This interview with Jim McNiven of respected viral agency Kerb first appeared in the book Targeting Students: A Marketing Guide (2005).
Sex. Violence. Humour. According to the rules of online viral marketing, you need at least one of these ingredients to make your campaign work. But Kerb, a Brighton-based digital marketing agency that does a lot of work for youth and student-orientated brands, doesn't take any notice of rules.
Kerb head Jim McNiven describes how they managed to get a warning message about the power of multinational corporations to the inboxes of over half a million people...while selling a few records at the same time.
"We were approached by the DJ Adam Freeland to create a website to promote his new band’s politically-aware debut single. The record, 'We Want Your Soul' by Free*Land, rails against consumerism and apathy.
"He wanted us to create something that would get people thinking about Free*Land's message and also provide an outlet for selling the track. It was a bit of a paradox - how do you sell a product that professes to be a comment on anti-consumerism to a bunch of cynical anti-capitalists!
"We know that to make something viral you have catch people's imagination, get them excited or interested. You also need a strong incentive to encourage them to forward the site to friends. We know that people like to compare and contrast with their friends.
"We created a site which led people to believe that two corporate giants had teamed up in a bid to buy people's souls. At the time it was in the news that Monsanto was close to decoding the human gene. We came up with the possibility that someone like Monsanto, with the financial backing of someone like Haliburton, could actually seek to 'buy' your soul. So we set about creating a site where two corporates had got together with that very aim. We couldn't say directly who they were, but we listed their real time share prices on the site, which gave a strong hint.
"We wanted to make people think: ‘Is this real?’ We wanted to create a wake up call, make people think this is something that could happen in the future.
"So the idea for the site was there, but we needed the extra hook, the feature that would get people to say to their friends, hey, you've got to check out this site.
"We came up with the idea of an online quotation form, similar to those sent out today by finance companies, but with echoes of the late Eighties when lenders were worried about dangerous lifestyles. It would determine the value of a visitor's soul by asking a series of questions. Do you eat fast food? Are you a practising Christian? Have you ever stolen anything of value? That kind of thing. Each answer would have a positive or negative impact on their soul's value and the visitor would end up with a quotation. They could then email their value to a friend and invite them to compare. After doing this they would be told they could raise the value of their own soul for a small fee - by buying the Free*Land single. There was a link through to a site selling the track.
"We've got a mailing list of 20,000 early adopters - people who like our content and want to be the first to receive it. It's a quality list. People are on it because they like getting viral content, not because they want to win some top-up vouchers or a holiday. We seeded the site there and waited to see what happened.
"Very quickly it was picked up by some crucial sites. It was on Guardian Online, Cruel.com, Popbitch and B3ta. Then all the blogs started picking up on it. It seemed every blog had a link to We Want Your Soul.
"We typed in the phrase 'We want your soul' into Google before we started and there were no returns. Within weeks of launching the site Google was registering 1,300 separate results! A month after launching we'd had 350,000 visitors. The hosting company, which had been arranged by Free*Land's management, pulled the site at one point, which is often the death knell for a viral piece because very few users will go back to a site later if they find it's down. But we got the site to a new host 24 hours later and it bounced back even stronger. To date it's had 563,819 visitors.
"There's so much crap talked about viral marketing. Half of what you see isn't viral. Viral is something that grows exponentially - you can send it to 200 people and it gets seen by 10,000. A viral campaign to a lot marketers means creating a poor bit of content for £10,000 and then spending £100,000 on banner ads trying to push traffic to it. Whereas you could spend £50,000 on content and get the best viral piece ever.
"There's a case for saying it's damaging the industry - this flooding of poorly-conceived creative. No-one's going to feel more affinity with a brand by playing some shonky platform game - the lack of creative thought that goes into it offends me. As viral specialists we're at risk of getting tarred with the same brush as all the amateurs that have come into viral marketing recently. Three of four years ago we were desperately trying to make people realise the potential; now I sit in front of marketing people who tell me: ‘This MUST go viral!’ It's become just a buzz word, without proper understanding of the nature of viral.
