Web Ink Now

World Wide Rave! vs. Unscrupulous and Illegal Viral Marketing Techniques

World Wide Rave: People talking about you and your company and your products.

World Wide Rave: When a community is eager to link to your stuff on the Web.

World Wide Rave: Tons of people visit your Web site and check out your blog and watch your YouTube videos because they want to (and without being coerced).

World Wide Rave: The online buzz that drives people to you, generating interest in your products and services.

For decades, the only way to spread ideas was to buy expensive advertising or beg the media to write (or broadcast) about our products and services. But now we have a tremendous opportunity to create a World Wide Rave, generate stuff on the Web that people want to consume and that they are eager to share with their friends, family, and colleagues. A World Wide Rave sells an idea or a product by virtue of its educational or entertainment value.

But David (you might say) it sounds like a World Wide Rave is the same thing as "Viral Marketing"? No.

What is viral marketing?

Many of you have read my recent ebook The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free (published January 2008). Thanks to people sharing it on their blogs and a version that appeared on ChangeThis, the ebook has been downloaded over 125,000 times in three months. Thank you.

Since I wrote and published the ebook, more than one hundred of you have sent examples of viral marketing initiatives to me. I will include the best in a new hardcover book to be published by Wiley in early 2009 called World Wide Rave: Creating triggers that get millions of people to spread your ideas and share your stories.

Unfortunately, in the past few months I've come to realize that viral marketing has a significant dark side - quite a bit more extensive than I had been aware of…

Unscrupulous Marketing Techniques

Many viral marketing examples that people send me are nothing more than traditional advertising techniques that rely on interruption, bait-and-switch gimmicks, inane games, and frivolous contests. It's the old rules of marketing transferred to the Web. These are not examples of a World Wide Rave. Instead, this is trickery and coercion in an attempt to sell products. Frankly, this stuff gives all of viral marketing a bad name.

I've also noticed that a cadre of viral marketing "experts" happily take large amounts of money from naive and unsuspecting companies to create viral marketing "campaigns". Typically, advertising agency-developed viral campaigns involve buying access in the same old ways, such as purchasing an email list to spam people or launching a microsite with a pricey print or TV ad.

Worse, some dodgy agencies set up fake viral campaigns where people who are employed or in some way compensated by the agency create videos or blog posts purported to be from a customer.

Misleading viral marketing techniques have become so widespread that the European Union enacted Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations to protect the public from the most deceitful activities. The Regulations become UK law on May 26, 2008 and The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), the industry body and professional institute for leading advertising, media and marketing communications agencies in the UK, is helping its members come to grips with what this means.

"If advertisers and their agencies ignore the ethics of responsible advertising, the damage to the advertising and marketing industry generally will be considerable, undermining all commercial messages, their effectiveness and the self regulatory systems," says Marina Palomba, IPA Legal Director.

According to The IPA one particular clause in the Regulations will make the following activities a criminal offence:
- Seeding positive messages about a brand in a blog without making it clear that the message has been created by, or on behalf of, the brand.
- Using "buzz marketing" specialists to communicate with potential consumers in social situations without disclosing that they are acting as brand ambassadors.
- Seeding viral ads on the internet in a manner that implies you are a simple member of the public.

Because th term "viral marketing" has taken on dirty and sleazy connotations by many organizations causing marketers and executives to become increasingly skeptical, I've started using the phrase "World Wide Rave" instead. I want to draw a clear distinction between the amazing ways that millions of people spread ideas and share stories online and the bogus crap that people are resorting to.

A World Wide Rave is valuable content that spreads because people want to share. Not because of some silly contest or dishonest activity.

A World Wide Rave—having others tell and spread your story for you—is one of the most exciting and powerful ways to reach your audiences. Anyone with thoughtful ideas to share—and clever ways to create interest in them—can become famous and find success on the Web.

Parents against reprehensible metal music

I was just on Technorati and saw a banner ad that caught my. They almost never do. I probably click on one banner a month.

I was attracted first to the Flying Vee with the universal symbol for "no". Then the headline "Parents against reprehensible metal music."

"Cool," I thought. Tipper Gore wannabes on the rampage. This will be fun. So I clicked.

As the father of a 15-year old daughter who likes obscure metal sub-genres and songs with "explicit" lyrics, I couldn't wait to share this with her so we could both get a chuckle. One of the questions in the banner is: "Does your teen show any of the following signs: Wears excessive amounts of black."

Um, yup. Lots of black clothing in my house. But on dad as well.

Imagine my surprise when the banner linked to a site for Toyota Matrix. At first I thought that The Double Click ad server was on the fritz. But then I realized, holy cow, it's a bait and switch banner!

