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How to make a viral video – a 5-step guide

1. select a product that is a low consideration product (e.g. a song) whose primary missing link is awareness

2. create a funny and entertaining video that features that product or a key attribute of the product

3. [ contact us for the "secret sauce" of step 3 ]

4. continue to build the momentum and build further social amplification by real people (won’t happen if the content is not funny, entertaining, useful, or unexpected)

5. use analytics to determine how to further optimize the content itself to match what characteristics actually went viral (based on how people talked about it when they passed it along)

Examples of videos whose viral effects were successfully manufactured over time. Obama Girl; Lonelygirl15 Brea Olson; Notice the shape of the stats curve of the more recent lonelygirl15 video from 2008. It is much flatter, which is a characteristic of non-viral videos. This is after they revealed that the original lonelygirl15 was a fake; now they have to support the view count through traditional paid media and continuous PR to accumulate the views.

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lonelygirl15-recent-non-viral-video

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Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 SEO, search, social networks 2 Comments

The Perfect Babe – Megan Fox (pics)

Megan Fox  – The Perfect Babe Product Placement

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No, this post is not about Megan Fox. Well, yeah it is.  But it’s about the MARKETING of Megan Fox.

Megan Fox has been around in films and TV since 2001 (see filmography below).  But it wasn’t until 2007 when she starred in the first Transformers movie that she burst on the scene and became an overnight mega celebrity, especially online (see Google Search Volume chart).  If you look at Ford’s search volume during the same period, there was NO lift in search that was detectable — there probably was some lift, but it is simply not detectable.

So Megan Fox went from very very little awareness to not only massive awareness, but also massive demand — people remembered her name and even took action (performed searches on her name). If some product placements would have had only 10% of the success of the “megan fox” product placement, they might actually justify the immense cost a bit better (millions of dollars paid by the advertiser to the movie makers to place products into the storyline of the movie).

And why is she “perfect,” in the marketing sense, of course? Her search volume has not only sustained but also continued to grow. She was not a flash in the pan that went away after the advertising/media dollars stopped or the public interest died off (see the snuggie and etrade search volume charts below).

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transformer girl, second girl in transformers, other girl in transformers – Isabel Lucas

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Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 SEO, Uncategorized, metrics 3 Comments