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.

When reaching out to bloggers, don't ask for them to write about you!

Lately I've been getting dozens of pitches a week from PR people who want me to write about their stuff on this blog. Most of the pitches are just spam, with the PR types using the exact same techniques that they have used with journalists for years.

To paraphrase the Wikipedia entry, spam is sending email that is both unsolicited by the recipient and sent in substantively identical form to many recipients. That's what PR people do to bloggers now. And then at the end of their email they basically say: "please write about me."

Here are portions of actual emails I've received recently. (I've paraphrased or modified to remove the identity of the people who contacted me).

"Would [this news] be something you are interested in covering? If so, when would be the first time you could publish something on it?"

"Are you going to be able to post something about...? I can send you suggested copy."

"Can I send you [the new book] so you can review it on your blog?"

(It's not just me. Other bloggers I've spoken with have the same problem with PR people.)

Here's the thing. Bloggers are not the same as journalists. We don't have editors telling us what to do. We write about what interests us and we are always on the lookout for things to share. But it is not our job to write about you and your stuff.

Here is an important point missed by virtually everyone - bloggers have other identities and can help you in other ways:

> Would you be happy if I talked about your stuff in front of the 20,000 people I speak to at conferences and events per year?

> Would you like to see your stuff profiled in my next ebook? (The last one has been downloaded 100,000 times in three months).

> Want to be in my next dead tree book?

> How about if I wrote about it in one of the magazines I write for?

> What if I mention your company the next time I am on the phone with The Wall Street Journal?

> Or perhaps I could write something in one of the other blogs I contribute to such as The Tuned In blog?

> What about a tweet on something you did?

It's OK to share things with a blogger that you feel they might be interested in. Just don't spam them with broadcast pitches and whatever you do, don't ask for coverage. We all know why you contacted us -- don't belittle the information you send and embarrass yourself by begging.

Want the good news? I'm always looking for things that are of interest to me! I'm happy to have you send stuff my way. (Other bloggers are too). But don't ask me to write about it on this blog. And don't send me the same pitch that you sent to dozens of others.

Thanks for reading this far! Here's bonus information for alert readers like you. I am currently looking for interesting examples of online viral marketing for possible use in an upcoming hardcover book I am writing that will come out in 2009. If you have a great example of reaching people online, go ahead and send it to me via email. Hey, maybe I'll even write about it on this blog too.

Why CEOs and executives must work harder to blog successfully than mere mortals

In the past year, I've had many conversations with CEOs, Presidents of companies, and other senior executives about the new rules of marketing and about blogs in particular.

I've always wondered why these senior executives have so much more trouble creating a popular blog than mere mortals. Why, in most companies, is the most popular blogger a product manager or junior marketing person? At first I had thought it might be because CEOs and executives had less time to devote to blogging or that they relied on underlings to do first drafts of posts. While both of those may be true in some cases, that wasn't enough of an explanation for the relative lack of really good senior executive bloggers in most companies.

Last week, I keynoted the General Catalyst Marketing Summit. GC is a venture capital company (Brightcove, Kayak, HubSpot, and many other interesting startups). In a brilliant move, GC brought together the senior marketing people of more than 30 of their portfolio companies for a day of discussions and best practice sharing. Todd Defren also spoke at the summit, and talked about the difference between "Influence 1.0" (shouting about your product) and what he calls "Participation is Marketing." Todd is an excellent speaker and I was honored to share the stage with him. We were saying the same things but in different ways.

So with Todd's help, it finally became obvious to me why most CEOs and corporate executives make poor bloggers. CEOs are used to being the most important person in the room. When CEOs are in a meeting, everyone defers to them. At conferences, people clap at CEO speeches even if they suck. CEOs talk about their company, its products, and nothing else. CEOs happily ignore email and phone calls because nobody expects a personal answer back. CEOs direct others to do their work for them.

These are precisely the things that make for crappy blogs.

CEOs and executives expect that the world will stop everything and pay attention and The Wall Street Journal will write about them as soon as they put out their first blog post. The posts they do write shout: “look at me!” CEOs don’t comment on other people's blogs or link outside their own little world. Yeah, a few ass kissers might comment but unless the CEO is saying something interesting, the blog will fail to gain traction. Then the executive will quit blogging.

