One of the things I love about marketing is the myriad of directions you can take in reaching your target audience. Obviously the way in which you position your message is important to your brand and having a single benefit that hooks in your audience is vital especially since media approach is even more mobile than it was five years ago.
Virals are nothing new of course, they've been around for a few years and there are thousands of them vying for your "forward" click. When I think of Skittles I think of thousands and thousands of the sweets falling from the sky (Taste the Rainbow) or the 'King Midas' advert where everything the guy touches turns to Skittles.
Rarely though do I associate Skittles with porn, I buy packets of Skittles for my kids for god sake but I have to say this viral though extremely adult in theme is irresistibly one you would most certainly forward to a bunch of friends.(I have to say my own wedding night was a lot tamer by comparison).
Many years ago I got into a huge heap of trouble when I tasked a London based viral agency with creating a viral for
Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks. As you're no doubt aware the MK franchise is one of the bloodiest beat em up video-games on the market and made its name through its gruesome finishing moves of spine removal and dismemberment. So I tasked the agency with creating something equally as gory and outlined an idea about a group of businessmen around a conference table discussing sales numbers and having them fight, the viral is known as "blood on the carpet".
When it went live it went everywhere, and I mean everywhere, when we saw the viral seeding report after a couple of days it had been watched from places as far away as the Faroe islands to Tibet...then we got a phone call from the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority)and a not very nice man asking us to remove the viral.
"We want you to remove the viral" said the disgruntled ASA employee.
"What do you mean you want us to remove it, remove it from where?" we replied.
"From the internet"said the ASA man.
"Exactly how do you imagine we do that, this is on thousands of sites all over the world?" we replied.
Now if memory serves me right we never quite got a reply to that one because no one really knew (including the ASA) much about establishing guidelines for age gating videos and online content. From that day forward though the ASA enforced specific guidelines for viral advertising and kept a close eye on what we produced for our campaign material. We didn't have the balls to tell the US office in Chicago about the viral because we knew they'd kill the concept but I'm pretty sure that Ed Boon, Mortal Kombat's creator liked it. So you can personally blame me for that, little ol me changed the rules for ASA guidelines on virals, well, me and London's premier viral agency Maverick anyway.
The problem is you will never ever be able to successfully police the internet for content, everything from Extremist manifestos to 'that video' (the one with the two girls and the cup) go viral because its user generated and seeds to thousand if not millions of sites because it forms social currency. We all value the need to contribute to conversation, your own hierarchy within your group of friends is influenced by what you contribute socially to that group, if you know something that one of your friends doesn't your social hierarchy is one of influence and knowledge for that specific subject and your standing within the group is increased. Personal recommendation from a friend, the concept of word of mouth is marketing gold, as an owner of a brand you can influence it with your audience but you can't control it, that is to say you can't make people want your product,you can certainly make them talk about it but you can't control the end users decision to own it. Marketeers want you to engage with their brands by forwarding their brand messages on, they encourage the conflict of social heirachy within your group at every possible opportunity.
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