"But I'm still hugely evangelical about this method of advertising. You can hit half a million people with £5000, using something that people not only see but recommended to their friends. And there is so much freedom. If you make a funny TV ad, but it's a bit risque, people will complain. Online, it's self-censoring. If someone sends me something they know me, and they know I'll like it. No-one is going to send Kerb's wanking game to their granny or their 7-year-old nephew, but if they did it wouldn't be Kerb or the brand sponsoring the piece that would get the blame, it would be the sender.
"We did something for a top drinks brand - it was meant to be a lairy, crazy breakdancing game aimed at 16 to 30s. They made us take out any slight drug reference, anything vaguely sexual. Really minor things like a tent where you could see two people's feet hanging out. They said, look, we're a family brand we can't afford to offend people. We said to them: you can be more lairy online, because it's not going to be seen by anyone who'll be offended. I think youth brands will realise they can afford to be a bit more outrageous.
"You learn in viral marketing to go for the lowest common denominator. The success of We Want Your Soul was driven by the fact people liked to see what they were worth and compare that with friends. For a while, every blog site was asking: 'How much is YOUR soul worth?' It was a bit sad that everyone wanted to value their soul; I'd been really pleased with the creative as I thought it tapped into a really interesting topic for further thought, but basically its success was driven by people wanting to say 'Hey, guess what my soul's worth!'
"I don't know that we at Kerb are anymore in touch with the kids than our peers. Our success has come because of the fact we like to push it, like to see what we can get away with. Perhaps our influences have helped - our first office had four very anarchic little companies in it - a skate firm, a sound system, a t-shirt printer and us, and we probably benefited from that environment. There were dogs running loose, graffiti on the walls - it was a complete state. Clients used to wipe the feet when they left."
Showing posts with label viral marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label viral marketing. Show all posts
08 December 2006
18 November 2006
Online communication with students
Article by Luke Mitchell
This article was a chapter in The Reach Students Handbook (2003)
Students, it is often claimed, are hard to reach. Dispersed across the UK at over 600 institutions, each with their own timetable, they regularly change address and are not practically targetable through any piece of old media. They've had marketers gasping for breath for years. It's easy to see why the new media revolution has attracted many new businesses to the student market.
The arrival of the internet, email and mobile phones has brought a tantalising opportunity to make direct contact with the student community. The fact that all UK students have free internet access, that many are early adopters of new technologies, and that communication resources are the lifeblood of the highly sociableaway-from-home young adult, have all helped make the new media proposition irresistible.
In the wake of the dot com boom period and with the benefit of several years practical experience, the statistics and trends that people projected on students and new media have been adjusted. But they are still impressive. According to NUSSL, 79 per cent of students use the internet, most of them every day. Marketing company Campus Marketing believe that 100% of students have an email address, while VirginStudent claim that two thirds of students own their own computer. Tom Edge, New Media Manager at the National Union of Students, updates the situation for 2003/4: "In the USA, 98 per cent of college students surf the internet weekly. 91 per cent are online at least three times per week. In the UK we're fast approaching those levels of usage. Students are online for consistently long periods, for both work and pleasure, and are willing to be entertained while they surf.
"Email is proven to be a primary method ofcommunication for students - especially with friends and family elsewhere in the country. Given therelationship between email and the net, effective campaigns online can find their message quickly spreading when there's user approval. So the student audience is there and waiting."
Of course businesses always had the opportunity to reach students through on-campus promotions,student media, sponsorship etc. But the costs involved have been prohibitive to many. The major attraction of new media is that it can be very economical. "It's cheap to get a good online campaign underway," says Edge, "relative to TV and radio spots. Even a full site and game build, with hosting, will come in way under the budget for a cheap localised TV spot - and a good campaign may bring millions of users to not just notice, butinteract with your brand. The potential benefits are sky-high even with low cost products, so long as the creative element works."
