Can You Survive the Frenzied Waters Campaign?

I’m a little miffed I didn’t receive my obituary in the mail.

It seems that all the super-duper, uber-coolest Social Media Influencers are now apparently dead, having been devoured by rampaging Viral Marketing Sharks. These powerfully predatory creatures have been cleverly stirring the Facebook, Twitter and webby waters into a bloody frenzy:

Frenzied Waters
Something terrifying has been lurking under the ocean’s shimmering surface. Feeding on those most vulnerable and those least suspecting. Think you can survive the murky depths of Frenzied Waters?

Naturally there’s a contest:

@FrenziedWaters: UPDATE: 5 capsules still out there. “Asbury Park”: Miami, Atlanta. “Battle of the Coral Sea”: Los Angeles, Atlanta, San Fran #FrenziedWaters

@yeldarb101 They are capsules containing artifacts from tragic oceanic events. They have been found in 11 markets at specific coordinates.

All of this viral voodoo is being conducted on behalf of— . Oops. I’m not going to tell you. Snoop around the bloody oceans yourself. (Or read to the bottom for a clue, Nancy Drew.)

I continue to be ticked I didn’t receive the actual package. This shocker featured not only the highly detailed obit but also a jar with shark-bitten shorts,a floating key, a seashell and the warning sign pictured above. Last effects, I guess. Genius.

When I watched the video, I had the option to click through to Facebook, where the brilliantly sick minds who created this campaign apparently scoured my profile for personal information. Much to my utter surprise, my gruesomely final flashing thoughts were of a Ladies Who Launch panel I once moderated. There, as my blood bubbled and swirled through the frenzied waters, was the smiling face of Facebook’s own Randi J. Zuckerberg, chatting up the eager audience. Happily, Randi’s Dotcomix videos always crack me up. So I guess I sunk down to those murky waters with a grin.

As always, I have mixed feelings about intentional Viral Marketing. All too often it’s too staged and fake to be genuinely effective. But extra kudos to this team for playing it smart in one very important way: tapping into both online and offline channels. When everybody’s zigging by being so relentlessly virtual, it’s an inspired idea to zag instead, via real life tactics such as the package and …(see picture above). <--clue

Guru’s Note: I’d love to check out the Frenzied Waters marketing plan. I have a feeling the Target Audience here is the heavily male 18-34, bring-on-the-blood-n-gore segment of the taxonomy. My female friends were weirded out not only by the yuckiness of being the shark’s supper but also by the idea of viewing one’s own death. Like ICK.

Many thanks to @ChrisBrogan who so graciously first alerted us this morning to his shocking death by shark.

A Whopper of A Facebook Promo.

If you log into Facebook and discover a gaggle of Friends gone missing, don’t reach for the milk carton.
I know where you can find them: At Burger King. You’ve been traded in for a free Whopper.

Burger King’s new Facebook app lets you to sacrifice 10 of your Facebook friends and get a voucher for a free Whopper in return. It’s about time someone had a little fun with this Friend Request Frenzy. As many of you know from my previous rants on the social media douchebag subject, I’d gladly trade a couple shameless promoters and neo-MLM ‘friends’ for a greasy burger selling for around $2.

“We thought there could be some fun there, removing some of these people who are friends, but not necessarily best friends,” said Jeff Benjamin, executive interactive creative director at Crispin Porter +Bogusky, the relentlessly hip ad agency on the account, said in a recent Adweek. “It’s asking the question of which love is bigger, your love for your friends or your love for the Whopper.”

Getting Naked for Peace.

(Be very glad) The Guru is not ready to take off her clothes for peace. However, she wholeheartedly supports those who do! And loves it when viral marketing techniques are used for the right reasons.

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Virgin Active Says Leave the Cleavage to the Girls. We Say Leave the Moobs in London.

We’ve had Carrot Mobs, Grand Central Freezes and now — Moob Men. Recently, a dedicated team of men with man boobs — aka moobs –mobbed London and nearby cities, with the mission of raising awareness of obesity and encouraging the British public to get in shape. Virgin Active’s viral campaign highlights part of the body that many feel embarrassed about, such as bingo wings, wobbly bellies and muffin tops . The buzzy slogan “Love your good bits, lose your bad bits”, aims to persuade people to start exercising and get the body fit ‘the old-fashioned way.’ That is, with sweat, not surgery.

Celebrities who have been ridiculed for their man boobs include Simon Cowell, Tony Blair, and ex Monkey Davy Jones.

If the campaign is as viral as other WOM winners, American men may suddenly start obsessing about their bingo wings and muffin tops. Lord only knows Wall Street needs to worry about something other than the stock market. NASDAQ? Housing Starts? Muffins Tops? No contest.

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Sarah Palin Ups SNL To Best Ratings in 14 Years.

