Viral Marketing

November 30, 2006 | Blogging, Viral Marketing

This evening, I will be the guest on Wayne Hurlbert’s Blog Business Success Radio show. We’ll be talking about viral marketing, and I thought I’d share a few thoughts here on the Roadmap as well.

First, tonight on the program, I plan to mention a couple posts  I read this week that  hit some important points: 

• Mike Manuel took a valiant stab at defining all the word-of-mouth marketing terms flying around these days - viral, grassroots, evangelist, buzz etc. etc.
• Nellie Lide has some great viral marketing tips, and she reinforces a point made here often: you can’t make something go viral. All you can do is create something that has the potential. It is the community that decides whether it will embrace it. .

Second, video as viral. Well, yes and no. While it is entirely true that good videos often go viral, just because you do a video does NOT mean that you’ve created a viral marketing campaign. First, your message has to be compelling and it helps if your video is good quality . And for it to be viral marketing, versus simply sharing, you have to have a business objective. 

What makes something viral and marketing? It spreads, and spreads FAST. That’s the viral part. It drives people to do something, buy something, watch something, believe something. That’s the marketing part.

So, Mentos and Coke fountains. Viral yes. Viral marketing, no. Weird Al’s White and Nerdy. Definitely viral marketing.

Finally, regular readers of this blog know that I think we find some of our best examples of effective viral and grassroots marketing in the the science fiction "segment"  — TV and movies in particular, but also comics and novels. Everything from web-only and web-delivered content released in advance of a film or season premiere (examples the R. Tam Sessions for Serenity and this year’s Battlestar Galactica webisodes) to how carefully the producers "leak out" spoiler information to build buzz for an episode (check out this spoiler, a YouTube clip for tomorrow’s Battlestar episode Unfinished Business)  to the pre-screenings done for fans of Firefly and influential bloggers prior to the release of the movie Serenity. Not to mention the numerous fan gatherings and conventions attended by legions of loyal fans, still coming years and years after a show has been canceled. Star Trek, anyone? Even before there was a Next Generation or any movies, people flocked to conventions. In costume. 

Why does it work so well in this genre and we don’t see a similar effect in others, like romantic comedy or mystery?

Science fiction and fantasy typically create a new or changed world and usually have long story arcs, often told across multiple movies or novels (sometimes both) regardless of whether they are deliberately connected in an explicit series. Think about the novels of Isaac Asimov. He had a few explicit series in his oeuvre, most notably Foundation, but in the end, almost all his tales became interconnected. 

To understand the world, to get the story, the fan must be willing to make a certain commitment. Commitment leads to loyalty, and the loyalty of many leads to a community. And once you have community, you have the potential for effective viral and grassroots marketing. Fans to unite in grassroots efforts to prevent their show from being canceled. Fertile ground for the virus to spread.

Oh yeah, and many of us sci fi/fantasy fans are pretty geeky, so we have all this electronic gear and gadgets which helps us spread the word faster.

So in the interest of doing my part to build buzz for Battlestar Galactica (you were right Mary, it is just about the best show on television), I’ll end this post on a bit of a tangent by naming the characters I’d like to toss out the airlock and my speculation (NOT SPOILER) about who will be revealed next as a Cylon. If you’re not a fan, this won’t make sense. Perhaps it is time to start watching.

Out the airlock: Dee followed by Cally. The characters, mind you, not the actresses, who are terrific.

The next Cylon: Anders. Gotta be him, or Dee. The show’s producers just love to torment Starbuck and Apollo, and what better way to do it.

So say we all.

Or at least me.

Tags: viral marketing, science fiction, Battlestar Galactica, Blog Business Success Radio

Blog Business Radio

November 29, 2006 | Blogging, Newsletter, Viral Marketing

Things have been a bit hectic lately, hence the radio silence, but I did want to let everyone know that I’ll be the guest on Wayne Hurlbert’s BlogTalk radio show, Blog Business Radio, tomorrow, Thursday November 30th at 8pm. Wayne and I will be talking about viral marketing.

Tags: viral marketing, Blog Business Radio

Happy Birthday to Me!

