“VirginMedia, (formerly ntl:telewest) are doubting the value of TV you love and have dropped Sky One, Sky News and Sky Travel.  We want VirginMedia to keep these channels on air so call them if you want you do too.”

Do these companies really think consumers are so bloody stupid?  I confess, I like VirginMedia’s response and I accept Sky’s response as being fairly acceptable in terms of corporate marketing, but come on!

Is there really any individual in the UK that seriously believes that Virgin just turned around and said, “nah we don’t need ya!”.  Nope.

Fair play to BSkyB for taking advantage of the situation – clearly two very savvy marketing teams are at war here and personally I find it pretty damn exciting to see who will prevail!

It will be interesting to see how far these companies would go to get the competitive edge over each other.  Sure the long term war for the cable market may not be won anytime soon, but this short term battle is far from over and certainly the victor will reap significant rewards.  I think this is worth spending some time researching!

More info here.

MG

On a side note, I think it’s pretty unethical advertising on Sky’s part – they are advertising a “switch over” from cable for only £15, but as we all know cable comes part and parcel with phone service and broadband and to get BT to install / set you up you are looking at a few hundred quid.

And for any gamers out there (or anyone who needs “always on”) broadband – BT sucks ass – they always disconnect you – got loads of mates who bitch about BT all the time.

Imagine my surprise (I thought I would start with that literary faus pax to set the tone of my sheer disgust) when I checked my logs this morning to find trickles of traffic for a multitude of video sharing sites such as Google Video, YouTube, MSN Soapbox, Yahoo Video and a range of lower tier sites.  Not having ever bothered my backside to ever create a video podcast, let alone bother trying to distribute it, I was somewhat intrigued to see where the…3…extra visits were coming from.

Unfortunately my morning cup of tea and cigarette weren’t as sweet today because I wasted several precious seconds of my life watching this stupid damn video.  And no, I’m not going to drop a link – it’s not worth the effort.

So starting from the beginning…

“Viral Friend Generator” appears to be yet another get rich quick scheme – it holds all the ill-thought out concepts of MLM – low quality production, outrageous claims (2 beta testers made over $200k!), and piss poor marketing techniques.  Ironically I suspect that by tomorrow, the viral “friend” generator will only have served to make enemies across the web.  As one YouTube commenter says, “die spammers, die”…

So 3 easy steps to increase your site traffic by 300%?  Let’s hear them:

Oh no no no, but first, let’s talk about the big mistake that 99% of marketers make….

“The 2 step process” – marketers use a 2 step sign up process to get visitors into their “marketing funnel” – we’re going to show you how… *video end*

Lol.

Anyone seen “There’s Something About Mary” – know the scene where Ben Stiller picks up the hitchhiker – yes, you know where I’m going…”7 minute abs!”.  Best.  Marketing. Gimmick. Evah!  You see 8 minute abs sitting there and next to it, 7 minute abs, which you gonna pick?

Lame, lame, lame crap viral friend generator my ass.

Referral spam is hardly revolutionary and throwing out a 2 minute presentation video that doesn’t actually say anything about your company or your product is stupid, dumb ass 80’s marketing (and frankly I think it only ever existed on TV and films because I really believe people aren’t that dumb as to fall for it).

I guess though, that the people behind the viral friend generator may call it a success.  After all, they’ve had exposure – their “brand” is being talked about – and no doubt the traffic to their site has increased (probably from 1 visitor a day to 3 – 300% increase – score!).  But that’s just like convincing yourself that the dog you just clipped with your car is probably OK and shouldn’t have been on the road anyway.

The old marketing adage – even bad publicity is good publicity – is perhaps an appropriate philosophy for the people behind the viral friend generator video.  Maybe someone should tell them that the adage is in fact an in-joke between marketers poking fun at idiots making a fool of themselves and their businesses and thinking they just did something good!