There are notable exceptions like Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems.

Great bloggers participate. They link to other bloggers. They comment on other people's blog real estate. They blog because they want to, not because they have to. They talk about things other than their own products and services.

Attention corporate executives: check your ego at the door if you want to be a successful blogger.

CNN: Time to retire the inane "best political team on television" phrase

I'm enjoying the US Presidential race. As a marketer, it is fascinating to see how the candidates position themselves. And as a frequent keynote speaker at conferences, I also enjoy the snippets of candidates speaking on the stump.

Each primary night, I channel surf for hours as the returns come in.

Is it just me, or is CNN's slogan: "The best political team on television" incredibly annoying? I was watching CNN recently for about twenty minutes and I heard Wolf Blitzer utter the inane phrase three times. So I clicked over to MSNBC because it pissed me off so much. A bit later I came back to CNN and he said it again. Yikes! What’s up with that?

A search of CNN transcripts on Dow Jones Factiva reveals that the phrase has been used on air about 200 times in the past 30 days and 16 times on Super Tuesday alone.

A phrase like "The best political team on television" might be OK as an advertising slogan for billboards and magazine ads, because you want people to give CNN a try. But it is incredibly silly for the anchorman to keep saying it on air during the editorial content of a program - we are already watching!

There is no need to coerce viewers into continuing to watch your coverage. Anyone who is into politics enough to watch primary results instead of American Idol or ESPN or something else on TV has already made up their minds about what channels to watch and who has the best coverage. Don't interrupt our enjoyment with advertising in the form of silly catch phrases during the editorial content.

I'll be watching the Wisconsin and Hawaii primary results this evening.

Attention Wolf Blitzer and CNN: It's time to retire that stupid phrase.

Why most CMOs get fired

A few weeks ago I get a call from Gary Stern, a columnist for Investors Business Daily.

Gary says, "I'm doing a story on the average tenure of Chief Marketing Officers, which is only 26 months. This is much shorter than 44 months, which is how long CEOs last. Can you comment?"

"Oh, boy can I," I say. "How much time do you have?"

(I could talk about this all day.)

We ended up talking for about a half hour. Basically I ranted. A lot.

I didn't give my opinions in quite this way, but here's a few ideas to let you know what I think:

> CMOs get fired because they would rather spend money on a PR agency to spam the media than be thought leaders that the media seeks out.

> CMOs get fired because they measure themselves on leads and press clips instead of what the marketplace thinks about their company and its products and services.

> CMOs get fired because they would rather spend millions on TV commercials than figure out how to get a free YouTube video that goes viral.

> CMOs get fired because they ________ (fill in the blank – there are many more reasons).

(And once they are fired and are looking for a new job, ex-CMOs obsess about resumes and networking and spamming people via LinkedIn instead of blogging, speaking, and writing about what they are passionate about.)

Gary did a terrific job with the article. It is slated for the print edition of IBD on Monday February 4. But here is a sneak peek via CNN online:

How To Move CMOs Out Of Harm's Way

Gary's article begins:
"Warning: If you're seeking job security, don't think about becoming a chief marketing officer. Over the last few months, the CMOs of Home Depot, Wendy's, Rite Aid, and Chico's CHS changed over."

Read the rest of How To Move CMOs Out Of Harm's Way

Attention Delta Airlines -- Do you really have to rub it in?

Nearly a year ago (February 4, 2007 to be exact), I planned, booked, and paid for a vacation for my family this holiday season to Belize. My daughter, a freshman in high school, has very limited availability due to the school calendar and her competitive swim schedule (she trains every day for 10 months a year), so we have severely limited windows of opportunity for vacations. The only time this trip would work was from December 20 through December 31 and we always book early and suck up the high prices to travel in peak season. We found an amazing place to stay and booked air travel on Delta Airlines.

Then disaster struck.

We got a message from Delta Airlines on October 21 telling us "your itinerary has changed" and we were now on a flight departing on December 24 (four days later). Since that meant the holiday was reduced by four days, it wouldn't work for us. Yikes! I called Delta and we were told they canceled our flights and the others were all full until four days later. Delta essentially said "sorry you lose."

