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Examining viral marketing disasters

For online marketers, getting a promotion to go viral is one of the greatest obtainable achievements. A viral campaign can turn on hundreds of thousands of people to your product, service or site at virtually no expense.

However, as was discussed earlier, not all viral marketing campaigns go well. Some end in disaster and actually end up doing damage to the people behind them.

But the pitfalls of viral marketing are many. No two campaigns have the same dangers. Here are three viral marketing campaigns that ended in disaster. Hopefully others can learn from these examples.

Starbucks gets too popular

In the summer of 2006, Starbucks sought to promote its line of iced coffee beverages with a coupon that let customers receive a free iced coffee. It send out the e-mail offer to a small number of its employees in the southeast United States. But the coupon, which had no restrictions on its use, unexpectedly went viral.

The coupon was distributed millions of times over via email and was posted on many popular sites on the web. Pretty soon, stores all over the world were receiving the coupon and that, in turn, prompted Starbucks to end the promotion.

When announcing the end of the offer, Starbucks said that the offer “has been redistributed beyond the original intent and modified beyond Starbucks’ control.”

What can be learned

Essentially, the mistake Starbucks made was assuming they ever had control over the promotions.

The Internet is, fundamentally, a copy machine. Never assume anything you put on it will be limited in the number of times it is copied or where it is distributed. Starbucks could have avoided much of the headaches that came with this promotion by putting reasonable restrictions on the coupon.

Sony gets burned for fake blogging

In the run up to Christmas, 2006, Sony wanted to promote its struggling Playstation Portable (PSP). Seeking help in obtaining viral marketing traction, the company hired specialists Zipatoni to produce a viral campaign for them.

The result of their efforts was a blog entitled alliwantforxmasisapsp.com which detailed the plight of an imaginary teen trying to convince his parents to buy him a PSP for Christmas. The campaign also featured a rap video (left) featured a rap video as well as, allegedly, fake comments on other sites.

However, the scheme was discovered when a blogger observed that the domain registration for the blog was in Zipatoni’s name. Bloggers quickly understood that the site was a fake and began to blast Sony for their tactics.

Eventually, Sony pulled the site down but not before a great deal of damage had been done to both the company and the brand. To this day, the fake blog remains a source of parody and scorn.

What can be learned

Good advertising, viral or otherwise, never relies upon trickery or deception. Sony’s mistake was thinking it could trick the Internet into believing the fake blog was genuine even though the language seemed forced and artificial.

Though some viral marketing campaigns, such as LonelyGirl15, have managed to fool viewers for a period of time, they are almost always found out in the end.

Mike gravel rocks

In the buildup to the recent US Presidential election primaries, Mike Gravel was a bottom-tier candidate who managed to build a small but loyal following built upon his liberal views and reputation as an outsider.

However, his online popularity came almost to a halt on 27 May, 2008. Gravel’s campaign posted a video entitled Rock that featured the candidate staring into the camera for over one minute, then walking back, throwing a rock into the nearby lake and then walking away.

The advertisement contained no words and only a mention of the campaign’s website.

Gravel later offered an explanation for the video saying it was not a political ad but a metaphor for the creators of the video that had to be “read into”.

However, the video quickly became the subject of countless spoofs and led, at least in part, to the rapid decline of Gravel’s web popularity.

What can be learned

Keep messages simple. As with all advertising, the easier the message is to understand, the more likely it will go viral in a positive way. While it is debatable whether Gravel or his campaign are at fault for the videos, the mistake was that the message was far too complex to be understood easily. Most people simply did not understand the videos.

A simple, powerful message is the first component of any good advertising campaign, viral or traditional.

Conclusions

The bottom line for anyone wading into the world of viral marketing is this: Follow the same rules and guidelines you would for traditional advertising. Have a good message, be honest and be prepared for your own success.

It is not possible to predict how a viral campaign will go, but they can foresee many of the worst pitfalls. Avoiding many of the obvious traps can not only help turn a viral campaign into a success, but can prevent failures from becoming embarrassments.

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