November 21, 2006 | Blogging

November is the anniversary of both the Marketing Roadmaps blog and my marketing consulting business, GetGood Strategic Marketing. I started them both in November 2004, with a pretty basic Web site, done by yours truly, and a fairly plain vanilla TypePad blog.

It has been a hell of a fun ride building this business and meeting so many wonderful folks through the blog. But it was time to fix our online image.

So for our second birthday, we’ve got a new Web site and a new blog design. Many thanks to Karen Rani of Troll Baby Graphics for the designs, Emily Carlin of Swank Web Style for the site development and my husband David Herrington of Active Oak for the technical support.

Kat Herding

November 17, 2006 | Blogging

A new blog burst on the blogosphere this week, and I am still laughing.

Kat Herding.

This is what a satirical character blog should be, and we should not be surprised that the "site contributors" are Chris Locke and Jeneane Sessum, who get the absurd like no one else online.

Why do I like Kat, and I haven’t always liked similar character blogs? Because apart from being funny and poking holes in Web 2.0 hype (something I will ALWAYS be for), it is honest. We don’t have to look hard to know who is behind this effort.

Since RageBoy is probably the first* known character blogger, who can do it better?

*Disclaimer: I have done no empirical research on whether RageBoy actually was the first character blogger, it is just a guess on my part, so please do not send me comments that he wasn’t. I actually don’t care one way or the other. I still think he’s funny.

NOTE: June 3, 2007 — Comments and Trackbacks closed on this post due to comment spam.

Tags: Kat Herding, Chris Locke, RageBoy, Jeneane Sessum, Web 2.0, character blog

A little more on the election

November 13, 2006 | Mathom Room, Politics/Policy

Watch this citizen-generated election advertisement.

Explains last week’s election results better than anything I’ve seen or heard to-date.

Seen on Elisa Camahort’s blog

Tags: politics, 06 election

Blogs and SEC Disclosure

Blogging, PR

Interesting developments recently on the public company material disclosure front.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz has been pretty vocal that he believes blogs and Web sites are better than "anachronistic" vehicles like press releases and conference calls to broadly disseminate material information.  He recently wrote a letter to SEC Chair Christopher Cox asking for clarification of Regulation FD (Fair Disclosure), the rule that requires disclosure methods to be "reasonably designed to provide broad, non-exclusionary distribution of the information to the public."

Cox’s  reply, posted in a comment to another post on Schwartz’s blog a little over a week ago, indicates that the SEC is open to the idea:

"The Commission encourages the use of websites as a source of information to the market and investors, and we welcome your offer to further discuss with us your views in this area. Assuming that the Commission were to embrace your suggestion that the "widespread dissemination" requirement of Regulation FD can be satisfied through web disclosure, among the questions that would need to be addressed is whether there exist effective means to guarantee that a corporation uses its website in ways that assure broad non-exclusionary access, and the extent to which a determination that particular methods are effective in that regard depends on the particular facts." (emphasis mine)

In other words, does the site have a broad reach? Is it open to all? And most importantly, is it GENERALLY true, not just specifically true in certain instances.

This last is the key one, in my opinion. Sure, Sun’s site and Jonathan’s blog are widely read, and would likely qualify under the FD Regulation. But in order for web disclosure to become a rule, it would have to be generally and broadly true for all public companies, not just some. That’s the much harder test.

So, don’t cancel your PR Newswire or BusinessWire accounts just yet, folks. I suspect we are going to need the old, beleagured press release for a bit longer.

Thanks to John Cass and Robert French. Also, more details in this AP article.

********

Today’s trivia:

• Schwartz is a fellow alum of Wesleyan University.

• Today is the 2d birthday (anniversary) of this blog.

Tags: Regulation FD, Jonathan Schwartz, SEC, public relations, PR, material disclosures

Lead management webinar

November 10, 2006 | Business Management, Integrated Sales & Marketing

I’ve just finished pulling together a webinar for my client GuideMark called "Five Tips for Improving Sales."