We were disappointed but had no choice but to cancel completely. Because Delta (who took our money for six months) didn't tell us until a few months prior to departure, we couldn't find another flight schedule that worked based on our limited window of opportunity.

OK, so far, it's just bad luck. Then the situation deteriorated to the ridiculous:

Today we got a message from "Delta Messenger" with the subject line Make your trip easier.

Looking for ways to make your holiday travel easier? Here are a few time-saving holiday travel tips to get you from home base to dinner plate as quickly as possible:

> Arrive three hours prior to your scheduled departure time. Remember, parking and getting through security may take longer than expected.
> Know the airport security guidelines and remember to pack your 3-ounce containers of liquids in a single quart-size, clear plastic, zip-top bag before arriving at the airport.
> Review useful resources for finding out what you need to know, new passport requirements and which forms you need to get and where to get them.

Happy Travels (and Holidays)!

Want to know what the weather is like in Belize City, Belize?

Thanks for choosing Delta; we're looking forward to seeing you.

Attention Delta – you screwed up my family vacation and now you want to wish me happy travels and tell what the weather is like in Belize? This is absurd! I'm sitting in a snow bound place wishing I could go where you promised and then you say I can't go and now you want to wish me "Happy Travels" and remind me about the warm weather that I can’t experience?

Do you really have to rub it in?

This is a great illustration of a stupid email system. When a reservation is canceled, it should also remove the automatic email reminders. Otherwise you piss off people like me.

We ended up booking a new vacation during a school holiday week later in the year. But this time it is on JetBlue, not Delta...

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

Most PR people are spammers - Chris Anderson now blocks you and I may be next

At every one of my speeches, I say PR people are spammers. That gets everyone's attention so I have an opportunity to explain what I mean.

I get several hundred unsolicited press releases and PR pitches every week. Well over 99% of them are not targeted to me, instead they are sent to me because I am on various PR people’s lists because of this blog, because of my books, and because I am a contributing editor to EContent Magazine and have written for a bunch of other publications. I’m getting the identical piece of spam email as hundreds of other poor journalists.

To paraphrase the Wikipedia entry, spam is sending email that is both unsolicited by the recipient and sent in substantively identical form to many recipients.

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine and author of The Long Tail recently lamented that he gets 300 emails a day and he’s had it. So he's blocked PR people and has published a list of those blocked on his blog.

Chris says: "So fair warning: I only want two kinds of email: those from people I know, and those from people who have taken the time to find out what I'm interested in and composed a note meant to appeal to that (I love those emails; indeed, that's why my email address is public)."

I couldn't agree more.

At my speaking gigs, after I get people's attention by saying PR people are spammers and describe the worst practices, I also offer ideas how to be successful with the media:

> Read our blogs.
> Comment on our blogs.
> Read our books.
> Read our publications (or watch & listen to our TV & radio shows).
> Attend our speaking gigs.
> Publish your own blog.
> Send well-crafted, personal email telling us something that is interesting and helpful.

I kind of like the idea of blocking the PR people who spam and naming names on this blog...

Facebook Applications: Silliness, spam and spoofs

Is it just me or have Facebook applications become too damn annoying?

Don't get me wrong. I think Facebook is terrific. I love when someone I know from a past life friends me. Or better yet, I am thrilled when someone who has read my book or heard me speak live connects via Facebook. I've got Facebook friends from all over the world (keep the friends requests coming folks).

As much as I like Facebook, I'm just not into the third party applications thing. I find the applications that require some sort of reply to be particularly annoying. So-and-so wants to "network using business cards" and this one "dedicated a song to you" and that one "asked her friends a question". The problem with these things is that they require action on my part. So I think of them as sort of spam-like. Sure it only takes a moment to click the ignore button, but these things seem a little outside the scope of Facebook, at least the way that I am using it.

Am I being overly harsh?

There are now 4,500 Facebook Applications, the vast majority developed by people who do not work for Facebook. In fact, this is a very hot area for Venture Capitalists to put money these days. There are sites that review and recommend applications. It's all very new and we're all learning as we go. But I predict a backlash against some of the more annoying applications.

