There is a delicate etiquette surrounding the ’saying’: Going Dutch! We’ve earned this tagline due to the fact that we bring our own food, when we go on holidays abroad. Also since we like discounts a lot. Or we tend to split bills and pay for our own food at restaurants.
Full of shame I must admit to our readers: Yes Sir! We can be a bit cheap sometimes, don’t say I didn’t warn you! But this ‘Going Dutch’ coin, has a more shiny flipside as well: Being Smart.
It all started in 1602 when the VOC was founded. As very, very small country Holland’s traders carried out many colonial activities overseas. So trading is part of Dutch DNA. Some proof is the success of Marktplaats.nl. The leading Dutch classified platform, which was bought by eBay for 225 million Euros. Marktplaats is similar to Greg Stuarts Craig’s List. Question to flashy web designers: why do you think these ugly sites are so very successful?
Okay, let’s go back to cheap or smart Dutch traders. Hosting of very successful viral commercials can be done via YouTube. But what if you want to host many viral commercials or a micro site with a webisode? Curious by nature, I’ve tried Amazon S3’s Simple Storage Service. We were satisfied about the solution and the prizes of storage and data traffic.
We all learned Philip Kotler’s marketing laws. If you don’t know Kotler or his theories, your job might be a vacancy soon. Or not? In Kotler’s theories, the -P- for Place is key to marketing success,. But that theory is just not applicable for global dotcoms like eBay, Skype or Google. Okay, these NODA’s (No Dollar Advertising Companies) have grown fast by being remarkable and no advertising budget, but -P- for Place simply is overruled by the internet.
Talking about being remarkable? Seth Godin has really coined viral marketing in his books and speeches. I love his theories. But are Godin’s theoretical viral ideas backed by case studies including social media, video portals and conversational tracking? Maybe we should add a new phrase to his tagline: turning strangers into friends … and let them tell their friends about being your customer!
My point? Probably most marketers of 40 years and older have studied Kotler’s laws. And most of these marketers might even have read one or two of Godin’s books by now? (I guess Purple Cow or Unleashing the Idea virus). But loaded with all theories, how can viral marketing still be a myth? How can only 15% of all US viral campaigns succeed?
Nearly 600,000 Bob Dylan fans around the world have watched the Dylan Messaging viral campaign, to promote the release of his greatest hits album DYLAN, out October 1. The Bob Dylan viral messaging campaign, launched by Sony BMG’s Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings, lets fans generate personalized versions of the cue card sequence to “Subterranean Homesick Blues” made famous in the film “Don’t Look Back“, D.A. Pennebaker’s filmed chronicle of Dylan’s 1965 UK tour.
In the month August 2007, USA search engines like Google and Yahoo! handled a total of 9,8 billion search queries. So search still is the number 1 most used functionality at the world wide web.
But, the tipping point is close! Soon US internet video’s will get more eyeballs than US search engines. Is that why Google bought YouTube? Is social media finally taking over search in 2007, measured in the number of eyeballs?
In the month July 2007, 9,1 billion internet video’s were watched in the USA. In June this was 8,4 billion and May 7 billion. If this meta trend continues, there will be more internet video’s watched in the US than there will be search queries.
In NewMediaAge I read that British Airways has launched a viral campaign starring spoof air stewardess Pam Ann to highlight the quality of its cabin crew. BA crews are featured working professionally while Pam Ann, played by Caroline Reid, causes havoc around them.
The videos, developed in partnership with Agency.com, are seeded on sites including YouTube and eatmail.tv, along with behind the scenes footage, as well as on a portal on BA.com. Clips can be seen at London Dan. I really doubt, if these BA commercials will become weapons of mass affection. What do you think? Maybe you like this Silverjet viral better?
Mobile phone maker Nokia created a great inspirational commercial for the Nseries, that shows us the technological evolution throughout the 20th and 21st century. From cinema screens to mobile screens. What will be the fifth screen? Also check out this great NSeries presentation of Matthew Snyder. (Found on IPUB.ca.cx, Plantão)
In the viral game you can torture various celebrities that are dominating the pages of today’s newspapers and magazines, like Paris Hilton, Victoria Beckham, Britney Spears and Cameron Diaz. Electric drills, knives, cleavers, a grubby chainsaw and a spiked bat are among the bloody instruments you can use. The website claims you can also upload pictures of friends and family so that you can torture them too.
The ‘horrific’ viral game has caused outrage among certain leading pressure groups writes Metro.co.uk in Thursday’s edition. So is this branded viral game good fun making some celebrities suffer or should you take this more serious like Amnesty International does? You decide.
UK viral agencies do well with a 60% growth of revenues. Including tracking and seeding the UK viral industry should be worth between £25m and £30m by the end of 2007.
Partners from our infuential viral network in the US, Holland and Germany all independently from each other told us: our 2007 revenues will raise 65% or more. So 60% viral growth in the UK seems very accurate. These viral babies are getting mature fast.
Austen Kay, MD of Woot Media explained e-consultancy: “media agencies aren’t just buying more viral campaigns, they’re buying them more intelligently. There is a growing realization that great creative will disseminate very quickly through social networks when seeded on the right blend of entertainment sites, blogs and forums”.
If I look at many virals, I see that brands today invest more in the creation of viral micro sites and viral architectures. This makes the viral sites grow organically and that makes viral factor go up, and boost the total reach of viral campaigns. Due to better viral results, virals winning awards and more viral case studies available, I think that the viral agencies revenues in 2008 will do 70% growth.
Viral Friday is the weekly viral video chart of ViralBlog, showing the 10 most popular viral videos, commercials or user-generated videos, carefully selected and ranked by popularity, viral impact & spread.
This week’s Viral Friday #1 position goes to Toyota’s World of Warcraft. Car manufacturer Toyota was highly successful and got a lot of respect last week with it’s viral for the Toyota Tacuma, which completely takes place in the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft (with over 9 million gamers participating). In no time the clip gained over 1 million YouTube views. The runner up spot is for the Alicia Silverstone PETA spoof. Earlier we saw Alicia butt naked in a highly successful commercial for animal rights organization PETA. Now she’s being spoofed by ShakeState, trying to benefit from this success. The Pure Blond Beer viral completes this week’s top 3. The beautiful, idyllic and utopian place where Pure Blond beer comes from is rudely disturbed by a fat, sweaty truck driver.
Do you want to see this week’s list from 1 to 10? Go on then, and have a look! We’d like to hear your opinion about the virals. Have fun!
It’s an old skool user created Cillit Bang spoof: a very viral spot! The music in this VSPOT is inspired on the old Dutch ‘gabber house’ culture also know as Techno, which was also extremely popular in Germany too.
Check out this Barry Scott Cillit Bang Remix, created by JAKAZiD. But be aware, this VSPOT is not created by Reckitt Benckiser’s Cillit Bang, its a spoof. But I like it much better than the official Reckitt TV commercials.
Reckitt Benckiser’s Cillit Bang team gave this statement: “the Barry Scott character has appeared in a number of spoof websites and weblogs, created by people unconnected to the Reckitt Benckiser brand”.
