Monthly Archive for December, 2007

The Buzz Linchpin

Published
by
Matt
on Dec 6, 2007
in New Marketing and Viral Marketing
. 0 Comments

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The new buzz marketing campaign for The Dark Knight is either ridiculous, awesome, or ridiculously awesome. As intense/elaborate as the plan gets, it’s still contingent on one key thing: People’s willingness to tell other people.

In case you didn’t read the article above, here’s the scoop: An online game was released and the winners were eventually given the address of a real life deli where they were told to give the name “Robin Banks”. The first person to give that name at the deli was handed a cake. Inside the cake was a box with a cell phone, charger and number to call. When the person called, they were told to keep the phone on and charged at all times, and that a call would be coming soon…

Now I think this is great. This is marketing to the 10th power. It breaks so many rules because it allows people to go above and beyond, and it really sucks them in. Of course it’s prohibitively expensive to do this on a broad scale, but thats the beauty of buzz, you don’t have to.

But as cool as this is, it would have fallen flat if the person who got the cake hadn’t told their story to the world. This whole venture could have backfired if the person who got the cake, and never plugged the cell phone in. It could even have backfired if they followed all the steps, but didn’t tell anyone besides people they know.

Thats the buzz marketing linchpin.

You have to create something cool/noteworthy enough that people want to talk about it. Something that fosters conversation, discussion, and speculation.

Buzz/Viral marketing isn’t a science, but there are some things that you can do in order to increase your odds. The thing is, all of that doesn’t mean anything if no one wants to talk about it.

The New Marketing Chaos Theory

Published
by
Matt
on Dec 4, 2007
in New Marketing
. 2 Comments

If you haven’t heard of Chaos Theory or The Butterfly Effect, (in ultra-simplified terms) they go something like this: Chaos Theory basically describes a system that is highly sensitive to it’s initial conditions. A system in which the outcome looks like it’s random, even though the systems’ dynamics are already fully determined. The Butterfly Effect, which comes from the phrase, “If a butterfly flaps it’s wings in Shanghai, you get rain in New York instead of sun.” describes that degree of sensitivity.

New Marketing is a what you would call “a chaotic system”.

Take this ridiculous story of GameSpot firing a longstanding employee for giving a game, one that had bought a large amount of advertising, a bad review.

Did they really think that this wouldn’t get out? That it wouldn’t spread around the internet like wildfire, incensing the devoted, tight-knit group of gamers who visit these sites all the time?

Obviously not.

One small (or big, depending on perspective) decision dramatically influenced the life of GameSpot, with many users canceling their subscriptions or boycotting the site all together. All this bad publicity, this “storm”, if you will, came out of the butterfly-wing decision to act.

The other major tenet of the Chaos Theory states that while the results appear random, they aren’t entirely.

Just like chaos, New Marketing is not completely random either. What person familiar with new media/marketing wouldn’t have predicted the backlash against GameSpot or Facebook Beacon? How can you dispute that giving your biggest fans the means to spread the word is a good thing? Who doesn’t agree that in order to be successful in social media, a company has to give up total control of the message?

These guidelines are the “dynamics” that make New Marketing work. Guidelines, not specific tactics (A2S over X%, heavy banner rotation during the holidays, etc.) are what’s important.

And while following these guidelines will give you a general idea of where you’re heading, remember, New Marketing is a little bit order, and a little bit chaos.

Let’s see where it takes us.