Facebook is great for connecting. But I don’t see it as a game. I don't really want to know "What My Stripper Name Is" (Note, if you're actually a stripper, this switches to "What's Your Internetweb Geek Name") and I don’t want to use BoozeMail to "Send your friends a drink (or even a round of drinks) on Facebook." Although, I must admit I'm rather intrigued by NaughtyGirls "Get Naughty. Send very naughty gifts and very naughty messages to all of your friends."

And here's something really creepy to really gum up the works. Today I got a Facebook Application spoof email. It looked exactly like a typical Facebook request email, but when I moused over the URL, it was some dodgy address somewhere, not Facebook. Ugh.

Just when we figured out how to deal with comment spam and trackback spam, we’ve got to deal with Facebook app spam.

Advertising agency websites: Digital masturbation

One of the fundamental aspects of web marketing is that you need to understand your buyers before you create any content. Who are you trying to reach? What are the market problems of the buyer persona that you are targeting? What resonates with your buyer?

David Koopmans asks: "How good are agency websites?"

Well, I'm a representative of an ad agency buyer. When I was VP marketing at several NASDAQ traded companies I controlled a multi-million dollar budget and purchased services from agencies. Now, on the speaking circuit, I am often asked for agency recommendations by potential clients looking for someone to work with.

My answer to David is that most agency sites suck. As David suggests, part of the reason is the heavy use of flash and a focus on "cutting edge creative."

I would add that agency sites are very light on compelling content. Another observation is that many agency sites use the same tired and worn ways to show that they are "hip" – you know, cool introductions featuring a stylized version of their logo; fun, often black-and-white photos of the principles with funky stuff in the shots (fishing poles and Labrador retrievers are good for this purpose). When everyone does flash and everyone does logo gyrations and when everyone does funky photos it ceases to be hip.

I am drawing no conclusions on the ten sites below. However as a way to show a few examples, and to be as fair as possible, below are the top ten advertising agency brands in the United States as ranked by Advertising Age together with a link to each site.

You be the judge…
1. JWT
2. BBDO
2. McCann Erickson
4. Leo Burnett
5. Ogilvy & Mather
6. DDB
7. Y&R Advertising
8. Grey
9. Saatchi & Saatchi
10. DraftFCB

Based on what I see on the majority of advertising agency sites (I've checked out hundreds), which in my opinion is nothing more than digital masturbation, I advise people not to trust an advertising agency to build their site. While some advertising agencies may build great sites, the majority fail big time and their clients suffer as a result. To be fair, one exception is that an agency may be the best bet for certain purpose-built micro-sites focused on a particular campaign.

Here are two reasons why I tell people to avoid the agencies, together with details on why I feel companies should avoid these approaches.

Flaw # 1 > Ad agencies focus on aesthetics over information.

Advertising agencies try to convince clients to focus on the sizzle instead of the steak. Their advice is to pay more attention to colors and graphics than to the substance of the Web site: content. Often Ad agencies push distracting images or generic stock photos throughout a site and clunky Flash Video introductions or pop-ups on the homepage.

= Why marketers should avoid this:

Visitors who actually want to learn something aren't satisfied and sales are lost. The best Web sites are designed by marketers who have learned to think more like successful publishers: It is important to make a book or magazine readable, but not at the expense of providing something good to read. The Ad agency focus on style over substance is flawed. Imagine if Pulitzer Prizes were only given for design, usability, and functionality but not the actual content?

Flaw # 2 > Ad agencies focus on the wrong part of the sales cycle.

Ad agencies often design sites that feature slick, TV-influenced, one-way broadcast messages that feel like advertising. Ad agencies create sites as if they need to grab the attention of visitors for the first time. Many sites designed by Ad agencies sport all kinds of in-your-face images and messages designed to get you to pay attention.

= Why marketers should avoid this:

When a visitor gets to a Web site, you don't need to grab their attention; you already have it! Advertising agencies' strong focus on grabbing attention is rooted in print and TV advertising models, not a Web content-marketing and publishing model. The ad model is flawed, because on the Web, the challenge has shifted from grabbing attention to informing and educating your visitors through content. People who visit Web sites are often further along in the sales process. But most advertising people don't understand this and create ineffective sites as a result. People aren't looking for TV commercials on the Web, they are looking for content that helps them in some way.