Guru’s Update on the exploding Viral Views: NBC’s own capture of the view count of Palin’s opening monologue is tracking some 580,000+ views to date. By the time Monday hits, it’ll be well into seven figures. Or more. Palin’s “Moose Rap” runs more than 300,000. Many of them from my daughter’s dorm at Berkeley.

There’s no telling if the real Sarah Palin’s appearance on the late night legend “SNL” will improve the McCain/Palin ticket’s odds in 15 days. But it sure gave Saturday Night Live a big bump (kudos to the uber-pregnant Amy Poehler) in the ratings. The Moose Rap will now enter the show’s long history of watercooler classics.

View Amy & the Eskimos here: The Moose Rap

This would be the highest-rated “SNL” since March 12, 1994, when Olympic skater Nancy Kerrigan — skating with the late, great, ever-graceful Chris Farley –was the host and Aretha Franklin the musical guest. “SNL” would also be the third-highest-rated show of all last week, including primetime, following only ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” (12.0/18) and CBS’ “CSI” (11.2/17). So does that mean 82-year old Cloris Leachman beat out the beehived babe?

The show opened with a conversation between the real Palin chatting with executive producer Lorne Michaels while Tina Fey portrayed Palin in front of the studio audience. Among other things, Palin tried to get Michaels to agree to let her play Fey on “30 Rock,” on which Michaels is an executive producer. But Michaels declined, saying that nobody watches “30 Rock.” She was then introduced to Alec Baldwin, another “30 Rock” star who after lambasting her politics, then tells the Governor: “You’re hotter in person.”

Also on the show was host Josh Brolin, star of the new Oliver Stone movie “W”, and actor Mark Wahlberg, cracking jokes about his hip “Entourage” credentials.

Saturday’s show was up 161% compared with the average last October (4.1/10). It’s also up 47% compared with the Oct. 4 “SNL” that averaged a 7.3/18. The real SP averaged a 10.7 rating/24 share in the 56 metered markets, according to preliminary estimates released Sunday by Nielsen Media Research.

Thanks to always in-the-know THR’s Political Theater Blog.

Guru’s Note:  Not surprisingly, the media (‘liberal + regular liberal’) is going wild with SP’s appearance on SNL.  Commentator Pat Kitano has a good piece on his blog, which also links to the buzzy Election 2008 twitter site.

Superhero Yourself? Kodak Launches A New Viral Marketing Promotion: “Make Me Super”.

I’m an old softie when it comes to Kodak, as some of my favorite people in the world live in Rochester, New York, home of the company’s longtime corporate headquarters. Many of these favorites at one time actually worked at Kodak — until the one-time photo pioneer missed the turn-off to the digital age. Since the inception of the Hail Mary turnaround strategy in 2004, the world’s biggest film manufacturer has slashed some 27,000 jobs and cut major product lines in an aggressive attempt to play catch up. One of these attempts is last week’s launch of an online marketing promotion. Kodak is jumping on the viral bandwagon most recently driven by smash viral success, Office Max’s Elf Yourself.

OfficeMax let people turn themselves into elves. But online photo service, the 70-million member strong Kodak Gallery, thinks people might prefer superheroes to elves. The end result is “Make Me Super,” at Makemesuper.com. Consumers are invited to upload their own pictures to a video showing them wearing superhero Spandex and capes, ostensibly transforming themselves into superheroes and Kodak into a massively viral winner. (See the Guru above as a Farrah-hair’d SuperGirl)

Wisely, Kodak enlisted EVB, the San Francisco based wizco behind a growing list of marketing hits like Office Max, Levi’s ‘Unbutton Your Beasts’ and Intuit’s JingleMaker.

Smartly targeting its user base of fervent gift-purchasing females, Kodak created a strong retail component, allowing the Superhero photos to be added to mousepads, shirts, mugs and other personalized giftware.

Kodak is also pursuing their consumer audience in an unusual-for-Kodak way: instead of the traditional media plan, the company is turning to the Blog-Hive of buzzy influential bloggers, along with viral video focused sites and even online superhero hangouts. The marketing team is hoping this strategy will attract a younger and more digitally savvy consumer.

Guru’s Take: By now readers of this blog know I am something of a curmudgeon. I criticized another recent viral marketing promotion ‘Yearbook Yourself’ for oddly not explaining the link between playing with its groovy make-over technology and being forced to register at an online shopping center. I criticized a Seventh Generation ‘Virtual Tree Maker’ for skipping the opportunity to make its viralizer more substantive. Now I am putting on my Critic’s hat for Kodak and wondering about such basics as why I can’t name myself . . . I am forced to be either Super Girl/Boy/Cat/Dog/Momma/Grandmother etc. I wanted to be Super Guru! Why can’t I choose their Super Girl video but add my own name? Personalization is paramount. In truth, I am rather underwhelmed by Make Me Super. I honestly wish it had grabbed me by the cape and convinced me to send my spandex self off to my network of link-loving pals.

