Real men cry into Brawny towels...

The more people and companies become comfortable with the Web, the more they start to experiment with new tactics and strategies with their products and services. Viral marketing, with roots stemming far back, is actually considered rather new and still hasn't caught on by many top companies. But for businesses like Brawny paper towels and Frito Lays Doritos, viral campaigns are not all that new, just still very successful.

Recently in the New York Times, Georgia-Pacific, one of the world's leading manufacturer of such products like paper towels and paper, have created a campaign that uses viral marketing to sell Brawny paper towels to women, age 25 to 54. They have justified this market due to the increase in amount of women spending much more time on the Web these days.

To start this campaign, GP used a very traditional viral technique of sending emails to all of the people who signed up on www.allyourrooms.com, a site created by GP for people to check out tips on cleaning, decorating, entertaining, cooking, etc. In my opinion, this is a great, personal way of contacting these people directly to inform them of the campaign. Of course, email is fading these days, but it is still one of the most strongest direct-mail services. These people are encouraged to visit the Brawny website, and check under the "tongue in cheek" section to hear some funny comments by the Brawny Man like, "why, you look beautiful today...it must be your eyes." The most important part of this campaign is not the commentary being spoken, but the button below the image that says, "send to a friend." This is the viral success of the campaign, the endorsement Brawny receives whenever one of these women visits the site, watches the clip, and then sends it to a friend.

Even better, the site has a link to the Brawny Academy, an actual reality show directed at the women of this target market. The show consists of several wives (of this age group) who are fed up with the laziness and dissatisfying ways of there husbands, so they send them to Brawny Academy to go through a forest "boot camp." The trailer, is rather amusing and the episodes are promising. I am sure it will be a successful show which just provides another outlet on the website for these women to stumble across, and become hooked on. These shows provide more power because they have the ability to entertain these women, and hold much longer visiting times. The more time the women spend watching these shows, the more they are exposed to the Brawny Man, the labels, the logos, and most importantly, their husbands using these products. In summary, these are all effective ways to brand this company to their markets, and a more efficient way to spread the word of their products.

Still, with such great ROI from the website and increase in awareness through the viral aspects, Brawny spent less than 1 percent of its $24.2 million estimated budget on the Web,and a consistent 31.4 percent on broadcast network television commercials.

Slowly, companies are learning the importance of not only the Internet, but the online interactivity and integration that is involved. The more outlets and entertainment your provide for your consumers who visit your site, the more chance you have to provide product/company information. To further this, the more creative and popular you are on the web, the more people will talk about your site and your products that you offer. It's a chain of events that needs to be mastered by any company in this day and age of technology-based consumers.


To check out more, visit the New York Times.

Can marketers really socialize with social marketing?

Whenever a new form of media is introduced to the public, it is only a matter of time before marketers consume the outlet with floods of advertisements. Just six months ago Google was offering Youtube 1.6 billion dollars for ownership, and of course there would be an advertisement strategy involved in the purchase. But with new ways to advertise on these sites, new viral ways, is it really acceptable to the public.

Let us take the very popular College Humor website, visited daily by prankster college students, or others just looking for a good laugh. The site is filled with hilarious pictures of college peers, witty editorial articles relating with the students, and the much visited daily videos . I have to admit, I am, and have been for a few years now, a huge fan of the social media based site. I visit nearly once (if not more) a day and at least check out all of the videos which provide me with a great laugh.

Recently, however, I have found something rather intrusive, something that serves as quite an annoyance for me. College humor has started to place advertisements around the boarder of several videos I try to watch, encompassing the entire outside of the video space, and usually plastered with logos. I would link the site of this advertising, but they appear randomly when you watch the videos, so I urge you to watch several of them to see for yourself.

Now, I am by no means a advertising critic, and rarely do I complain about the amount/intrusiveness of advertisements in my life. But I too have lines that can be crossed.

To start with, I go to this site not only to watch the videos, but also to read the clever commentary that is paired with the video. Its like they give you something to look for while watching. But with the addition of these "frame-advertisements," The commentary text is completely cut off, and I have to instantly close out of the advertisement to read the content. By then, I have seen the video, miss the joke, and am ticked off.

Secondly, the first time I saw this type of advertisement I was very confused and thrown off. While watching a video of a student streaking across campus all my attention was focused on the giant Kraft label that surrounded the video. Initially, since I had never seen these advertisements, I thought Kraft was sponsoring the video, and in fact performing the stunt (or at least encouraging it). As I continued to watch, confused, I thought to myself,"this is some bad publicity for Kraft."

So all in all, its no surprise to me that advertisers will be "invading" social media networks, nor do I wish them not to. But in order to be successful at doing so, I rec commend several points. First, don't cover up important information on the site that visitors depend on, your ad will be closed immediately, and if it does stay open, consumers will be aggravated not with the site, but your brand (gives them a face to blame). Secondly, be careful who your "unintentional" sponsors/partners are. If your company deals with preventing fires, make sure you don't advertise on a site like College Humor where your logo and company will be surrounding a video of pyro-maniacs.

I have come to accept this frame advertising, and in fact enjoy its efforts of being less intruding on visitors. But there are some minor changes that need to be done in order to generate success from them.

For more information, check out Ad Weeks related article with Google & Youtube.