Ah, the creative element; creative executions have delivered the successes and failures of many a student-orientated business. So how can marketers make sure online ventures work for this tricky demographic?
"Ignoring banner ads and rich media promotions, there are a lot of websites out there today vying for a surfer's attention," says Edge. "A company willing to invest in promoting their message online should thoroughly survey the competition and attempt to find a new, innovative hook for their site. When it comes to viral emails, student web users are very often experienced and jaded - another low-end Flash game won't catch their imagination unless it has a serious creative hook behind it. The idea of the game must be at least as amusing as the pleasure of the game play. People only forward emails which have amused them enough to want to spread the joy - everything else gets binned."
"So being innovative is key, even if you're just putting a sharp new spin on an old idea. Poor quality, hackneyed ideas are probably the greatest obstacles to an online promotional campaign's success - getting it built and hosted professionally is a comparatively small worry."
One of the best-known creators of effective online campaigns aimed at young people is Skive, a London-based new media agency. Skive are a dab hand with 'viral' games - those that get passed around by email to friends and spread like an infection. These games are particularly effective with students - a NetValue survey in 2002 found that they account for a third of the UK's 3 million regular online games players.
Skive's clients have included Adidas, Sony Playstation and Wrigleys. MD Sean Singleton thinks their recipe for success with students is pretty simple: "We try to inject humour into our work because it's really effective online. We think that young people tend to laugh at the same things. Being a student is about going out, enjoying yourself, being a bit cynical and laughing at the world. That's the approach we have at Skive.
"The problem we have to overcome is finding that place where the brand is comfortable with thecreative and the student can laugh at it. What works best with viral campaigns, for example, is the extreme stuff. But brands don't always want to be associated with that.
"That said, we would always encourage risk-taking. I don't think many campaigns are worth doing unless they involve risk."
Equally successful at student-orientated online communication is Mike Slocombe, who runs activist website Urban75. Slocombe's not-for-profit website is his passion, but such is its success with intelligent young people, he is often offeredcommissions by brands eager to make use of his impressive e-communication skills. Slocombe has produced work for Virgin Radio, Xfm and Youthnet. "I love daft, nonsense stuff on the web," he says. "I don't like to see it used bycompanies as some kind of expanded corporate brochure, and I think a lot of students probably feel the same.
"Good practice is always inviting the student to feed back on what they're experiencing. Bad practice is thinking you can create anenvironment that young people will flock into and inhabit, but creating it so it entirely suit your own needs. You can't set up a chat room, for example, and ban swearing. It won't get used."
What has to be remembered before any online communication with students is attempted is that this group are habitual new media users. "Students close down pop-ups without noticing their content," says Tom Edge. "They can detect a spam mail from a dozen clicks away and won't, generally, be generous enough to see a page through if it doesn't entertain - there are too many options out there. It is easy to get it wrong, but those who get it right may well enjoy aglobal spread of their message that would be hard to achieve in any other medium."
Indeed, as online head at NUS, Edge has experienced first hand what happens when businesses don't think intelligently aboutintelligent audiences: "nusonline had its origins in the gold rush days of internet VCs throwing money at anyone with a laptop and a Hoxton Fin haircut. The resulting site - a partnership between ITM Communications and NUS - tried to be all things to all students, reviewing films and games, covering NUS news, storing documents used bystudents' union officers, and selling products via paid ad spots. It was a poorly executed mish-mash."
Famously within the student movement, after three years of foisting an ill-conceived product on students, ITM ran out of money. They went into administration, leaving NUS out of pocket but with the freedom to create a site that worked for itsaudience. "The site has undergone a crucial revamp. We've stripped it down and focused on NUS core concerns: campaigning, giving advice to students and building on the NUS card's status as the primary discount card used by the student market. We changed the site's construction and cut theunder-performing peripherals such asentertainment reviews.
"We've concentrated on developing a new media strategy to serve nusonline's varied audiences, rather than treating it as a get-rich-quick side project. Having said that, we do still use the site for revenue streams, selling limited commercial solus mails as well as placing limited banner ads on the site. We also attract sponsorship for our monthly update emails to our 750,000 registered members."