I was immediately incensed. It reminded me of those annoying "You are the 1,000,000th visitor! You won! Click here!" ads.

But then after a moment, I decided it was pretty cool. I Googled the phrase and found a nifty little site ParentsForPARMM.com "Our censor sensor is always on high alert!"

So here I am writing about it - promoting the site and no doubt sending them a few thousand more clicks. I guess that's what they wanted, right? Well, then it worked.

So what do you think? Is this a reprehensible bait and switch? Or just plain fun? What would the transparency police say?

Sex, shaving, and your oral health

Please forgive the gratuitous headline but I couldn’t resist. Two new free ebooks have been sent to me recently and both of them involve sex. Well, sort of.

Dianna Huff points us to Dr. Helaine Smith, a Boston, Massachusetts cosmetic dentist. Dr. Smith asks the question: "When was the last time you thought about your teeth? That's like asking when you last thought about your femur or your elbow."

In her new e-book, Healthy Mouth, Healthy Sex! Dr. Smith explains the connection between oral health and sexual well-being: "a topic not too many people talk about."

She says: “What many people don't understand -- or even consider -- is that the health of our teeth and mouths has a huge connection with our overall physical health -- and our sex lives!

Luke Faccini points us to an ebook that his agency The Sponge created called The 6 Essential Elements to an Exceptional Shave!

The ebook asks: "Were you taught how to shave by a pro? More likely you've unknowingly taken on the bad habits of your father, or even worse, you've taught yourself to shave from what you've seen on television commercials. If you ever get razor burn, ingrown hairs, redness or irritation then you have to read on!"

The ebook includes six reasons why you should pay attention to your daily routine with number 6 being: "The amount of sex you get is in direct proportion to how well you shave!"

The sex angle, while just a teeny bit gimmicky, does spark some interest because the authors are linking sex to unexpected things like shaving and dentistry.

I really like these ebooks. If a dentist and an Australian company producing "male grooming products that were created to increase the appeal of the uncompromising man" can find topics to write an ebook about, it shows that virtually any company, product, or organization can use an ebook to tell a story.

You can too!

Disclosure: Both of these ebooks kindly mention me in the acknowledgments and I thank the authors for that. I had nothing to do with the development of either ebook. However, both authors were in some way inspired by the information about creating ebooks that I included in this blog and in my latest free ebook The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free.

Meet Greg the (software) Architect

The good people at TIBCO Software have a great series of videos about Greg the Architect. TIBCO is one of those enterprise software companies that has a difficult marketing challenge – how to make what they do interesting. The About page says: "TIBCO Software Inc. provides enterprise software that helps companies achieve service-oriented architecture (SOA) and business process management (BPM) success."

This is my favorite from the series. I've known a lot of B2B software salespeople, and man do they nail the types here in this video. But it's all in good fun. Watch how the sales guys work over poor Greg.

Watch more videos and meet the cast here.

Hat tip to Erin Smith, Director of Marketing Communications at Axeda for pointing me to Greg .

New Rules of Viral Marketing update and free virtual book tour teleseminar

It's been twenty days since I released my new ebook The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free.

I'm amazed at the stats. In just 20 days:
> 42,810 downloads (based on my Web analytics)
> Close to 100 blog posts about the ebook (depends on which blog search engine is used)
> Well over 1,000 hits on the exact phrase "new rules of viral marketing" (on the day I put out the ebook there were zero hits on the phrase.)

How did I achieve these results?

I didn't do a thing. I didn't beg the media to write about it. I didn't pay for expensive advertising to promote it. I didn't interrupt people by sending it out via email.

All I did was post it on my blog. That's it. You did the rest. Thank you for downloading the ebook and for talking about it.

(Well, I guess I can safely say that my viral marketing ebook has gone viral.)

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UPDATE - Due to a scheduling problem with the technology provider, the live event needs to be postponed to Tuesday March 4, 2008 at 6:00PM eastern time. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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I'll be on a live teleseminar Tuesday February 26th, 2008 at 5:00 PM EST to discuss viral marketing in depth. For about 70 minutes, I'll answer questions that you submit to me and discuss the issues people face with going viral. It's free to participate. I hope you can make it.

Mike Sigers, of Simplenomics kindly offered to host the live Q&A with me. Mike will do the Q part and I'll do the A part. Mike is a sales and marketing consultant who simply tries to help people find easier, simpler ways to sell more and market their products and services for less cost with bigger results.

To submit a question for Mike to ask me, please go to the New Rules of Viral Marketing Virtual Book Tour site. You'll have an opportunity to post the question and then get the dial in information.

