Doing a Viral Campaign Right Ain't Cheap, or Easy

I must have read and heard a hundred times that viral marketing is an inexpensive way to get a message across. Nice idea. But it's not true.

The field of viral video contests and emails is crowded with a few terrific campaigns and a huge number of lame ones. I don't want to pick on Bazooka, but the The Bazooka Joe Video Contest is a great idea whose execution is one-dimensional. Try, for example, to find a link from the site to the video entries. You can't. There isn't one. And, despite the website, blog, and, I think, a TV commercial, the contest apparently is not reaching its potential audience.

For example, I was on a cross-town bus yesterday and three teenage boys were goofing around, singing the extremely catchy hip hop Bazooka Bubble Gum song and annoying old people by dancing in the aisles. They were cracking eachother (and me) up. I asked them if they'd entered the Bazooka Joe Video Contest and they hadn't heard of it. I told them about it and they said they'd check it out. These kids were the ideal audience for Bazooka, yet they had no clue the contest was happening.They said none of their friends did either.

Here's the bottom line: mounting a viral campaign requires not only social media, which provides remarkable new tools, but also integration with offline marketing, from street teams and guerilla marketing, to billboards, TV, radio, and print.

New media marketing is simply not a substitute for all others. It's a tool: one of the best ever created. But doing it right ain't cheap, or easy.

Look at the intensely clever marketing for Stormhoek Wine, which began by sending the wine to bloggers for their review, and now involves 100 Geek Dinners - offline - where people can get together to try the wine, and point of purchase, and clever labeling using the brilliant Hugh Macleod's edgy cartoons, you still see the combination of online and offline, traditional and new. Because that's where the real skill comes in -- using all available tools in new and exciting combinations.

BL,

Great post, I agree that viral marketing is neither as cheap, nor as straightforward as it appears. We did some detailed research on viral marketing that I thought you would be interested in: http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/kintz/archive/2006/09/17/1612.html

Eric

BLO: I tend to agree with you my man. A savvy cross mix of media is one of the killer apps that can be used for Viral Marketing activity.

But there is a secret:

I agree that lame viral campaigns abound - most folks in the business just don't seem to get it.

BUT 'Lonely Girl' on YouTube has received a massive cover without much of a 'paid for' cross-media platform connection. I don't think they spent much on PR at all. That was all free. The secret lies within that success: It was a fake of course - setting up the fake cost a few dollars. But relatively speaking it cost virtually nothing.

I know about this. I have created a viral campaign that generated over a million hits in less than a month. I also sold over 300,000 copies of my book too. (That was not a fake!) I did partly use other media as you describe, but the big viral effect originated from my forum; People passed my story around the internet and arrived at the forum in increasing numbers to see what all the noise was about.

So while I agree that it 'aint necessarily easy', if you are educated about how it all works, then I believe that the sky is the limit.

Rich article thanks BLO.

Jonathan Gunson

BL,
Very astute analysis. It is sometimes easy for people who spend much time working on internet marketing to forget that there are multiple channels available for getting the word out.

And that integrating online and off line methods into a cohesive whole will always be more effective then just using one channel.

I agree, it's just not true - good viral campaigns can be more costly then traditional media production if done right. Virals must still reach target audience, achieve specific goals and that takes experience, research, creativity, production and execution which is not cheap... "buyer beware" of anyone who pitches you cheap. Cheap is a dirty word!

I tell clients you save on the media buy. Which can be hundreds of thousands of dollars. But encourage them to spend 25% what they would on a standard media buy and put it towards offline marketing, street events or publicity.

To any of my agency friends reading this who don’t have clients with budgets under one million, yeah I know, you’re not the norm!

The Bazooka Campaign dosn't look cheap, are you privy to the details of the campaign or just using it as a springboard?

Also, I was confused. I found a pages of videos on MySpacem, YouTube, and the Bazooka blog itself that have been posted for months?

I also did a little digging and found that they have reached out to schools and incorporated the making of the video as part of it’s street outreach program.

The fact that the kids were singing the brands name in the isles of the bus (lol, where do you live? I thought that only happened on MTV and here in New York City) I thought that would be considered a success?

What do you think the goal was fro this campaign?

I am commenting with wet hair, as I was in the shower humming that Bazooka song, I realized then I had to post this.

Keep up the good work, a fan of your blog. Hope your eye gets better.

Hi
This is all very interesting from the filmmaker's point of view. These contests can be great ways to reach new talent. Check out our viral: "Orchestra" for windblows.us. And please vote for us while you are at it!

I saw your post about the Bazooka Joe video contest, so I used Second Life to make a machinima film. I posted it on Youtube and