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Thursday, May 17, 2007 |
Paul Steinbrueck, CEO of OurChurch.com, was pretty jazzed about his AIDS Clickathon idea - like a walkathon, except people click and sponsors donate to a home for orphaned African Children - and he thought it was the perfect basis for a viral Internet campaign.
Editor's Note: There's been a lot of hype around viral marketing, but it is one of those concepts that is difficult to execute. It's bipolar, even, down in the depths or high as a kite. We're looking for a robust discussion about effective techniques, what to avoid, and whether some topics are too heavy to float. Let us know what you think at WebProWorld, or in the comments section.
A short time and shorter amount of money later, Paul's trying to understand what went wrong.
Paul set a goal of raising $50,000 for missionary friends of his who were to set out for Africa to build the orphanage - and what a sad state for a large cluster of children, to find themselves alone in the world as AIDS ravaged their parents.
But maybe that was a little heavy, Paul wonders. Maybe we've grown used to sad video footage of the starving and destitute. Maybe Internet users (when surfing, not necessarily in everyday life) are still too self-serving and utilitarian, looking to fill their own needs online.
Maybe Bono was too busy with his own AIDS in Africa campaign (Paul did try to contact Bono's One Campaign, but never received a response). Or maybe he didn't set up his campaign right. After 15 weeks, the AIDS Clickathon collected just $1500.
And so, Paul is losing faith in social marketing. "I'm undecided about how successful a viral campaign like this can be," he told WebProNews. "We did it in conjunction with the viral marketing competition on Andy Beal's site. That was done in the hopes that the people who cover viral marketing would pick it up."
Sorry we missed you, Paul. The Web is an easy place to get yourself lost in.
Steinbrueck's strategy is easy enough to find on Marketing Pilgrim. He outlines it with 12 different focus points that include search, blogging, posting video on YouTube, submitting to Digg, directories, sending press releases, emailing friends, setting up the website, soliciting links from related sites and forums, and setting up a MySpace profile.
The AIDS Clickathon MySpace page currently has 66 friends - not nearly enough to raise some serious green. Barack Obama's MySpace page hauled thousands of friends in a matter of months.
But just 66 people cared enough to make a few clicks (that's all it was really, they weren't asking for money directly)? So what gives?
Paul's main theory is that it was too heavy a subject. It may be that viral marketing doesn't work if the subject matter isn't "funny or outrageous," as Steinbrueck put it. He took his concerns to our WebProWorld forum to seek advice, with an admission that he made mistakes from launch that may have affected the outcome.
"Doing it right the first time matters," he said. "When you first kick off a viral campaign, the biggest supporters are people you know. And it depends on a lot of people picking up the ball and running with it."
Even that WPW post had viral elements, posing humorous analogies beginning with "Viral marketing is like...," and fill in your favorite. My favorite was "Viral marketing is like Sanjaya's hair. Sometimes things are popular because they stand out not because they're good."
Indeed they are. The forum presented their theories with little real consensus other than sometimes viral just doesn't work.
So let's conclude this case study with an invitation to our readers to drop into the WebProWorld forum, or into the comments section on WebProNews (which we in the news room are affectionately - okay, sometimes begrudgingly - calling "the water cooler."
Maybe a robust discussion of Paul's campaign and what went wrong will be a great learning opportunity.
About
the Author:
Jason Lee Miller is a WebProNews editor and writer covering business and technology. |
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Blogging Pays Off With Camaro Concept
 By Doug Caverly
Staff Writer | WebProNews
It's a well-known fact that most bloggers toil away in obscurity, and that a lucky few manage to obtain all sorts of fame, money, and material goods (or a talented few - I don't mean to slight anyone). But, oh, what goods - Jalopnik's Ray Wert recently got his hands on a Camaro convertible concept car.
Granted, the test drive was useless from any sort of practical perspective. "[A] write-up of time spent behind the wheel of a car designed entirely for show and never for go will help you in no way to make a purchasing decision," notes Wert.
But the experience still sounds like a blast, and, unlike what occurred with an old Microsoft-Edelman scandal, all the parties were clear from the start that this was just a temporary loan.
Ideally, someone could mesh that experience with Wert's - pass out real Ferraris, instead of an Acer Ferrari 1000 notebook, or the keys to a half-baked concept. But beggars - and bloggers - can't be choosers, so . . . on with the Camaro convertible.
There were some strict ground rules on Wert's test drive - no accelerating past "roughly 25-30 mph (I say roughly because there's no working instrumentation," for one. Also, "The seats aren't the real ones, so you've no idea what the sight lines are going to be like in the real thing."
Then - and I can't help but laugh at this - Wert writes, "[T]he heat from the engine was causing the paneling on the concept to warp a bit - taking some of that design balance and turning it into an amusement park hall of mirrors."
Still, as a car enthusiast, I can imagine few bigger rewards for one's work. Bloggers everywhere should take heart.
About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news. |
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MSN Ad Center Blues
W After reading some positive comments about conversion rates for MS AdCenter in WebProWorld and elsewhere I decided to bite the bullet and sign up.
So I paid my non-refundable £5($10) - it's twice the US rate here in rip-off Britain.
The email containing the startup instructions arrived soon enough so there I was, all excited and ready for a new adventure, poised to create exciting new ad campaigns to draw lots of qualified traffic from our favourite demographic at carefully targetted times of day between reruns of Frazier ...
Except there was no create campaign button.
And so it has remained for the last week and a half. No button, no campaigns, no extra visitors.
My-name-is-Dave at AdCenter support assures me that this will be corrected in a timely manner.
Trouble is, if you can't get the page with a simple create campaign button to display correctly, what chance is there that the demographics, the anti-click fraud, or the accounting systems work?
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