viral

Debunking The Tipping Point

A fascinating article in the February issue of Fast Company about Duncan Watts, a researcher at Yahoo, who questions some of the core concepts of Malcom Gladwell's book The Tipping Point [T]astemakers, Gladwell concluded, are the spark behind any successful trend. "What we are really saying," he writes, "is that in a given process or system, some people matter more than others." In modern marketing, this idea--that a tiny cadre of connected people triggers trends--is enormously seductive. It is the very premise of viral and word-of-mouth campaigns: Reach those rare, all-powerful folks, and you'… Read more

AlwaysOn favorites: Play-Doh bunnies, sunglasses, and a blender

NEW YORK--Will it blend? This innovative ad campaign sure did.

A lot of Madison Avenue types have packed into midtown Manhattan's upscale Mandarin Oriental hotel for the annual OnMedia NYC conference, a sort of Silicon-Valley-meets-the-ad-industry event. The conference, which started Monday and ends Wednesday, is presented by new-media trade publication AlwaysOn. At the end of the day on Tuesday, AlwaysOn founder Tony Perkins announced 2007's "Best of Broadband (BOB) Awards," a hand-picked list of the top Web video ads that achieved viral success and actually worked.

Gimmicky? Of course. But after a day of panels and … Read more

You, there. Step back from the Webcam

Corey Delaney, you're making us all look bad.

Last week, the Web became all too well acquainted with this Australian teenager and the sunglasses he refused to remove. On a Melbourne-area newscast, an anchor interviewed Delaney, 16, about the bacchanalia he'd hosted at his parents' house while they were out of town--and the $20,000 fine the police served to him. He responded with the most obnoxious flavor of awkwardness imaginable. Within due time it was all over the likes of YouTube, leaving the viral-video hordes to wonder if it was real. (It was.)

What happened? YouTube fame, … Read more

Rethinking consumption with 'The Story of Stuff'

Reading about Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize this week while juggling holiday shopping gave me a severe case of cognitive dissonance about consumption. This feeling intensified today when the viral video The Story of Stuff arrived in my e-mail inbox.

The Story of Stuff illustrates the consumption chain and aims to reframe our conversation from unlimited production and consumption to sustainability and equity. The video is quite engaging, and I was impressed by its simplicity and effectiveness. No flashy graphics or sensational techniques, just simple line animation accompanying a 20-minute video lecture by sustainability expert Annie Leonard.

The story of this project is an interesting case study of viral video. Leonard has more than 20 years of experience studying factories and dumps around the world--giving her deep knowledge of sustainability issues, but not exactly a visible platform to launch a movement. Enter the video: according to Leonard's blog, The Story of Stuff has been viewed by more than 100,000 people since it was launched last week. … Read more

Conversation 2.0: Social marketing and you

Here's a link to a presentation I gave last week. Forgive me for the "conversation 2.0" moniker but it's a catchy way to pinpoint what's happening right now in the world of marketing. Marketers and brands have always had conversations, but at a much slower pace and mediated by professional parties. That's no longer the case. Conversation 2.0, that is, the Web 2.0-enabled conversation, shifts places and times; it is ubiquitous and doesn't pause--it is, in all senses of the meaning, a "never ending conversation."

Thus, "social … Read more

Top 10 Internet memes

The Internet is a weird place. It also has a weird way of making things wildly popular that would never have been famous before the copy-paste generation.

Over the last decade, we've seen a massive number of funny videos, odd art, daft catchphrases and quirky trends. These "memes," as they're generally known, spread like wildfire over the Web, sometimes reaching millions of people within hours, and millions more within days. They're known as "virals" for an excellent reason. Click here to see the list.

(Source: Crave UK)

Report: Britney-crazed YouTuber may get a TV deal. Say it ain't so

It is a truth universally acknowledged that one-time pop darling Britney Spears' performance at the MTV Video Music Awards earlier this month was a total and utter trainwreck.

But, as viral video fans soon learned, some crazy guy with a YouTube account didn't agree. He promptly put up a clip of questionable sanity in which he lay in bed, sobbing, begging us haters to "Leave Britney Alone." The video has racked up nearly 8 million views on YouTube, reaching a degree of overkill that's made many of us hope the buzz will fade away quickly or … Read more

Interactive game illustrates your family's ecological footprint

Is your family burned out on Webkinz and Club Penguin? Are you ready for a new online "game" with a purpose?

The public radio producer American Public Media has launched an interactive game called Consumer Consequences that allows users to model their own ecological footprints. The game prompts users to describe their lifestyles in terms of house size, car travel, energy use, food and shopping consumption, and the mathematical model behind the game translates the information into an easy-to-understand visual summary.

The bottom-line result tells you how many "Earths" of natural resources it would take to sustain all 6.6 billion humans...if everyone lived like you.… Read more

Social bookmarking explained with hand gestures, puppetry

Some Web 2.0 concepts don't make sense to people unless you break it down to them in ways they can understand. We do our best with our Newbie Guides for things like Twitter, Flickr, Google Reader, and Facebook. Along similar lines comes a video about Del.icio.us, and social bookmarking in general, from Common Craft--a consulting company that does Web videos. This may be viral marketing, but it's very well executed and a joy to watch. I'd hire these guys for my start-up video.

[via Digital Inspiration and DownloadSquad]