If you have something that warrants the effort you are putting into any marketing campaign, then surely it warrants doing it right?  Of course, where your product is lame in the first place (or you are in fact ripping people off – which I’m not in any way insinuating that the people behind viral friend generator are…), then the approach you might want to take is to grab as much eyeball time as you can for the lowest cost.

The one thing that really bugs me about the marketing world is the righteous approach to PR that people often take, even in the face of facts that suggest otherwise.  Read: Zipatoni after the Sony flog drama, or BMM after their ban from Google – established marketing professionals still cling to their guns to try and “save face” even when it’s glaringly obvious to everyone else that the best approach is to ‘fess up and admit they were wrong.

No folks, any publicity isn’t good publicity – in fact some publicity can be terminal for your business.  Manage your outward appearance as best you can, even if it means you are going to focus on being the best moron you can.  At least you are being honest and some people will respect that – coming out with trite sales pitches is just the lowest of the low.

Example – VirginMedia’s approach to the Virgin v BSkyB drama.  Their customers have lost out and that could have hurt them a lot.  But they have stuck to their guns and released a lot of honest (albeit sarcastic) responses to the situation.  Lose a few points because I don’t get to watch 24 on TV anymore, but gain a whole lot more in respect.

MG

“When submitted stories are consistently reported as spam and users complain via our feedback email about submission spam, we ban the domain. The domain will not be unbanned. The domain would consistently get reported as spam otherwise.”

Sooo…I thought it would be worthwhile writing a post that looked at social marketing, with a particular focus on Digg.

First of all, some background reading if you feel like it:

• Threadwatch – Growing list of domains getting banned at Digg
• Lee Odden – The hypocrisy of Digg and spam
• 10e20 – List of domains banned by Digg
• V7N – URL banned by Digg.com
• Graywolf – How to be a dirty Digger
• Digg – FAQ

The difference between social marketing and SEO

I think this is core to the issues facing a lot of sites that have been banned by Digg.  An SEO strategy is a very flexible thing.  You can take your broad strategy for any site (or page for that matter) and apply it to other sites (or pages).  Of course, this is an over simplification – there are obviously differences from industry to industry and site to site, but generally, what works for one site can more or less be applied to another site for similar results.

You optimise the same core areas, write content in a similar style and build links from standard sources.  It’s a very transferable strategy.

Social marketing has largely been adopted by the SEO community due to the fact that “buzz” and “viral” campaigns can result in some sweet links, which are great for SEO.  But more and more, SEOs are beginning to appreciate the traffic and brand value from this form of marketing – the problem arises when the SEO mindset is applied to this emerging channel of marketing.

Simply put – a social marketing campaign needs to be tailored to your specific objectives and although certain aspects are “standard”, each strategy isn’t as obviously transferable as SEO is.

Example 1 - an innocent mistake

A blogger who has been banned from Digg had posted on his blog that he had “only” submitted each of his 30 or so articles to Digg once.  Not gonna name names at this point because I do think it was an innocent and non-malicious action intended to “seed” the stories on Digg in the hope that they would “grow” in popularity.  However if he reads this and doesn’t mind being named, I’ll happily add in links, etc to his posts.

The problem here is not his intention – just the implementation.

When devising a social marketing strategy, we need to look at the big picture, particularly when exposing our sites to a large community.  As with forums or blog news sites such as Threadwatch, there are different levels of issues and etiquette we need to consider.  For Digg, I would make the following assumptions:

• They receive a lot of rubbish submissions
• Most of which probably come from the SEO community (or at the very least, people with a knowledge of SEO)
• As such, the Digg community may frown upon SEO flavoured submissions.

So, in this example, submitting every one of his blog posts, the author has applied a SEO mindset by creating a social marketing strategy that isn’t entirely appropriate to meet his objectives.  By submitting so many of his own articles, the community system (a combination of human and automated factors) has flagged his domain as spam.  The number of submissions as a proportion of the size of his site were so high that Digg has banned his site (as most articles would have been buried).

