- You're in the bar drinking uncool cola, wearing that
Hawaiian shirt from Littlewoods's end-of-season range. Life has been
re-routed
off the old road on to the bypass ... until the gorgeous girl
arrives.
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- She brings with her ice-cream, an unfamiliar brand, which
she smears on your face and neck and says: "This makes me feel so
alive!"
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- Has the shirt's whorl pattern touched a deep sexual need
or have you become the latest target of a "dynamic campaign targeting
a younger, advertising-literate audience?"
-
- Go for number two. In all likelihood, Miss Hotpants is
a secret agent of capitalism and she's just given you the virus, the
"buzz"
"the tsunami of chatter" for the Now Generation. Be warned:
she, they, it, may already be out there at a hostelry near you. You could
become cool before you know it.
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- Viral marketing at street level is now so cool it could
melt your Häagen-Dazs, the very familiar brand of ice-cream which
is about to spend £6.5 million on viral marketing on the internet.
Watch an e-mail address near you. In another age of less
"literate"
audiences, the concept was known as "word of mouth".
-
- However, the manipulative, corrupt, conscienceless and
scurrilous - usually known as advertising executives - have speeded up
the process by employing undercover teams to promote brands.
-
- Here's how it works. The brand employs an agency; the
agency recruit "ambassadors" who go in undercover wherever the
target audience is identified.
-
- In one case, it was the playground. Hasbro, the toy
giant,
recruited 1,600 "Alpha-pups" - boys in Chicago aged eight to
ten who were regarded as the coolest kids in town. They were paid $30 to
play a new hand-held video game called "Pox" and tell their
friends
about it. The resultant word of mouth sent sales of the game into orbit,
and it cost a fraction of a major campaign.
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- But, back to you in the bar an attractive woman wants
to give you a drink you've never heard of; an unfamiliar brand of cigarette
is proffered by a stranger who walks away leaving the packet. Two bright
young things are in earnest conversation about a new drinks mixer.
Alternatively,
a group nearby are having a good time and, strange as it may seem, they
all appear to be drinking the same, unknown brand of vodka.
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- Think of those old adverts, which sought to persuade
us that drinking a certain aniseed-based poison would make us more
attractive.
This the same deal, only up close and personal; and while it excites some,
it scares others, who believe it to be morally corrupt.
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- Naturally, viral marketing was conceived in the US and,
naturally, the first target was the internet and cross-referencing products
to our free e-mail services. Superficially, it may appear to be another
staging post in the industry's ever-evolving art of seduction, but as some
pioneering New York agencies consider transferring the concept to the UK,
there are those who express reservations.
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- At the Leith Agency in Edinburgh, Mark Stephenson,
business
development director, believes the technique could result in a backlash.
"I haven't heard of it reaching here yet. I think it works better
in the US, where people are more gregarious. After all, if a stranger
approached
you and offered to buy you Brand X vodka, you would immediately wonder
what the game was. Word of mouth is powerful, but this undercover thing
is subversive and dangerous. There is nothing worse than feeling you've
been had, and bad word of mouth spreads as quickly as good. If people
falsely
extolling a product are rumbled, the product will suffer."
-
- The pioneer of grassroots viral marketing was the Big
Fat agency in New York run by Jonathan Ressler. "It is real-life
product
placement," he says. He has represented Pepsi, other soft drinks
companies,
alcoholic drinks, cars, and cigarettes. He adds: "There is no product
undercover marketing cannot help."
-
- It may appear inherently deceptive to recommend a product
without disclosing your interest in it, but, as Ressler says: "Count
the product placements you see the next time you watch a
movie."
-
- John Palumbo, the company's chief strategist, says:
"Consumers
are increasingly discerning and will switch off when presented with overt
TV and magazine advertising. To reach the most desirable consumers, those
between 12 and 34, is hard because they have grown up with heavy sell and
are inured."
-
- Palumbo says his company carefully selects its undercover
operators. They should be approachable, not too good looking, or too
obvious.
"They'll say we're celebrating and we want to buy you a drink,"
he says. "Then they'll try to implant things about the product in
your head. "
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- Ressler predicts that soon ordinary people's lives will
be underwritten by commerce: "You're going to see real people being
sponsored by companies. It's not going to be a superstar but Joe Average,
and it'll be cheaper, effective and have more credibility."
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- On the internet, viral marketing is a fact of life.
However,
at street level it is relatively new. Neither is it the domain of small
companies with dubious products. When DaimlerChrysler wanted to generate
pre-launch buzz for its PT Cruiser, it seeded the striking-looking roadster
into rental-car fleets around Miami Beach. The grapevine did the
rest.
-
- Rogier van Bakel of Advertising Age Creativity has
charted
the progress of viral marketing from its New York roots, and predicts its
arrival in the UK is imminent. " We live in a post-advertising society
where people have a deep aversion to the merciless avalanche of commercial
messages. Most agencies have yet to wake up to the reality that there are
methods to influence consumers that do not involve television and magazine
spreads. I would just like for those newer methods not to be so patently
deceptive," van Bakel says.
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- "You can't build a brand without building trust.
The fastest way to squander trust is to play people for suckers. I was
hanging out at the mortally unhip bar of the Waldorf-Astoria when an
attractive
stranger came up to me and asked if she could buy me a bourbon. I don't
mind. But they had undercover marketing for flavoured water. Teams of
beautiful
young people went to bars where they struck up as many conversations as
they could that include a favourable mention of the product. It resulted
in a Stepford Wives-ish situation with conversations such as one woman
saying to another: 'Wow, I feel great, so real. It's this drink!' The other
woman asked: 'Would you feel the same way with soda?' First woman: 'No!
I feel alive!'
-
- "If you were to overhear two people having a chat
like that, you'd think whatever they were drinking killed brain cells.
It's a bit sinister."
-
- That is the view of Kalle Lasn, the editor of Adbusters
magazine. "It is a form of cultural corruption at a time when
advertising
already pervades the landscape. It's much more insidious because marketers
are creating culture at the grassroots level, on the streets and where
we live."
-
- There are already signs. The latest advertising in-joke
concerns a New York ad executive visiting the Edinburgh Festival. He spies
two tramps holding the distinctive blue cans of a very strong lager.
"Christ,
they're perfect," he says.
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