Many of you may have heard or seen “Viral” marketing campaigns by businesses seeking to inexpensively promote themselves or their products and/or services over the Internet, specifically viral video campaigns. Viral marketing and viral advertising, as defined by Wikipedia, refers to “techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth, delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message voluntarily.”
Samsung Omnia (i900) Unboxing
While we have all seen viral marketing and advertising through the
years, it is the newest incarnation of this medium that interests me:
Viral video marketing. This usually involves a video “spoof” or using
the phenomenon of something like YouTube to promote a product, service
or a company’s brand through someone pretending to be a blogger or an
“average Joe” submitting something as new or cool. I have seen some in
the last year or two. Some were successful, some were not. While the
term “Viral Marketing” has been around for over ten years (it was
coined by a Harvard Business School professor, Jeffrey Rayport, in a
December 1996 article for Fast Company The Virus of Marketing),
viral video marketing has not taken off or been used effectively over
the Internet until the last few years. And even then, most were seen
from the very beginning as being what it is: corporations “disguising”
themselves as something that they were not, such as a “blogger”
discussing some new product or service to his “audience” when it is
clearly some actor playing a role reading a script that sounds just a
tad too scripted to be real, such as “Hey, check out this cool new
product/service that I just found out about.”
Because I am constantly trying to keep up with the latest
technologies, I belong to, communicate with, and participate in several
tech blogs and forums throughout the Web world. And because of this,
any company that places a viral video campaign that disguises itself as
something else into YouTube, Facebook or any social network, I can usually spot it a mile away for what it is – corporate advertising.
Such was not the case for the following two viral campaigns I recently saw. The first one, for the Samsung Omnia Smartphone,
takes on the role of an “Unboxing” video. These types of videos are all
over the Internet. For those of you unfamiliar with unboxing videos,
they are usually posted by tech reviewers or product enthusiasts
unpacking their new product as soon as it arrives in the mail, giving
the viewer a “first view” of what the product looks like as the poster
unpacks his or her shiny, brand new product. These are usually
demonstrated for products from companies like Apple (whose packaging is
always something people seem to “ooh” and aaah” about), where fans or
enthusiasts get a chance to see these new products unfurled before
their eyes.
So when I first saw this video, I was expecting the usual (a person
opening the new product, commenting on the cool new packaging, talking
about new features, explaining what accessories are included, etc.,
etc.). But after 30 or 40 seconds, you start to realize this is no
ordinary unboxing video. Without spoiling it for anyone who wishes to
watch it, all I have to say is that it got me – hook, line and sinker.
Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did this video
have the look and feel of a typical unboxing video, but was funny as
well. Way to get me interested, Samsung. You had me at “Hello.”
The second video that caught my attention was one for the new Tiger Woods golf game from EA Sports.
The nice thing about this one is that it is a video “response” from one
YouTube viewer to another. In the YouTube community, a viewer makes a
video post then sometimes gets a response from another viewer with
another video. It’s like writing a mass email, then getting an email
response from one of those email recipients. Nothing unusual there. But
in this case, we have someone posting a video of himself watching
another YouTube video of the Tiger Woods game while making comments
about how odd it is that it looks like Tiger can walk on water. But
then we get a video response from the manufacturer themselves (EA
Sports) that Tiger Woods CAN walk on water — and shows a video of the
real Tiger actually walking on water. Quite inventive, I think.
Tiger Woods 09 – Walk on Water
After seeing companies stumble in trying to create realistic viral
videos in the first few years of this new medium, it is nice to see
them getting into character, having fun, and getting all the nice
little nuances and details of this formidable world of social networks
and communities. Heck, they fooled me and I’m a tough sell.