One look at the Quirk blog confirms that we are big fans of Viral Marketing. We feature at least two innovative viral videos a week and make use of viral campaigns in our own eMarketing strategies for our clients. But, while we fully believe in the power of word-of-mouth marketing, there have been instances where viral campaigns simply weren’t, well, viral. We’re not being mean by pointing these out, but rather using them as a teaching aid to better plan our own campaigns and learn from each other’s mistakes, after all, that is what the Internet is about.

Nokia and Bad Timing

Even big brands like Nokia need to remember to consider the smallest details in their viral campaigns. An elaborate campaign was launched detailing an ancient movie clip that was hidden from the world for hundreds of years because of its “weirdness”. The idea was that people used the tools in the downloads section of their Nokia mobile phone to break the seal on the box containing the video or the seal would automatically open after a 101 hour countdown.

To start with, the countdown ended on America’s Independence Day when most of the country was out celebrating and not online. And this crazy video wasn’t revealed after the countdown, a “termination notice” appeared instead, drawing out the campaign even further. Designed to increase suspense, this actually just confused people and they lost interest.

The morals here:

• Don’t forget the small details - Things like the dates are just as important as the quality of the Flash.
• Don’t over complicate things - The simplest ideas are usually the best ones.
• Social Media, Social Media, and oh, did I mention Social Media? - Nokia did very little to promote their campaign. With the plethora of tools available to you (for free), there is no excuse to simply rely on the awesomeness of your idea. Social Media!

Doritos and Huh? What Happened?

Doritos seemingly released an awesomely awesome viral that attracted huge amounts of attention online. The unique clip promoted a new Doritos plugin that could be downloaded from onlythegoodstuff.com that would allow you to remove all the ads from around the web pages that you view and replace them with anything that you want to see. The brilliant tagline: What if the Internet was just like a bag of Doritos. Filled only with the stuff you like.



Brilliant right? So what went wrong? Well, to date, onlythegoodstuff.com does not exist. Neither does the plug in. And it seems that the clip wasn’t even made by Doritos, but was actually a project by two design students. But no publicity is bad publicity right? Sometimes, but the confusion surrounding the “ad” was never answered by Doritos, meaning that many people became disgruntled with the brand for promising something and not delivering.

The moral here:

• Online Reputation Management – Know what is being said about your brand and respond! Doritos missed out on an excellent chance to market themselves online and pissed off a few people in the process.

Sony and Deceit

Because of reduced sales of their handheld PSP, Sony decided to be super sneaky with a viral campaign over Christmas in 2006. YouTube videos surfaced with a teenager rapping about wanting a PSP for Christmas and linked through to Alliwantforxmasisapsp.com. This seemingly genuine blog site offered visitors help with convincing parents and loved ones to buy them PSPs for Christmas.

Unfortunately, Sony was found out to be behind it and the responses were not good. The site was taken down within weeks and most of the YouTube videos removed. People were mad that they were deceived by Sony and treated as if they were stupid. Fortunately (ORM lives!) Sony did respond:

Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out (maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn't a real hip-hop maven and this site was actually developed by Sony. Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on the PSP.
- Sony Computer Entertainment America

The morals here:

• Don’t underestimate your audience - A viral campaign that attempts to trick users will ultimately just end in annoying them and all your efforts will be wasted.
• Don’t make ridiculously cheesy videos - As one YouTube comment says “I have a strange desire to burn anything with a Sony logo on it.”

GM Canada/Pontiac and Interactivity

GM’s Catch the Vibe campaign saw sets of contestants driving the new Vibe car through three Canadian cities on a scavenger hunt of sorts, with fun activities planned along the way. The idea was that the entire trip could be monitored online via Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, e-mails, online ads, video clips, blogs, wiki's and text messages. This online hype would go viral and more and more people would be exposed to the new Vibe.

Unfortunately, GM limited the contestants to journalists and regular consumers were only asked to register to “cheer them on”. No prizes were awarded and no consumer participation was encouraged. The campaign got roughly 2000 people to register and the only hype was amongst journalists, who probably would have written about the new car anyway.

The moral here:

• Interactivity is crucial - Using Social Media to reach a target market is smart, but only if you let them participate, after all, that is what Social Media is all about.

Have you come across any failed viral campaigns?