techPresident - Viral Marketing, an Oxymoron? - Comments

Nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising

cfinnie — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 12:33:45 -0400

That's another well-known axiom in the marketing business. Good advertising stimulates trial. If users are disappointed, they'll spread the bad news. The usual metric is that a satisfied customer tells two people, a dissatisfied one 13.

My experience in politics, however, is a bit different than in my marketing career. As another commenter said, when people really get excited about a candidate, they will spread the word. I also have to agree with Seth, the messages are just not very compelling. And that's where this axiom does apply. If people are motivated somehow--whether by word of mouth or direct outreach from the campaign--and try to find out more about a candidate, I think they'll be disappointed. I was.

A few months back, I did a classroom exercise at a local state college where I was a guest lecturer. We analyzed the "message" for front-runners from both parties, using their campaign websites. In several cases, we simply couldn't find one. On a few others, we were just guessing. I told the class that, honestly, I thought the ones we could find stunk and gave them the assignment to come up with better ones. They didn't. But they weren't much worse either.

From my experience as both a political activist and a professional marketing writer, I found the websites and the messages disappointing. They were shallow, badly done, unfriendly, uninformative, and uninviting. To see them, you'd think the Dean campaign never happened.

There has to be a reason to talk about it.

tlsmith — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 18:12:22 -0400

For something to go viral, in my mind, there must be a compelling reason for me to want to tell my friends to see something. Either something must be entertaining, such as the 1984 or Obama Girl videos, or be of such historical importance that you just have to see it, such as "Macaca." The trick for the campaigns is, how do they get someone willing to spread some information favorable to their candidate, or unfavorable to their opponent? This is very much an inexact science.

Ron Paul on Eventful

Tex MacRae — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 16:45:10 -0400

I think we're just moving into a new phase in the campaign. Eventful was useful for the early days when the campaign was even less organized than it is now, as a way to stage events for Ron. Now, RP has some staff and his calendar is full, so grassroots activity is more on the ground and communicating via MeetUp, (41,135 Members) blogs, and forums right now. The YouTubers are still going strong as well. Ron Paul's grassroots campaign is simply using the best tools for the job at hand.

Viral Marketing, an Oxymoron?

Micah L. Sifry — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 15:21:21 -0400

What is a real "viral campaign"? Does it even make sense to use the word marketing alongside the word viral? And why does the 2008 race seem to be almost devoid of real word-of-mouth/web success stories?