Edge outlines the benefits new media has for NUS and the student movement: "It saves us money - our mailing costs have been slashed as we now tend to place documents online and use email tocommunicate with key members. The commercial value of our brand is difficult to assessaccurately, but certainly a better site has increased our credibility within our membership, helping to preserve our status within the student market."
This year will undoubtedly be a critical one for the big websites that, like the old nusonline, continue to address themselves to the fictional 'generic' higher ed student. They lose a third of their target audience every year because ofgraduations, and they will find new customers less forgiving than in the earlier days. Viral game creators will have to find formats beyond the multiple-choice quiz and the platform game, if they are to keep students entertained. And copywriters are going to have to get a muchbetter sense of student thinking if they are to avoid delete buttons getting the better of text messages and emails.
All the evidence shows: the student audience is online and waiting. The question is, who is smart enough to reach them?
This article was a chapter in The Reach Students Handbook (2003)
Students, it is often claimed, are hard to reach. Dispersed across the UK at over 600 institutions, each with their own timetable, they regularly change address and are not practically targetable through any piece of old media. They've had marketers gasping for breath for years. It's easy to see why the new media revolution has attracted many new businesses to the student market.
The arrival of the internet, email and mobile phones has brought a tantalising opportunity to make direct contact with the student community. The fact that all UK students have free internet access, that many are early adopters of new technologies, and that communication resources are the lifeblood of the highly sociableaway-from-home young adult, have all helped make the new media proposition irresistible.
In the wake of the dot com boom period and with the benefit of several years practical experience, the statistics and trends that people projected on students and new media have been adjusted. But they are still impressive. According to NUSSL, 79 per cent of students use the internet, most of them every day. Marketing company Campus Marketing believe that 100% of students have an email address, while VirginStudent claim that two thirds of students own their own computer. Tom Edge, New Media Manager at the National Union of Students, updates the situation for 2003/4: "In the USA, 98 per cent of college students surf the internet weekly. 91 per cent are online at least three times per week. In the UK we're fast approaching those levels of usage. Students are online for consistently long periods, for both work and pleasure, and are willing to be entertained while they surf.
"Email is proven to be a primary method ofcommunication for students - especially with friends and family elsewhere in the country. Given therelationship between email and the net, effective campaigns online can find their message quickly spreading when there's user approval. So the student audience is there and waiting."
Of course businesses always had the opportunity to reach students through on-campus promotions,student media, sponsorship etc. But the costs involved have been prohibitive to many. The major attraction of new media is that it can be very economical. "It's cheap to get a good online campaign underway," says Edge, "relative to TV and radio spots. Even a full site and game build, with hosting, will come in way under the budget for a cheap localised TV spot - and a good campaign may bring millions of users to not just notice, butinteract with your brand. The potential benefits are sky-high even with low cost products, so long as the creative element works."
Ah, the creative element; creative executions have delivered the successes and failures of many a student-orientated business. So how can marketers make sure online ventures work for this tricky demographic?
"Ignoring banner ads and rich media promotions, there are a lot of websites out there today vying for a surfer's attention," says Edge. "A company willing to invest in promoting their message online should thoroughly survey the competition and attempt to find a new, innovative hook for their site. When it comes to viral emails, student web users are very often experienced and jaded - another low-end Flash game won't catch their imagination unless it has a serious creative hook behind it. The idea of the game must be at least as amusing as the pleasure of the game play. People only forward emails which have amused them enough to want to spread the joy - everything else gets binned."
"So being innovative is key, even if you're just putting a sharp new spin on an old idea. Poor quality, hackneyed ideas are probably the greatest obstacles to an online promotional campaign's success - getting it built and hosted professionally is a comparatively small worry."
