Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much!
An idea introduced to a population almost always fades away.
Send 1,000 people a coupon, and perhaps 20 use it. To get more usage, you either need to ping the audience again or find a new group of people.
This explains why marketers are always in search of new people to reach, and also insist on frequency of messaging–it maximizes the percentage of the group that is reached and minimizes the fade of the idea.
There’s an important exception to the rule of fading ideas, though.
If you haven’t followed the Old Spice phenomenon from this week, you’ve missed out. It’s a great example of a really strong performing viral campaign that harkens back to some of the classics like Subservient Chicken, Shave Everywhere, and Tea Partay.
It started on on television earlier this year with the following Old Spice commercial, “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” (link for those of you in RSS readers):
(If you’d like to see how this was accomplished, Leo Laporte has a great interview with the agency.)
That commercial, first aired during the Super Bowl in early February, as of this week has garnered over 14 million views. And then the next commercial, “Old Spice: Questions“, went up on YouTube:
Those ads are pretty funny to begin with and were passed around a good deal. But this week, Wieden + Kennedy, creators of the campaign for Procter & Gamble, took it to the next level.
“Further positioning itself as a TV alternative, YouTube has launched a new user interface option named ‘Leanback,’ with which users can more easily browse content at a distance.” MediaPost, Thursday July 8, 2010
Awesome idea and functionality that will help lead YouTube to the forefront of next generation online video viewing. YouTube is so often overlooked as an incredibly viral social media tool and platform. Everywhere I go the speakers in the social media space are talking about Facebook and Twitter and forgetting the highly engaged value of YouTube.
If you are planning a social media strategy, and want visibility and consumer engagement, make sure to include YouTube… especially as Google adds functionality to the platform.
Ted Rubin