about naturally and very rarely is it anything other than purely altruistic. Mostly it’s just pointless shit. Attach a point to pointless shit and you negate it.
posted by Lee on Jun 13
A lot of traditional marketing companies fundamentally DO NOT GET how marketing works on the internet. They see that you have some web space and they treat it like it’s BBC primetime TV.
The important thing to remember about web marketing is that is primarily about getting people onto your site in the first place. Yes, you need to have everything set up so that they can then buy things, but writing sales copy on your blog is no good to anybody. Ask yourself this: why would somebody willingly seek out that article and read it?
If you have a blog, use it to write useful articles that people might be searching for. No-one is looking for sales copy online and even if they find it, it’ll turn them off.
posted by Lee on Jun 12
Yesterday I spoke about how certain TV adverts are targeted at certain viewers and appear in certain programmes overly frequently. Generally, this is bad. Sometimes it works.
The example I would give is the Just For Men ad with a frumpy daughter and a dad going for a job interview. When he gets back, he tells her how he’s going to need… ‘more ties!’ and they both hop about joyously like utter dicks.
At first I thought this advert was stupid. Then I found it fantastically annoying. Then, somehow, it’s laughable quality gave it laugh-worthy quality and I ended up enjoying it. If I ever get bothered about my grey hair, one brand name is now very familiar to me.
posted by Lee on Jun 11
It can take a lot to lodge something in a person’s brain. I’m not doing about a pick-axe or a spear here, I’m talking about advertising.
Different ads ‘bed in’ at different speeds. Generally, a person will need to see an advert a number of times for it to really have much of an impact. But how much is too much?
Because some advertising campaigns are highly targeted, you can find that you see the same ads again and again and again if you watch certain programmes regularly. When these ads become overfamiliar, they merely become irritating and this is the feeling your target audience ends up with.
posted by Lee on Jun 10
Marketing isn’t just about raising awareness about your product. It’s about presenting it in the right way to the right people.
When I was in India recently, I spotted a worrying trend in the TV advertising there. As well as having ad breaks and various companies sponsoring each programme (often six or seven sponsors for one show) they also have these invasive ads that run during the thing that you’re watching.
The way it works is the main picture is shrunk slightly – like a window on the computer – and ads are presented along the bottom and side of the screen while the programme continues. I experience intense irritation whenever these ads are run. Is that the feeling you want associated with your brand?