One of the best-known creators of effective online campaigns aimed at young people is Skive, a London-based new media agency. Skive are a dab hand with 'viral' games - those that get passed around by email to friends and spread like an infection. These games are particularly effective with students - a NetValue survey in 2002 found that they account for a third of the UK's 3 million regular online games players.
Skive's clients have included Adidas, Sony Playstation and Wrigleys. MD Sean Singleton thinks their recipe for success with students is pretty simple: "We try to inject humour into our work because it's really effective online. We think that young people tend to laugh at the same things. Being a student is about going out, enjoying yourself, being a bit cynical and laughing at the world. That's the approach we have at Skive.
"The problem we have to overcome is finding that place where the brand is comfortable with thecreative and the student can laugh at it. What works best with viral campaigns, for example, is the extreme stuff. But brands don't always want to be associated with that.
"That said, we would always encourage risk-taking. I don't think many campaigns are worth doing unless they involve risk."
Equally successful at student-orientated online communication is Mike Slocombe, who runs activist website Urban75. Slocombe's not-for-profit website is his passion, but such is its success with intelligent young people, he is often offeredcommissions by brands eager to make use of his impressive e-communication skills. Slocombe has produced work for Virgin Radio, Xfm and Youthnet. "I love daft, nonsense stuff on the web," he says. "I don't like to see it used bycompanies as some kind of expanded corporate brochure, and I think a lot of students probably feel the same.
"Good practice is always inviting the student to feed back on what they're experiencing. Bad practice is thinking you can create anenvironment that young people will flock into and inhabit, but creating it so it entirely suit your own needs. You can't set up a chat room, for example, and ban swearing. It won't get used."
What has to be remembered before any online communication with students is attempted is that this group are habitual new media users. "Students close down pop-ups without noticing their content," says Tom Edge. "They can detect a spam mail from a dozen clicks away and won't, generally, be generous enough to see a page through if it doesn't entertain - there are too many options out there. It is easy to get it wrong, but those who get it right may well enjoy aglobal spread of their message that would be hard to achieve in any other medium."
Indeed, as online head at NUS, Edge has experienced first hand what happens when businesses don't think intelligently aboutintelligent audiences: "nusonline had its origins in the gold rush days of internet VCs throwing money at anyone with a laptop and a Hoxton Fin haircut. The resulting site - a partnership between ITM Communications and NUS - tried to be all things to all students, reviewing films and games, covering NUS news, storing documents used bystudents' union officers, and selling products via paid ad spots. It was a poorly executed mish-mash."
Famously within the student movement, after three years of foisting an ill-conceived product on students, ITM ran out of money. They went into administration, leaving NUS out of pocket but with the freedom to create a site that worked for itsaudience. "The site has undergone a crucial revamp. We've stripped it down and focused on NUS core concerns: campaigning, giving advice to students and building on the NUS card's status as the primary discount card used by the student market. We changed the site's construction and cut theunder-performing peripherals such asentertainment reviews.
"We've concentrated on developing a new media strategy to serve nusonline's varied audiences, rather than treating it as a get-rich-quick side project. Having said that, we do still use the site for revenue streams, selling limited commercial solus mails as well as placing limited banner ads on the site. We also attract sponsorship for our monthly update emails to our 750,000 registered members."
Edge outlines the benefits new media has for NUS and the student movement: "It saves us money - our mailing costs have been slashed as we now tend to place documents online and use email tocommunicate with key members. The commercial value of our brand is difficult to assessaccurately, but certainly a better site has increased our credibility within our membership, helping to preserve our status within the student market."
This year will undoubtedly be a critical one for the big websites that, like the old nusonline, continue to address themselves to the fictional 'generic' higher ed student. They lose a third of their target audience every year because ofgraduations, and they will find new customers less forgiving than in the earlier days. Viral game creators will have to find formats beyond the multiple-choice quiz and the platform game, if they are to keep students entertained. And copywriters are going to have to get a muchbetter sense of student thinking if they are to avoid delete buttons getting the better of text messages and emails.
All the evidence shows: the student audience is online and waiting. The question is, who is smart enough to reach them?
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