It requires a basic understanding of Internet users.  The vast majority of people that use the internet are content consumers.  Sites are built to make this group of users be able to consume content easily.   On the other side, there’s a small percentage that create content.  Some are professionals, but the vast majority of creators toil in relative anonymity, but continue to produce.  These are the folks that create reviews at sites like citysearch and comment on newspaper stories.   They are, virtually by definition, incredibly eager to share their thoughts.

These content creators are the most vital and active Twitter users.  They see the power of the system to push out their message, and are eager to defend its virtue.  Twitter can provide a megaphone for content creators of prior obscurity, and further amplify the voice of a loud organization or celebrity.  Since psychographically they are the same as blog commenters, they aren’t afraid to provide input into any article written about their new soap box.  This creates activity and action on sites that write about twitter.  It creates a cycle, which is self reinforcing.

Oddly enough, it doesn’t yet matter if the masses adopt it.  It will, as the ability to push a message to the masses is what is attractive in the first place.  But for generating hype, it doesn’t matter.

There’s a lot that any business can learn here.  Your best customers are your most powerful advocates.  Make it easy to share your message and they will.  Also, never forget the value you are giving to your best customers.  Twitter provides value by giving a voice, and their best customers repay them by returning the favor in hype.  Nothing is more viral than that.

In the end, the ad wasn’t very good, but they had more than made up for it in buzz.  They’ve repeated the stunt for several years, by always trying to push the letter of the law to the limit.

The latest in the string of “PRstunt-erists” is a dating website that promotes affairs and cheating.  Darren Rovell of CNBC was kind enough to provide them with a blog post about how their ad for the Super Bowl Program was denined.

Darren, when you post links to the site, the PRstunt-erists win.  They could have gotten maybe 100,000 people to notice their ad, and your coverage might generate 10x that.

Personally, I stand behind the NFL and their decison to deny the ad.  In fact to atone, I think they should offer a free ad in the program to the dating site that is the polar opposite.  One that is not for married people and is free – the free dating site downtoearth.com.

While it’s hard for anyone to change a culture like that, it’s pretty clear that’s its wrong from the get go.  Marketing on the Internet isn’t merely digital, it’s interactive.  It’s a conversation, not a soapbox.  It’s not just a marketing channel, it’s a completely different medium.

However, it’s awfully hard to get people to understand the power of a medium they barely know how to use.  CEOs are just to busy worrying about other things to “surf” and learn to adopt a new behavior.

What would I do in this situation?  I’d bring up case studies both good and bad.  If it’s a competitive threat, it tends to get a response.  Take a look a blogs like the consumerist and see how often you’ve been listed.  It’s important to make people aware that people on the Internet will talk about your brand regardless, so it’s better to be involved than try to ignore it.

As I was writing this, I found this great interview about how ad agencies are changing their approach to interactive.  It’s a great read, especially for those that would call internet marketing “digital.” 

By implying that babies are a fashion accessory, J&J insulted the bond between a mother and a child.  This video on youtube shows a number of people’s feelings about the insult. Advertising Age provides an excellent overview of the time line here as well.

To my way of thinking the failure was in not actually having anything to say.  Any pain reliever could have said the same thing.  If all you have to say is that you understand your target, you’d better make sure that you actually do.  In this case J&J and Taxi clearly did not.

Pulling the campaign was the right move in this case, not because of the critics, but because it was very unlikely to be effective.  I would actually say they were fortunate that people were as vocal as they were so they could avoid wasting hundred of thousands in wasted media buys.

There’s a lesson here about “common interest” campaigns and social media.  The buzz will say one of a few things.  “Wow this brand really gets me” or “I hate it”  With the instant communication options open today, it would be very smart to monitor the buzz and react quickly.  If you get the Wow, ramp up.  If you get the latter kill it and listen to the reasons why.

More often than not, the viral nature worked simply.  You install the app, everyone that you are friends with becomes aware of the install through your newsfeed or direct invites, and it becomes an innocuous part of a persons profile.  Every time a user visits his or her profile, the small frame of the app becomes an active user.

Recently, the controversial facebook redesign has made apps far less prominent.  They now have been relegated to the “boxes” tab on a users profile, forcing a user to actively engage.   It would seem as if this has caused traffic to many apps to plummet dramatically.  The reverse is true for a few.  Estimated app valuations have also apparetly plummeted as well.