Your questions are really important to me. As I learn more about viral marketing and more about what you want to know about viral marketing, I will be creating more information about how to spread your ideas for free. The questions help me to speak, write, and produce the most valuable information.

If you don't want to ask a question, but would like to listen in, that's cool too. Please go here.

If you can't participate live, ask your question anyway. The New Rules of Viral Marketing Virtual Book Tour site will have the replay as an MP3 the morning after the live event.

Thank you for spreading my ideas.

The New Rules of Viral Marketing - free ebook!

The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free

> Imagine you're the head of marketing at a theme park, and you're charged with announcing a major new attraction. What would you do?

> What would you do if you were a vice president of marketing for a technology company and you were ready to find a new opportunity to advance your career?

> If you were a marketing executive for a big, famous company, how could you quickly put a human face on your organization?

> Or think of a marketing program that you might initiate if you suddenly had to launch a startup technology and services company targeting marketing professionals, Web designers, and business owners interested in improving their Internet marketing. How would you do it?

The answers will surprise you. The smart marketers profiled in The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free tell you exactly how they used viral marketing and provide advice in their own words.

Download The New Rules of Viral Marketing now! It's free and there's no annoying registration requirement.

You and I are incredibly lucky.

For decades, the only way to spread our ideas was to buy expensive advertising or beg the media to write (or broadcast) about our products and services. But now our organizations have a tremendous opportunity to publish great content online—content that people want to consume and that they are eager to share with their friends, family, and colleagues.

How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free!

Word-of-mouse is the single most empowering tool available to marketers today. I wrote this e-book so you can take advantage of the power of viral marketing too. In it, I share ideas that will help you create your own viral marketing strategies and campaigns. These are the "new rules" I've used to create marketing programs that have sold more than a billion dollars' worth of products and services worldwide.

It's not easy to harness the power of word-of-mouse, but any company with thoughtful ideas to share—and clever ways to create interest in them—can, after some careful preparation, become famous and find success on the Web.

Please download my new ebook. And if you find it interesting, please share it with whomever you believe would benefit from reading it. Thank you.

For best results, stick it in the fridge

Have you noticed that most product packaging falls into two categories. It's either dreadfully boring (as if it were written by someone who has never has any fun). Or it is chock full of inane corporate gobbledygook "this flexible, cutting-edge product will improve your business process."

I always think this crap is just written to fill up white space on product packages and I've often thought there is a better way.

This weekend, coutesy of my 14-year-old daughter, I found a cool example of how to do it better -- Glaceau vitaminwater. My daughter is a competitive swimmer and takes a bottle of vitaminwater to most meets. The other day, she casually mentioned to me that she and her friends like to read the labels on vitaminwater bottles.

Hold on! This I gotta check out—teenagers reading product packaging!

All the bottles have this helpful information:
"for best results, stick it in the fridge."
"the inside is natural. The outside is plastic."

And each of the dozen or so flavors has a fun essay on the label. Check this great writing out:

Revive
fruit punch
If you woke up tired, you probably need more sleep. If you woke up drooling at your desk, you probably need a new job. If you woke up with a headache, on a Ferris wheel at the Idaho state fair, wearing a toga, you probably need answers, not to mention this product. Its got potassium and B vitamins to help you recover and feel refreshed—kinda like in those old Irish Spring soap commercials. And if you’re like our boss, Mike, and woke up married to an Elvis impersonator, you probably need a lawyer.

XXX
acai-blueberry-pomegranate
C’mon, get your mind out of the gutter. We only named this drink XXX because it has the power of triple antioxidants to help keep you healthy and fight free radicals. So in case you’re wondering, this does not cost $1.99/minute or contain explicit adult content or anything considered ‘uncensored’. It has not 'gone wild!!!' during spring break nor will clips of it be passed around the internet like a certain hotel heiress, and it has never been seen live or nude, but it is definitely au naturale.

Power-C
Dragonfruit
Legally we are prohibited from making exaggerated claims about the potency or the nutrients in this bottle. Therefore, legally we wouldn’t tell you that after drinking this, Eugene from Kansas started using horseshoes as a thighmaster or that this drink gave Agnes from Delaware enough strength to bench press llamas, Heck, we can’t even tell you this drink gives you the power to do a thousands pinkie pushups… just ask Mike in Queens. Legally, we can’s say stuff like that—cause that would be wrong, you know?

Yeah, it is cool. Great writing can exist on product packaging as vitaminwater has proven. What about your product?