I also wish Kodak/EVB had created cross-promotions with the places target women 25-44 frequently visit: Facebook, Ning, etsy, MySpace and all those gazillions of Mom blogs. Why not make a deal with BlogHer?  With the DVD release of uber-superhero Iron Man, which pretty much coincides with the Superhero release.   Maybe all these efforts are still to come?

In fact, I wonder about Kodak Gallery, which is already skewing older, now that so many of the popular sites are either social networking sites or have social networking features — the stickiest of which are the hugely trafficked photo-sharing areas.

And while I know it’s not really fair to compare viral veteran Elf Yourself to the newbie Superhero, here’s how the Elf did last year:

The Elfin’ Impact from 11/20/07 to 1/2/08 :- Over 193 million site visits
- Over 123 million elves were created
- 60 elves were created per second
- Users spent a combined average of 2,600 years on the site
- Ranked #51 most visited website on the web (HitWise Intelligence)
- Ranked #1 on “Movers & Shakers” (Alexa Rankings)
- Ranked as top 1,000 website in 50 countries (Alexa Rankings)

Source: Elf Yourself 2007 “>Metrics Marketing blog.

And finally, Elizabeth McDowell, Publicist for EVB San Francisco, the co-creator of “Elf Yourself,” says “The success is in part due to three fundamental characteristics 1) Keep it Simple 2) Make it Personal and 3) Give People a Reason to Pass it on.”

Go check out Make Me Super and tell me if Kodak followed those three characteristics.

Retail’s Best New Back To School Viral Campaign: YearbookYourself.com.

Ever wondered what you might look like in a past life? (Ewwww, did you look like your MOTHER?! Now you’ll know for sure.)

In the cleverest viral campaign since OfficeMax’s Elf Yourself, social-networking-savvy Taubman Centers, owner of upscale shopping malls nationwide, has created a buzzworthy new site to drive more teens and their parents into its malls for back-to-school shopping.

YearbookYourself.com allows you to upload a photo and see yourself with classic hairdos and vintage outfits through the decades. Era-appropriate music plays while you’re waiting to be stunned by your new ‘do. Once Yearbooked, people can save their pictures and post them to their favorite social networking site, such as Facebook and MySpace, as well as share them with friends. All I can say is: Keen! (1956 Guru) Groovy! (1966 Guru) Awesome! (1988 Guru)

Unfortunately, for all its blockbuster potential, the site architecture breaks a number of basic social marketing rules. In fact, parts of the site are somewhat kludgey and even confusing. Most significantly, the fact that the Taubman shopping center connection is never explained until you’re suddenly asked to Choose A Mall.  Huh?  Yet all they had to do is add a screen or a crawl along the bottom that explains who is behind the site.

The Malls themselves require registration — that typical My Mall stuff –which is really annoying. It stops the flow; it stops the excitement. It is a significant barrier to continued engagement. I was interested in seeing how Lucky jeans were an update on 1978 jeans — but I couldn’t see them without ponying up a pile of my personal information. Why create this terrifically trippy widget if you’re going to make it difficult to explore?  What’s likely to happen is the sponsors’ worst nightmare: a high level of engagement with the YearbookYourself pictures and then a marked percentage of abandons when the user hits the reg-required mall pages.  With all those teen fashionistas out there scouring the web for store and style content, its a shame to lose them with barriers and bumps that should have been prevented via Usability Testing.

Worse, once you’re in Mall World, you can’t easily return to the YearbookYourself you’ve already created.

I do applaud the erstwhile attempts to connect yesterday’s styles and trends with today. 

The site also features “homeroom” pages that allow visitors to save their favorite yearbook photo to a page and then invite friends to post their photos as well. Once invited, friends post their photos, a virtual yearbook page is created. Shared links allow friends to view each others’ homeroom pages. They can also save, print, email or post their yearbook photo creation to a webpage or social network site.

I’m conducting some mini-research this week to see if teens think YearbookYourself.com is fun, corny, cool or lame — and will track if and where they actually post. My focus-group-guru self thinks they won’t admit a thing . . . but that MySpace will see some Yearbook action soon.

Wouldn’t it have been a kick if Taubman, and always innovative ad agency Colle + McVoy,  had added:

• A celeb component, with a Gossip Girl, hot band, or Jonas Brother getting Yearbooked? MySpace would have been an awesome partner here.
• A Buy-and-Sell-Your Friends game.  Does your bff cost more in 1978 or 1954?
• Stimulated Homeroom usage by mixing in REAL celeb yearbook pix as part of a prize-winning scavenger hunt or name that celeb.  Again, partner with MySpace.  Wouldn’t The Ubiquitous Tom be perfect in Yearbook ‘disguise’?