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.
Category: Viral Marketing
Did April Fools’ come a week early this year? Something *very* odd is going on over at “henderson bas”:http://www.theniceagency.com/ this weekend.
Their home page has been replaced by this:
The page title has been changed from “henderson bas – the nice agency” to “henderson bas – the cleanest agency in Canada” (the company’s url is theniceagency.com).
What’s going on here?
_Sebastian Arciszewski is one of the founders of “SplitReason.com”:http://www.splitreason.com/ a Vancouver-based online retailer selling apparel to geeks and gamers around the world. Along with his partner, Brian Penner, he is now embarking on a new project called “AdFights.com”:http://www.adfights.com/ – a website which pits advertisers spending power against each other in a forum where the advertisers are openly mocked._
*One Degree: Where did the original inspiration for Ad Fights come from?*
My partner, Brian and I have been brainstorming for a little while as to what crazy and unique ideas can potentially lead to a large windfall of money in a short period of time, with minimal effort since our daily tasks with SplitReason.com take up most of our time. Originally we had planned to mimic the Million Dollar Homepage _(see “One Degree’s coverage”:http://www.onedegree.ca/2005/09/09/the-million-dollar-home-page)_ but soon realized that it had already spawned literally hundreds of copycats. During an MSN conversation, Brian came up with the concept for AdFights.com – allow advertisers to compete for ad space in a concentrated arena of advertising, while mocking the ones not willing to pony up the money for premier placement.
*One Degree: The site has a real attitude. How has calling some of your advertisers “cheap bastards” gone over?*