The point here is that not every post made on a blog actually deserves to be added to Digg.  Most blogs cover niche topics and in the grand scheme of things, it’s unlikely that everything you (or I) write will be “Digg worthy” – remember the community out there is much larger than just SEO.

A more appropriate strategy for this type of site (a blog) would be to submit ONLY articles that high quality and are likely to appeal to a broader community, or at the very least just space out your submissions (as submitting an article from your own site as and when you post them could trigger a spam flag).

Example 2 – social bookmark buttons on larger sites

Another domain that has been banned from Digg is the popular business networking site ecademy.  This is an interesting one, because it is an active site with a vibrant community of it’s own.

Of course, I can only speculate as to why they were banned, but I would assume that the following factors are core:

• Lot’s of user generate articles (different authors), each with a Digg It link.
• Authors most likely Digg their own submissions.
• AND / OR regular users Digg the story.

Why is this a problem?

Let’s put it in context.  The site receives 100,000’s of visitors each month and as a networking site, a high proportion are likely to be returning visitors and as such they will be familiar with regular authors.

The chances are that even if the author doesn’t Digg their own story, some regular users will.  Only one person needs to do it, but given the scale of the content being generated this could lead to a lot of submissions on a regular basis.  Again, as with example 1, lots of submissions + low Digg count could lead to spam flagging.

But surely sites shouldn’t be banned because users Digg their content?

No, of course not.  But what we would like and what happens in reality are two different things.  I’d love for Google to not index the site belonging to the guy who is copying my content, but here we are!

As I said at the beginning – we need to look at the big picture.  Where do your articles fit into the grand scheme of things?  Generally, not where we would like, but then that’s why we’re developing a marketing strategy, right?

The reality of the situation is that Digg receives a lot of spammy submissions and as such we need to factor this into our strategies.  Some people will spend time working out ways to get around this – fake usernames, pay to Digg, etc.  Personally I think this is a waste of time.  It is social marketing after all and if you can’t embrace the community for what it is, then you have a larger problem that won’t be solved by a short term burst of traffic from social media sites.

Tips for smaller sites and blogs

I would be inclined to avoid larger social media sites such as Digg until you can get yourself some decent professional kudos from fellow bloggers and industry professionals.

Basically, if you are considered to be a nobody, then your submission isn’t really going to carry the weight that it otherwise would.  But if your site or blog has a lot of blogsphere / press / authoritative exposure, then the articles you write a much more likely to stand up to close inspection.  Plus it’s useful for smaller sites to have an established user base that can support submissions by Digging them – that will mean there’s less chance of your submission fading away into nothingness.

Also, think about it before you Digg something.  Does it really warrant the submission?  Is it a topic that would spark a several page discussion on a forum or be covered by industry news sources (or is sufficiently sensationalist for neither of those to matter)?  If you can’t answer yes to any of those questions, then why would other people Digg your submission?

Tips for larger sites

If your site generates a lot of content (larger forums, sites where users can submit articles, etc), then consider how you will approach social bookmarking buttons.  Do you really want every piece of content to have a Digg button on it?

In my opinion, a good strategy for larger sites would be to have some mechanism to monitor and list popular topics – either by comments, replies, page views, etc.  If you can shuffle these to a “popular page” and then ONLY add social bookmark buttons to these pieces of content, then there’s more chance it will be accepted by the Digg community.

Basically, for most sites, the onus is on the site owner to filter out the crap content and promote selective social bookmarking, instead of broad based bookmarking with a “let them sort it out at their end” philosophy.  This will give you the best return on your efforts, while minimising the risk of a ban.

MG

The site has since been taken down – I originally thought it might be a server crash due to the traffic being sent from the blogsphere and social media sites such as Digg, etc, but it seems that the site is down permanently.

I did manage to find this article though that claims to have had a brief statement from both Sony and Zipatoni on the matter:

Next-Gen contacted SCEA PR boss David Karraker who answered a couple quick questions. When asked about the magnitude of this PR mishap, he replied, “Buzz and viral marketing is a common practice across the industry.  In this instance, SCEA hired an outside agency to create a humorous ‘underground’ PSP site for the holidays.  The tongue-in-cheek nature of the site didn’t come across as intended and we have since altered it.”

