The “Cardboard arcade kid”, vs “Push button to add drama” – value in viral video?

April 24, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Two weeks ago I posted a quick blog post about a video featuring 9-year-old Caine Monroy, who built a cardboard arcade over a summer vacation, and waited for his first customer to turn up.

Well, after two weeks, the result of his first customer happening to make a video about him, and then organising a flashmob via Reddit and Facebook is in.

Almost $200,000 dollars has been raised from what began as a child creating something cool with some old cardboard boxes, and it has a following that many brands would kill for. So what lessons could you take from something like this in terms of viral video?

  • Doing something interesting is key – if Caine hadn’t built his cardboard arcade for the fun of it, and then won over his only customer, filmmaker Nirvan Mullick, then none of this would have happened.
  • Relationships count – to make the flashmob happen, Mullick had help from the Reddit community, and also from friends and contacts who were able to post the event on popular LA recommendation sites and Facebook pages.
  • Spread it far – obviously we all put our videos on Youtube, but in this case, Vimeo actually received more views. Do you only focus on the first-placed site of it’s kind?
  • Give people inspiration – part of the effect has been kids around the world building there own cardboard arcades, which are constantly being featured on the Caine’s Arcade Facebook page etc.
  • Give people quick and easy ways to contribute – the scholarship fund suggests contributing ‘$1 or more’ to help Caine and other children prepare for college. Or you can buy a T-shirt or the film’s theme song via iTunes.

So basically:

  • Interesting.
  • Inspiring.
  • Relationships.
  • Shared.
  • Easy participation.

But what’s also missed in a lot of digital activity and promotion is that there was no guarantee that this particular video would take off. Besides Mullick’s time and energy in capturing and editing the footage and his promotional efforts since then, the reception it has received has been down to the people seeing it and responding, which led to media interest putting it in front of more people.

And yet still brands focus on big stunts and extravagant campaign approaches to video and asking people to do things. A lot of people have also been sharing this video for a new television channel launch:

OK, it’s a cool idea, and it does involve some participation in terms of kicking off the action by pressing the big red button, but then what? The audience watches everything unfold, and then possibly pays attention to the launch of a new TV channel in Belgium. Or not. It doesn’t lead onto anyone doing anything except watching some TV shows.

  • 29 Million Youtube views
  • 733 Likes on Facebook
  • 80 Followers on Twitter.

A couple of parody videos have been created, including a nice Lego version, but that’s about your lot. To put it another way, the big TV advertisement may have driven awareness of the television channel launch and resulted in higher audience figures initially, but most of you reading this would have comparable reach online, because messaging you is likely to give some interaction.

The question is what effect you want to achieve…

Filed Under: Content Marketing, Digital Culture, video Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

How social media can turn us into babies

August 19, 2008 By 2 Comments

It’s been a long day, but one of the main things that has kept me going is my son.Baby Feet picture on Flickr by photosavvy (Under Creative Commonons He’s just a few months old, and he’s at the stage where he’s just realised he has feet (and other body parts). Every so often he’ll look amazed as this thing on the end of his leg comes into his eye line, and he’s able to control it (with varying success!).

By the same token, I’m constantly fascinated by the unpredictability of social media marketing, and how making even small changes can have a big effect on whether something drives links, referrals or conversions. It’s something Malcolm Gladwell outlines in The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make A Big Difference. One of the case studies Howard Leventhal’s experiment by creating a ‘high fear’ and ‘low fear’ version of a booklet describing the benefits of tetanus shots for university students – although the ‘high fear’ group were more convinced about the benefits, they weren’t any more likely to get their shots done. Instead it was the inclusion of a timetable and a map showing where the university clinic was located that suddenly raised tetanus shots – a clinic most of the students would have already seen and walked past every day!

By the same token a small change in a headline or a phrase can have a big effect on how well an article does on one of the websites I work with – but even with website analytics, buzz monitoring, Google trends and a tinfoil hat to pick up brainwaves, there’s still an element of chance and surprise when dealing with humans!

And this isn’t about Neuro-linguistic Programming or trying to seduce or trick people – it’s about how to let people know something is available for them to use, share, or remix. To quote Mark Earls ‘forget doing stuff To folk; do stuff WITH them’. But doing stuff with them can be hard, particularly if you’re used to writing and interacting in a broadcast style, rather than a conversational one.

I still think things can be brilliantly written, and inspirationally presented, despite coming in at the same level as the people you’re trying to interact with. And that can be anything from Kevin Smith’s Clerks to Mike Leigh, or Robert Johnson, Christy Moore, and Bruce Springsteen.

That’s what makes the job fun, as we try and figure out how things are apparently connected, and how we can improve what we do to be more useful to others – and also makes us into toddlers as every time we think we’ve got the hang of it, our foot suddenly comes into view!

* Baby feet photo is by photosavvy on Flickr, and used under Creative Commons. If you think I’m waking my son up for a blog post when he’s finally napping, you’re very much mistaken!

Filed Under: social media marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,