By the way, while the product packaging is great, the vitaminwater Web site absolutely sucks. It is an inane flash-driven site that looks pretty but doesn’t deliver any real information. Ugh.

An open letter to Warner Music Group: Lighten up! Your fans are promoting Led Zeppelin for you… for free

Dear Warner Music Group Executives:

The BBC reports that twenty million people wanted to purchase tickets to the historic Led Zeppelin show held at the O2 Arena on December 10, 2007. With only 20,000 tickets available, needless to say there were many disappointed fans who couldn't be there when the band took the stage for the first time in 19 years.

Immediately after the show, grainy, low fidelity clips appeared on YouTube and were eagerly watched by fans. I wanted to see how different the band looked since the time I saw them at Madison Square Garden in June 1977. Alas, you had already started to pull down the clips, claiming copyright infringement.

Your actions completely underestimate the power of a rabid fan base to help sell legal recordings, which is, after all, what you want. I am absolutely confident that the buzz generated by the concerts is selling millions of dollars of Led Zeppelin recordings.

The availability of YouTube clips enhances your sales and you shouldn't worry about these low quality fan tributes. I, for one, am replacing my vinyl recordings with Led Zeppelin CDs and I'm sure many other people are as well. All because we’ve been exposed, briefly, to the power of this band (which many of us may have ignored for several decades) via fleeting images of a concert we would have traveled halfway around the world to see if tickets had been available.

Yes, I understand the paid content world. My book publisher, Wiley, was supportive when I made parts of my book available for free on my blog and on many other blogs and in magazines. We know that it sells books (nearly 30,000 as of this writing) when people have a taste of what they will be buying. The free publicity that's generated by viral, word-of-mouse marketing can be worth millions of dollars and you’re missing a tremendous opportunity to harness that power.

I encourage you to re-think your knee-jerk legal-eagle impulse to clamp down on fans with draconian measures and consider the power that the Web has to sell your artists music.

Sincerely,

David Meerman Scott
Author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR

"Make my logo bigger!"

Is your tiny-logo-loving-designer always cramming your beautiful logo into an obscure corner of your ad? Well not anymore with Make Your Logo Bigger Cream!

Boring white space on your website? You can eliminate that white space and fill it with your marketing messages with White Space Eliminator!

You gotta check out this video. Anyone who has worked on a Web site project can relate to the bosses and the salespeople. They say something like "shouldn’t the company logo be a bit larger?"

But what they really mean is: "We want to make sure that our dumb prospects know who we are so make the damn logo bigger you silly pony-tailed geek!"

This incredibly clever Make My Logo Bigger video comes from Agency Fusion, a web development firm who says: "We understand that you are the trained designers and our expertise lies within the geek realms of programming. We are proud to be some of the best-qualified geeks around. We can't keep your client from asking you to make their logo bigger than Texas, but when it comes to websites we can help. Make My Logo Bigger Cream might be fake, but we are not."

Tip of the hat to Kelly for sending me this. Kelly is the publisher of a book that I enjoyed called Spinning Disney's World: Memories of a Magic Kingdom Press Agent. The book is a fascinating inside account of PR at Disney written by Charles Ridgway, the long-time head of public relations for Walt Disney.

Lights! Camera! Sales! Welcome Wall Street Journal readers

I am quoted in a terrific article in today's Wall Street Journal by Raymund Flandez titled Lights! Camera! Sales! How to use video to expand your business in a YouTube world. The article includes many examples of viral videos and is worth a read. We also filmed a television segment for the Wall Street Journal Report where we discussed how small businesses can create online videos that can increase their exposure on the Internet. Thank you for speaking with me Raymund.

If you've found your way to my blog via The Wall Street Journal, thanks for stopping by. I am an online thought leadership and viral marketing strategist and through my books, seminars and speaking I show organizations how to harness the amazing power of viral marketing.

Here are a few things I've written on this blog about viral marketing using YouTube videos that you might want to check out:

8 tips to make your YouTube video go viral

Viral Marketing with Jerry Garcia's toilet

IBM's terrific "Mainframe: Art of the Sale" sequels now available on YouTube!

Video on the Web to reach your buyers

You may want to check out my bestselling book The New Rules of Marketing & PR. I provide much more information about creating content, including YouTube videos, that people want to consume.

My ideology: marketing and public relations is vastly different on the Web. The old rules of mainstream media are about controlling a message and the only ways to get noticed is to buy expensive advertising or beg the media to write about you. The new rules of marketing and PR (on the Web) are completely different. Instead of buying or begging your way in, anybody can publish their way in using the tools of social media such as YouTube videos and other online media (blogs, podcasts, online news releases, ebooks).