Sooo…we got it wrong.  Zipatoni didn’t create an insanely bad viral site – it was just meant to be tongue-in-cheek and we all just missed the point.

Next Gen go on…

When confronted about accusations that Sony underestimated gamers’ intelligence with the campaign, he stated, “Sony just released the most advanced console ever developed, so I doubt seriously that anyone would think we are underestimating our consumers’ intelligence.  This was simply a marketing idea that was poorly executed.”

Lol Sony – way to make a bad situation worse.  I think they may be overestimating their consumers’ loyatly if they seriously think that the power of their brand is going to blind people to crap like this and a very late market entry for the PS3.

Next Gen contacted Zipatoni about the flog and subsequent backlash, but they said they weren’t prepared to comment [at this time].  Probably a good idea!

MG

I was tagged by Aaron Shear, who was tagged by Avinash Kaushik.  The game was started off by Jeff Pulver.

I decided to pass this on to: Dean Bloomsfield, Brendon Scott, Craig Wilson, Dave Carruthers and Brian Turner, mainly because I’ve chatted with them all in one form or another before and I know they blog regularly.

So on to the 5 shocking (or utterly boring, depending on your perspective) facts about me that you might not know…

1.  I’ve had an insane amount of jobs in my time – I’ve worked for Scottish Opera, the Scottish Executive, the local social work department, restaurants, estate agencies, national banks, shops, marketing agencies and a plethora of other random jobs.  My top 5 (in order) are:

1. My current job (freelance SEO, working from home)
2. Night shift in a 24 hour shop when I was at Uni (I don’t like mornings)
3. Washing dishes in a restaurant while I was still at school (they gave me a beer after I finished work each night!)
4. Temping at Scottish Provident (crap job, great team and we had loads of great nights out!)
5. Working in Spain (crap jobs, great weather!)

2.  I once jumped out of a 1st floor window to prove that I could do it without hurting myself.  I then did it another 2 times because people arrived who missed the previous efforts.  It was 1st year at Uni though, and there may have been some beer involved.  I think I twisted my ankle the 3rd time.  It’s the charm.

3.  Given number 2, you may be surprised to find out that I’m a member of Mensa.

4.  I play poker regularly with my mates and much to their dismay, I’m actually getting quite good at it.  They would of course put it down to luck, but we all know differently, right?   It’s a lot like SEO – learn the basic rules, get a little practice, then shove all your chips in, close your eyes and hope for the best.

5.  My first experience with SEO was starting with an agency and being introduced to WebmasterWorld.  And then being given the task to setup loads of fake sites to build links for our client’s site…I didn’t stay there long!

If anyone is interested in how this is working out in terms of a viral marketing campaign, check out the technorati stats which update more or less in real time.  As of midnight 14th Dec 2006:

• Fused Nation – Rank 147,655 (46 links, 24 blogs)
• Jeff Pulver – Rank 4,600 (1,698 links, 526 blogs)
• Anyone else wants their blog added to this, add a comment with your current technorati details.

MG

tag, you’re it!

OK Sony.  So you screwed up in the console wars.  You had some idiot develop your strategy and based it entirely on the fact that consumers may buy the PS3 later in the year, missing the Xmas market (and your main competitors’ feeding frenzy) on the sole basis that your Blu Ray crap would be a major USP.  And you were doing so well with the PS1 and PS2….what happened?

There’s no need for this kind of crap.  I’d class “all I want for Xmas is a PSP” dotcom as a bloody stupid and naive attempt at viral marketing.  What were wou thinking?

It is so bloody transparent!

DO SOME RESEARCH!