Full disclosure: this IS a lead generation vehicle for my client, who sells CRM systems, however, a large chunk of the presentation is based on my lead management philosophy and rating model. My posts here on these topics have received a number of comments, both public and private, so given the apparent interest, I figured I’d let you all know about it.

Here’s the pitch:

One of the most important things you can do to improve your sales is to close the gap between your sales and marketing teams. One salesperson or fifty, one marketer or a whole team, they often have diverging views of the task at hand. This gets in the way of growing your business and increasing your profits. This webinar will help you get these two critical teams working together toward the same goals. Topics include lead management and a brief demo of GuideMark’s SalesDRIVE CRM.

The content is about 2/3 lead management, 1/3 CRM.  I go through a lead rating model step by step, so if you’re interested in how this works, you might want to listen. Bonus if you are also interested in getting a CRM system

Dates and times: Wednesday November 29th at 10am, Monday December 4th at 10am and Wednesday December 6th at 2pm

Tags: CRM, lead management, sales lead management, lead tracking, sales, marketing

Mood: Optimistic

November 8, 2006 | Mathom Room

While I make no secret of my personal political leanings, I also don’t write about them that often. This is a marketing & communications blog, not a personal political pulpit.

But today, I just gotta say: YAY!!

As of 7 pm this evening, the NY Times election results show a gain of 5 seats in the Senate for the Democrats (including affiliated folks like Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman), with one contest (Virginia) still undecided. Last I looked, that race was led by the Democrat, but there’s bound to be an official recount. Either way, next year, the Senate is either split 50/50 or the Dems have a 1-seat majority.

And the news is even better in the House and nationwide governor’s races. If you are a Democrat that is

House: solid Democratic majority, with Nancy Pelosi likely to be Speaker.

Governors: Six states, including Massachusetts, my state, switched from a GOP to a Democratic governor. 28 states to be led by Dems, 22 by GOP (a complete flip from the previous numbers).

And the day ended with Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation.

It is going to be a different world come January, and it’s about time.

Tomorrow back to our regularly scheduled marketing topics.

The Ethics Lesson from the Wal-Mart/Edelman flog fiasco

November 2, 2006 | Blogging, Ethics, PR

You know, we all learned pretty much everything we need to know to avoid a similar ethical foul up by the time we reached first grade.

It’s simple.

Tell the truth.

And here’s the truth. The failure in the Wal-Mart Edelman fiasco wasn’t simply a lack of understanding of how blogs and social media worked. That may have been part of it, but it wasn’t the root problem.

It was an ethical failure, full stop.

Here’s the lesson, and let’s be crystal clear. It is not okay to cloak your interests or advocate without honesty. Sure, people do it all the time. We call them liars. It doesn’t matter whether it is explicit or by omission. It is still a lie.

And here’s the other part of today’s lesson: this mess does not mean that companies shouldn’t blog, or sponsor blogs, or reach out to bloggers. The Wal-Gate mess was a lapse of ethics, not an indictment of social media.  Social media can be excellent vehicles for reaching out to and talking with customers, but we have to do it honestly. Your customer knows you have an agenda. EVERYONE has an agenda of some sort. Be honest about your goals, disclose your interests, tell the truth,

It may not set you free, but when you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember what you told the last person.

Words to live by.

——

Bye the bye, the latest word from Edelman on this – 

He recently gave an interview to IT World (Japan). When asked what happened, he says: "We were insufficiently transparent about the identity of one of the two bloggers who went on that RV tour. And in a certain way, it’s not a failure of new media; it was a failure in all media. Which is to say, if they were talking to you in your IDG mainstream media hat, you would want to know the name of the spokesperson and what his background was and what his credentials were and we failed that basic test." He goes on to once again accept full responsibility as the boss and reiterate what they intend to do to prevent future occurences. I wish them luck.  Thanks to Shel Holtz for the link.

UPDATE 11/3/06: Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) puts Edelman membership under 90-day review. See also WOMMA’s 20 Ethics Questions and discussion draft of guidelines for contacting bloggers.

Tags: Wal-Mart, Edelman, social media, ethics, fake blog, fake blogs, PR, public relations