Influx

A post appeared on Techcrunch recently the created something of a frenzy around the ethics of viral videos and their marketing.

For any of you who believe ethics are involved, forget it. It appears people are doing whatever they can to game the system to their advantage, employing tactics that would have client and agency lawyers ready to jump from the 20th floor.

Here’s are some of the highlights from the post.

The Film

1. Make it short: 15-30 seconds

2. Design for remixing: create a video that is simple enough to be remixed over and over again by others.

3. 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

4. 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?!

5. Appeal to sex: if all else fails, hire the most attractive women available to be in the video.

Seeding

1. Blogs: We reach out to individuals who run relevant blogs and actually pay them to post our embedded videos. Sounds a little bit like cheating/PayPerPost, but it’s effective and it’s not against any rules.

2. Forums: We start new threads and embed our videos. Sometimes, this means kickstarting the conversations by setting up multiple accounts on each forum and posting back and forth between a few different users. Yes, it’s tedious and time-consuming, but if we get enough people working on it, it can have a tremendous effect.

For all I know, agencies might be doing this, but if they aren’t, someone else will be. The world has gotten tougher, alot tougher. Not only is this challenging on moral grounds, if you are prepared to put that aside, there’s an incredible amount of  work needed to make viral success happen.

Thanks to Podcasting News.

Posted by Ed Cotton