Growing up, neither “my brother”:http://www.onedegree.ca/category/karel-wegert nor I expected to work in interactive media. As a kid I abhorred technology, and my brother was far more interested in “NOFX”:http://www.nofxofficialwebsite.com/ than PPC. So it never ceases to amaze us – let alone our Mom – that we’re both now deeply entrenched in the interactive marketing industry.
Although she’s Internet-savvy in her own right (she emails, uses an instant messenger program, and is considering building a Web site to sell her decorative painting work online), our Mom still struggles a little to wrap her head around what it is that we do. Once, during a visit home, she happened to overhear my brother and I commiserating about a paid search campaign. “They might as well be speaking a different language!” she later told my father. But as she said it, there was a distinguishable note of pride in her voice.
Category: Tessa Wegert
Viral marketing. If the term makes you cringe, you probably work in interactive media. Far too often these days, clients ask us to create campaigns that are “viral,” citing the popularity of applications that, frankly, have gotten old, and praising the apparent ease with which they generate consumer attention.
The more mainstream the concept of viral marketing becomes, the more misguided advertisers’ perception of it. This is largely because the majority of the applications they see weren’t designed for marketing purposes. There’s a lot more to viral success than slapping up a funny tool or glamorous microsite and waiting for it to become the next “Sith Sense”:http://sithsense.com. And there are many more poor attempts out there than worthy endeavours.
So when I come across an effort that is as clever as it is effective from a marketing standpoint, I immediately take note. Last week, I was turned onto Clorox Company of Canada’s new Brita Faucet Filtration System microsite, a companion piece to “the current ad campaign”:http://mail3.mediapost.com/otlbrita.html. Both are based on the concept that “you deserve better” — better water, that is — and remind us that the water we consume within our homes isn’t expressly reserved for this purpose.