Not all viral is good viral.

For those who don’t spend the stupid number of hours that I do on-line there has been a bit of brou-ha-ha in Australian marketing/adverising circles in the last couple of days because of a fake marketing campaign.

It all starts here:

The ’story’ was picked up by mainstream media however from early on web observers were crying ‘fake’. Unsurprisingly this turned out to be the case as the campaign was outed on the internet with mUmBRELLA reporting on the hoax campaign being from the agency Naked.
Around the same time an even more grating follow-up confession video was posted on Youtube, and then the boss of Naked, Adam Ferrier, responded along the lines that people in Social Media don’t know what they’re talking about.

Naked and their client Witchery have been hauled over the coals on-line for lying and being deceitful, which I think misses the point entirely (to be fair to Naked there has been some overt chest beating around what social media is and isn’t, but there has also been a lot of fair criticism for the failings of this work).

I think their sin is having done it so poorly and without any regard as to where to from here.

Now, in their defense, Adam Ferrier has spoken about this on his blog and amongst other things said:

“Who in social media understands marketing strategy: Campaigns using social media need to be judged, not on how well they abide by the so called rules of social media, but rather the effectiveness of the communications.”

I agree – effectiveness of the communication is crucial. Which is the problem I have with this, it is just badly done, and more importantly now what?
Column inches gained, people talking, great, but in what context? How does all of the criticism of the communication convert into purchasing action?

And what comes next? Now that you’ve gotten this attention what is to follow? Is there a strategy to expand upon this and maintain the momentum? Will this kind of attention convert into sales?

It might. It would be very interesting to see if Witchery tracks sales and reports back.

But at this stage it looks like all that has happened is the client looks a little foolish for having gotten embroiled in what is essentially a PR stunt that has no follow up.
And this is the issue I have with Adam Ferriers comments about Social Media practitioners – Naked have poorly executed a campaign that they claim to be ’social media campaign’.
It isn’t. It is an attempt at viral marketing (and you could argue a successful one for its viral effect).

Adam criticises Social Media practitioners for not understanding the importance of effectiveness so I would ask the following;
Where is the campaign here? Where is the value-add? Where is the community build? Where is the engagement and conversation? In what way has this been effective?

Naked have done a lot of good work and Adam Ferrier is obviously a pretty smart guy (read his bio) which makes the defensive posturing around this work all the more grating to people who work in Social Media and understand that we are here to help build business for our clients. We care about strategy, and we care deeply about getting results. We also care just as much about effectiveness as Adam does – so we can understand the pain for all involved when something doesn’t work. But please quit shooting at the messenger.

(Fake soft drinks photo by shortie66)