By Ian, on November 25th, 2007 The secret strategies of viral marketers seems to have caused considerable upset among the Techcrunch faithful, registering 444 comments to date. Clearly author Dan Ackerman Greenberg hit something of a nerve with the 2.0 faithful. Many readers, including head honcho Michael Arrington, seem to be very naive about what marketers are going to do with sites that allow individuals to vote up stories, videos and sites. Arrington says, “frankly I’m disgusted by this”: quite an odd stance from the site’s editor – why did he publish the piece, then? Personally, I thought the article offered some really useful information for anyone submitting a video to get it noticed among the other 19,999 videos submitted to YouTube on any given day. The initial tips for creating videos that appeal should be written on the bedroom walls of some of the aspiring ‘film-makers’ that appear on the site: - Make it short: 15–30 seconds is ideal; break down long stories into bite-sized clips
- Design for remixing: create a video that is simple enough to be remixed over and over again by others. Ex: “Dramatic Hamster”
 - Don’t make an outright ad: if a video feels like an ad, viewers won’t share it unless it’s really amazing. Ex: Sony Bravia
- Make it shocking: give a viewer no choice but to investigate further. Ex: “UFO Haiti”
- Use fake headlines: make the viewer say, “Holy shit, did that actually happen?!” Ex: “Stolen Nascar”
- Appeal to sex: if all else fails, hire the most attractive women available to be in the video. Ex: “Yoga 4 Dudes”
Anyway, those who were shocked might want to Google ‘viral marketing agency‘ or ‘buzz marketing‘ and peruse some of the 1,980,000 results. What was it that you thought these people did? By Ian, on November 22nd, 2007 It took a lot to say that, but I’m a big man and I do this for a living, and I have to agree: I know I keep going on about this… but I have no time to read feeds or blog anymore. Work has en[c]roached too far. Tonight I sat down to catch up on 3,000 unread feeds and realised the feeds aren’t going to make blog. I just need to start doing it again and godamnwell make time for it all. Godamnit again… I’m to turn my Twitter notifications on again as well and get social good and proper. HONEY… I’M HOME!
I’m also going to find a prettier template for this site. I’m a lush, not a monk — I ought to find something that suits.. By Ian, on November 15th, 2007 Just struck me, in a not–entirely–artificial way, that if you are interested in PR and the Web, as per the last post, then you ought to come to the event we’ve organised at NMK on Tuesday next week (20/11/07), ‘Clients in the Wild’. There are about ten tickets left at this point, I understand. Click the link back there ( <— ) to find how to register. Anyway, it’s about when companies embrace all this nakedness and transparency and conversations idea. If they do, where does the PR company’s role lie? What’s the logical outcome of this ‘cluetrain’ railroad? It’s aimed at PRs, mainly, but everyone is welcome to come, as always. I’ve heard some fascinating answers to that question, ranging from ‘get them to shut up quick’ to ‘embrace and dance’. If PR is reputation management, then are these power-ups, loose cannons, guardian angels, friendly fire or bulls in a china shop? Can you think of better metaphors than me? Have your Say! Are you personally affected by this issue ? Then e-mail us. Or if you’re not affected, can you imagine what it would be like if you were ? Or if you were affected by it but don’t want to talk about it can you imagine what it would be like not being affected by it ? Why not email us ? You may not know anything about the issue, but i bet you reckon something. So why not tell us what you reckon. Let us enjoy the full majesty of your uninformed ad hoc reckoning, by going to bbc.co.uk…clicking on “what i reckon” and beating on the keyboard with your fists and your head”.
(Thank you, Jem Stone) If you’re in London and can come along, it would be great to meet with you, share a few beers and talk about this stuff. With less beating. By Ian, on November 15th, 2007 OK. I’ve been product-pitched by PR companies as a (sort-of) journalist many times. I have been pitched as a blogger a few times. This week’s malarkey is a new thing entirely. A teaser/blogger-outreach campaign. On Monday I received a plain brown envelope. It contained a blacked out memo, but the remaining words revealed something about a military operation. Ooooh! There was a little brown envelope, too. What’s inside?? Oooh a mobile phone SIM card! Plug it into my phone immediately, of course! Oh Nothing. No top secret texts.. no nothing. No credit on the pay-as-you-go SIM either. Meanwhile, my clever assistant was all over the memo and thought enough to google the word ‘nanosuit’, one of the few remaining legible words on the memo. There’s a new game coming out today called Crysis that involves the protagonist wearing a nanosuit. It has to be them behind this, since any other mention of ‘nanosuit’ on the web is about science and that. Next day. I’m thinking they might send me a phone to put that SIM card into! Woo hoo! Errr.. no. I get an email (once it came out of the spam bin) from a ‘top-secret’ website saying they need help with an audio file. There’s a link to a deliberately unfinished site, so you go straight into the file browser. Lots of areas are inaccessible, what with this being top-secret. I poke about a bit, as you do. Eventually, I find an mp3 file — aha — that must be it! I download it. My computer plays that format in iTunes. It’s called ‘Crysis — final — approved’ in the title bar. It contains some audio of combat footage and some guy talking about being behind enemy lines (or something). I am not at all sure how I am supposed to help them with this. Run it through some audio filters, perhaps? Very top secret, then. And I am supposed to write about the launch of your game because…? It’s not about anything that this blog is supposed to be about. I know I make exceptions sometimes, but come on? P.S. Yes, I have written about it anyway and, yes, free stuff is always welcome so long as I am allowed to be sarcastic about it. Drew reckons it’s “Very cool and slick”, so maybe I’m just a grumpy bastard. By Ian, on November 10th, 2007 Radio 4’s Analysis programme from Thursday covered the Facebook phenomenon: With Friends Like These: Why are people happy to disclose huge amounts of personal information online? Ben Hammersley asks whether our notion of privacy has changed.
The ‘listen again’ broadcast of Ben Hammersley’s programme is available here. (NB: the link might not work for long). By Ian, on November 9th, 2007 | About this BlogSocial tools, devices and web evolution are creating epochal change in media, society and business. The plan is to hide under the floorboards till it’s all over document some of the interesting parts of that change. More….
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