It seems as if the second stage for apps has begun.  Its no longer going to be enough to follow the viral strategy 101 and just push for installs.  App makers will need to build apps that are engaging, not merely virally marketed well.

Leave it to Nintendo to break every other rule and create an ad that people will seek out.  Using the now familiar idiom of leaked footage of a new game uploaded to youtube, they continue to make the video break out of the frame to make the entire web browser appear to be broken apart by the rough game play.  It delivers a message that illustrates the uniqueness of the game in a way that’s very easy to understand. 

How effective has it been?  As of this writing about 12 days after it posted, over 2.3M views have been logged.  Pretty amazing for something that is nothing more than an ad.

After seeing the success of these efforts, Circuit City launched their FANALYSTS’s Channel.  The sponsored channel encourages users to upload fantasy football analysts to upload videos which are hand selected for inclusion on the channel.  There is no hard sell for Circuit City, but there’s lots of their logo everywhere.  Much in the tradition of Kige, the videos frequently diverge from football to broader pop culture like Heroes and politics.

I’ll give credit to Circuit City for being a part of a “movment” instead of trying to invent thier own.  By demonstrating their understanding and providing a launching pad for content generators, they are trying to get ahead of their rival.   The traction isn’t great thus far, but I think it’s a nice use of user generated content.

My interest here is the sheer amount of conversation this move has created.  I’m not sure if Crispin Porter + Bogusky is that brilliant, but they did claim from the beginning they were trying to get people to talk about windows and the campaign.  That has most certainly been achieved.  The two million video views on youtube, as noted in my prior post, is pretty strong evidence.

What I remain puzzled by is such moves have created a negative buzz.  The old rule of PR was: “I don’t care what they say, just make sure they spell the name right” but I can’t believe it applies in this case.  Also if as rumored they are going straight after the much beloved Mac/PC ads, they are certain to encounter an even bigger storm of negativity.  

However, the person that really needs to be convinced is not the online elitist, but an “average” consumer who doesn’t write blogs or get as involved in advertising and marketing as some others.  Is the bewilderment over the first couple of ads real for them, or did they just enjoy watching Seinfeld again?  Did people start to change their opinion of Microsoft after seeing some commercials that were nearly completely unrelated to actual products?  Will they even attribute those few vignettes to Microsoft at all?  My guess is most people somewhat enjoyed the commercials and shifted their opinion every so slightly positively for Microsoft.  It’s nudging a battle ship, but still an ever so slight move in the right direction.  

There’s still a big risk to this approach, and according to most the effort has been very expensive.  Microsoft is attacking a huge strategic problem of a bad corporate image in a very unusual way, but with an impressive and patient approach.

The second installment debuted on microsoft, and was quickly ported over to youtube (by microsoft themselves).  This video is over four minutes long and reveals a bit more about the reason behind the campaign.  Windows wants to connect with real people.  To do so they employed two extraordinary wealthy individuals and “embedded” them into a normal family.  Again, the feature has very little about computers.  However, this one is pretty funny, despite being a bit confusing.

There are a number of very interesting things here.  The second commercial (more accuratly a webisode) tells you exactly what the first was trying to accomplish.  It’s so above board about it, that you can’t help but respect that Microsoft realizes they have a very serious image problem.

The second interesting point is the amount of buzz these items have generated.  Each of the videos has generated around 1M views on youtube.  That’s no sneezing panda, but pretty sold for a video that’s been up for only a few weeks and requires an attention span longer than the typical 14 year old in need or ritalin (or average blogger for that matter).  Lots of people may hate it, but they are taking the time to post, comment and otherwise communicate about it.  It is sparking an honest debate.  That’s quite impressive given that a vast majority of Microsoft postings in the past tended to be harshly critical.

At the bottom line, I’m not sure if the commercial will be all that effective or not.  It’s quite the undertaking to take a brand as well known as Microsoft and change they way people view it.  In the end it might end up be an ad campaign about nothing.   However, at the very least they are taking on a huge problem in a very impressive manner using methods that only they could.

Smaller brands can learn a lot from this situation.  The biggest lesson is to never let your brand get this far out of control.  They were the big bad monopolist for a very long time and tended to ignore consumers along the way.  It’s what got Microsoft in the pickle between apple and needing to do a campaign like this.  The second lesson is that respecting your consumer’s intelligence can go a long way toward getting your message spread.  It’s my opinion that the reason this ad is generating this level of communicaiton is how frank and honest it is about the situation they are trying to address.