How many fansites actually stoop so low in branding that they would refer to themselves in such a stupid and inappropriate way?  Oh no wait, sorry, every Metal band does a Xmas song lamenting to some two bit lame hand held.  And yeh EVERY fansite has a “letter” from a 12 year old detailing his quest to help his mate’s mum buy him a PSP for Xmas.

Stupid bloody lame corporate ignorance.

Jeeez – even the stupid post with the “print this and put it in x, y or z’s magazine to give them the hint” has the alt text “Print_Ad”….. Uh..hello?

Your marketing agency (Zipatoni) are idiots.  Yeh, here’s an idea, let’s hire an agency using a fully flash site to conduct our web marketing campaign – that’s a great idea!  They clearly know what they’re doing.

Hmm let’s not be too brutal here – maybe they don’t know what they were doing?  Perhaps I should email them?  That would seem to be the thing to do…

(let’s side step the fact that this marketing agency actually own the viral domain for a second – no need to bring ethics into this…)

So I sent this email to meredith.goette@zipatoni.com and also copied it into scee_presscentre@scee.net (the Sony UK press centre):

Hi Meredith,

I don’t really want to “activate my campaign” as the big, bold text on your flash site suggested as I clicked it, but I thought I would send a message anyway.

I just want to chat about the Sony PSP viral campaign at http://www.alliwantforxmasisapsp.com/blog/ – interesting stuff.  But none of it is really…well…real, now is it?

As a marketing professional, I’ve got to point out that this campaign is highly unlikely to meet it’s apparent objectives before Xmas.  Aside from being insanely transparent, the blog site really only serves to create a vastly negative impression of the PSP since your involvement has been ousted on various blogs.

Obviously, viral marketing is a tricky area – particularly on the web where people are able view information like the OWNER of the site and so forth. 

At this point, you may want to read the comments in the links I posted on my blog – they are very revealing.  You can find the post here:  http://www.fusednation.com/seo/sony-and-bollocks-web-marketing/

Feel free to get back to me if you would like to discuss the proper way to market to consumers online – ie, not assume they are idiots.

Kind Regards
Scott Boyd
www.fusednation.com

Perhaps a little harsh, but they screwed up big time and for a major client.  If anyone from the Sony PR team are reading this – send me an email and get in touch and I’ll happlily show you how to do it properly – maybe even grab some of the vast market share you just lost.

Here is some of the forum / blogger community’s response to the Sony viral marketing campaign:

• Digg – Sony and bollocks web marketing
• Digg – Awful viral marketing site
• Digg – Sony creates a fake blog as viral marketing
• Sony takes viral marketing to a new low
• Sony pays for fake Xmas wishes
• PSP site the new loneygirl?
• Another flog is exposed

What do you think?  IMO, even pretty looking crap is still spam and it doesn’t matter if it is big brand or some piece of rubbish churned out by your average webaster!

UPDATE (14th Dec):  They’ve owned up on the blog, but kinda half heartedly so.  Dean puts it well:

I certainly don’t think they got caught because their speech was too ‘funky fresh’.  More likely it was because it didn’t ring true. Kids are pretty adept at figuring out who talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk.

One funny part of the statement:

Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever.

Um.  No.  What actually happened is that you hired an agency that doesn’t have a fucking clue how to market on the web.  I don’t think either Sony or Zipatoni were every in danger of being “too clever”.  Their site has to be the most transparent piece of crap I’ve ever seen.

Their l33t sp33k wasn’t even close to the fanboi-esque style they were trying to hit and fails as miserably as their half assed ‘fess up fails to salvage any dignity from the situation.

And I bet it all sounded really great on paper!

UPDATE 14th Dec (again): The site is down.  Guess Sony finally bitch slapped Zipatoni.

MG

Great follow up to the original flash animation.

MG

Really nice little Flash viral from M&Ms – basically you have to look about the static painting and click then type in the name of the horror film that the part of the image is representing.

Easy example: click on the blue M&M and type in “The Ring” and it greys out showing you got that one.

I’m up to 17 out of 50 but starting to struggle.

MG