Archive for October, 2010

This was the question that Becca Caddy posted to me for an article she was writing for Reputation Online. Becca was prompted to write the article by a piece by an op ed by Dan Greenberg over at Mashable. Dan laid out what three factors he felt were key to ensuring a video went viral:

• Psychological Share Motivation (an emotion that resonates with the audience, self-expression or useful content)
• Easy shareability
• Data-driven strategy (planning, thinking about where the audience would see it)

Becca got responses from Matt Morrison, Wadds and myself, you can read her article here. Here is my response to her initial inquiry below (complete with typos and bad punctuation):

When I hear the word ‘viral’ I think of Nic Roope’s (of Poke London fame) tongue in cheek intro of Lean Green Fighting Machine at a Webby evening event a few years ago when he defined viral as something that was ‘a little bit shit’. It’s a much maligned concept. Marketers think that its ‘free advertising’, they think its cheap, that its easy and YouTube is full of ‘viral videos’ that would put you off watching video online for life (just go and have a look at Leicester County Council’s YouTube channel – or most local government videos for that matter).

I’d argue that Dan Greenberg’s points are actually equally valid for all social objects not just virality with video. The data strategy also needs to understand user contexts | intent – you could do a great viral campaign for hemorrhoid cream but I may not want to share it.

Shareability also needs to think about transmedia, not just online.

You also need to have a great idea – which is hard and even harder to keep untainted because everyone in marketing thinks that they are a creative and everyone in legal thinks that they are the god of everything. The idea may not be expensive, but having a budget helps. The idea is also hugely important for keeping the conversation going after the viral hype has died.

Finally all of this needs to come from an essential brand truth: Halo is a mighty saga – a silicon version of Beowulf, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk – is a comfort food, it makes people who eat it feel better… until the guilt kicks in about the calories, drug dealers are awful people who sell a crap product in the case of Pablo the Drug Mule Dog for the Home Office

This is cross-posted from my personal blog.

One of the key criteria that you should have when joining an agency is looking around at your potential colleagues and working out whether you can learn from them and grow as a PR professional.

At Ruder Finn, I work with a number of people across our offices who are pretty smart across a number of different issues from transmedia campaigns to global health campaigns. Some of this knowledge is captures in an annual publication called Move. You can find an online archive of previous issues here.

I have the latest copy in a large coffee table print format and have a number of copies that I can give away, if you would like a copy drop me a line with your full contact details.

I managed to attend Econsultancy’s first Jump conference which put 1,600 agency and in-house marketers in Old Billingsgate for a day of presentations and open forum discussions on marketing from a holistic point of view rather than the usual silo-ed approach of digital, PR, TV advertising etc.

The high density of iPhone-holding executives seemed to have crushed O2’s network like an empty can. But the electronic peace allowed me to focus more on the content and my trusty Moleskine notepad.

Below are the notes I made from the six sessions that I attended:

Belinda Beeftink of the IPA on their TouchPoint research

David Nugent, managing director Cider of Sweden Limited and Simon Labbett, creative partner Saint@RKCR/Y&R

Heineken

Phil Rumbol, former marketing director Cadbury PLC

Chris Journeay, Omniture product marketing manager EMEA Adobe Systems
Social media panel discussion with representatives from SapientNitro, innocent drinks, Virgin Atlantic Airways and Nokia.

This is cross-posted from my personal blog.

On Friday morning I attended Echo Research’s Fit for the future event. I have scanned in my notes from some of the talks and shared them below:

Miguel Pestana, Vice President Global External Affairs, Unilever PLC

Basil Towers, Founding Partner, Heselden

Maril Gagen MacDonald , Chief Executive Officer, Gagen MacDonald

This was cross-posted from my personal blog.

I was inspired to write this post whilst traveling into the office on the tube. If you haven’t been to London the Central Line at rush hour is pretty similar to this experience in Tokyo...

I usually treat my iPhone as a messaging device and turn off the vibration function, so that I don’t become a slave to my email. The vibration has a similar reaction to me that a baby crying has to a mother, an almost instinctive reaction to check on it.

I use a Mophie battery pack to give me a decent amount of usable phone life untethered from a charging cable. So I got on to the train and suddenly my phone started to vibrate in the pocket of my soft-shell.

I eventually managed to squeeze my arm in there, pull the phone out and get into the home screen where it told me it was running under its own power and that the Mophie battery pack was no longer charging it.

I acknowledged the message, put it back in my pocket where it then kept on vibrating every two minutes to let me know exactly the same thing. I have virtually 100 per cent charge on the device so the alert so there obviously wasn’t any urgency for the message. More people got on the train and this became as annoying as having an itch that you can’t scratch.

20 minutes went by and I was thoroughly pissed, as Apple’s UI had annoyed me and reminded me how crappy the battery life is on an iPhone 3GS. Now Apple isn’t the greatest sinner on this and it isn’t a new phenomena, I know people over two decades ago who used to be enraged by the Sad Mac symbol (shown when something has gone horribly wrong with the computer on start-up for Macs prior to OSX) which they thought was making fun of their situation.

But it just goes to show how user interactions should be thought about in such a way as to not exasperate or initiate customer frustrations. This is cross-posted from my personal blog.