Op-Ed: Viral marketing, or Rent a Blogger, the easy way to target your ads

Viral marketing, aka Revenge of the Communications Workshops, has now become an official method of advertising. How simply wonderful. Apparently even people whose only word in their vocabulary is “monetization” can understand the process.

It started with the “cell phone makes popcorn” ad. 15 million hits, that got, as useless a bit of information as it is. Basis of success was the phonephobia scare of the time, when radiation from cell phones was a big thing. It turned out that phones don’t kill people, they only turn them into idiots, but any health scare will do to attract attention. Ask any American tomato in the last week or so. Talking about unlikely sources, (or sauces, if you're a tomato) Xinhua has this article:

The ingredients for success are simple: at a time when the supposed harmful effects of mobile phones have consumers worried, this so-called "pop corn" video has intrigued, amused or even alarmed Internet users.

In turn, they have spread it to their peers, thus contributing to the phenomenal success of the advert, which was made by a company that specializes in producing Bluetooth and other mobile telephone applications.

That figures. “Come and buy our health hazard.” Expect “Plagues R Us” sometime next month. It’s cheap, too, because it’s free. Like Chicken Little, having been told the sky is falling, you go and tell someone about it, and the net, inevitably, spreads the bull far and wide. (A sickening lisp is appropriate here. I thould thay, thickening lithp, I thuppothe.) Now cometh the motht gruthemotht ghathtlietht part of the thtory:

But before reaching the general public, marketing agencies have to perform a lot of work in order to target the right market segment. "Unlike advertising campaigns in traditional media, it is after the campaign has been launched that the hardest work begins," says Emmanuel Vivier of Culture buzz, an agency specializing in viral marketing.

Depending on the campaign, it is vital for agencies to choose their first target. Webmasters, the presidents of associations of students as well as influential bloggers are targets of choice to form the first link in the chain.

"The most difficult is to convince the bloggers who are the most suspicious of all internet users. But if it works with them, then the general public rallies behind them and the chain takes an exponential turn," according to Chast.

Meaning Yer Average Blogger is a market segment leader. Anyone who wants to build an ark, now would be a good time to start. This time, just to be on the safe side, only take one of each species. Even better, the viral ads, in the form of YouTube videos, blog media, and related psychotherapy, can last for months, not just the pitiful few weeks of a traditional campaign. Given the fertile minds of the advertising industry, the bonny bouncing intellects of the production industry, and the ability of bloggers to tell the difference between furniture and people, Earth should become uninhabitable in about six years. Me, I’m digging a tunnel to Andromeda.