February 22, 2006--True Lies
Have you heard about Buzz Marketing? Others call it Viral Marketing. It is designed to sell things to people who are simultaneously watching television, talking on a cell phone, text messaging, surfacing the Internet, and sending instant messages. In other words, folks difficult to reach through conventional means of advertising—print, radio, and TV ads. Thus Buzz Marketing.
In a word, BM involves enticing consumers to spread marketing messages to each other. A recent NY Times piece, linked here, describes one Buzz campaign that has raised implications broader than its effectiveness.
That campaign pitched cell phone ring tones. Ones, for a fee, that could be downloaded so that your cell phone would have its own distinctive ring. When you get a cell phone, as part of the package, your provider offers x number of sounds or tunes you can set up as your ring at no additional cost. So if you want, you can have your phone play a little Mozart, clang like a cow bell, or whatever. But then you can buy a ring tone separately if, for example, you want Snoop Doggie Dog rapping to you when someone calls.
Oasys Mobile had a better idea—they developed ring tones that it wanted to market as having the power to increase your sexual attractiveness. Whenever your cell phone rang, using one of the tones you could buy from them, it would literally attract to you a member of the opposite sex, or the same one if you were thus inclined. Sort of the way Pheromones attract insects to one another.
Oasys hired McKinney & Silver to develop a Buzz campaign. M&S came up with the concept of Pherotones, a faux-scientific notion (tones, not mones) which claims that certain tones produce physical reactions in people, including stimulating sexual desire. To push the ring tone product, they produced a series of ads that appeared only on certain websites that could be downloaded and, key, passed along to others.
These ads featured a Danish doctor, actually a raven-haired, leggy actress playing the part, saying, “Experience the ring tone secret I discovered in Denmark, that’s too hot for mainstream science.”
And work it did. After placing these ads on a fake website, Pherotone.com, they are averaging 10,000 page views a day and Pherotone.com is now in the top 10 percent of the most popular blogs worldwide.
As a result of campaigns this effective, Buzz Marketing itself is a rapidly expanding segment of the advertising economy—nearly 80 percent of marketers spend some money on it. How else to reach all those kids IMing while Surfing and TMing?
But here’s the problem—the “Dr. Myra Vanderhood” ad for Pherotones does not include the traditional disclaimer that she is an actress or that Pherotones have not proven to be effective by the FDA. In ads we are all used to this occurs, albeit for a millisecond, at the bottom of the screen in a type face so tiny no one can read it. But at least it’s there. In the case of Buzz marketing, however, it is not only not there but for it to work it cannot appear because these ads, if they are to be passed along, need to be believable. Or at least make people willing to be fooled, which studies have shown people are quite eager to do.
In other words, Buzz Marketing is an out-and-out form of very intentional lying. Thus, BM has revived within the advertising industry their historic, soul-searching question—Is it acceptable to use advertising to trick people?
Like selling Coke as “the real thing” isn’t tricking people? What’s “real” about it? Since Coke sales are down, I wonder if Dr. Vanderhood might be available to explain.
In a word, BM involves enticing consumers to spread marketing messages to each other. A recent NY Times piece, linked here, describes one Buzz campaign that has raised implications broader than its effectiveness.
That campaign pitched cell phone ring tones. Ones, for a fee, that could be downloaded so that your cell phone would have its own distinctive ring. When you get a cell phone, as part of the package, your provider offers x number of sounds or tunes you can set up as your ring at no additional cost. So if you want, you can have your phone play a little Mozart, clang like a cow bell, or whatever. But then you can buy a ring tone separately if, for example, you want Snoop Doggie Dog rapping to you when someone calls.
Oasys Mobile had a better idea—they developed ring tones that it wanted to market as having the power to increase your sexual attractiveness. Whenever your cell phone rang, using one of the tones you could buy from them, it would literally attract to you a member of the opposite sex, or the same one if you were thus inclined. Sort of the way Pheromones attract insects to one another.
Oasys hired McKinney & Silver to develop a Buzz campaign. M&S came up with the concept of Pherotones, a faux-scientific notion (tones, not mones) which claims that certain tones produce physical reactions in people, including stimulating sexual desire. To push the ring tone product, they produced a series of ads that appeared only on certain websites that could be downloaded and, key, passed along to others.
These ads featured a Danish doctor, actually a raven-haired, leggy actress playing the part, saying, “Experience the ring tone secret I discovered in Denmark, that’s too hot for mainstream science.”
And work it did. After placing these ads on a fake website, Pherotone.com, they are averaging 10,000 page views a day and Pherotone.com is now in the top 10 percent of the most popular blogs worldwide.
As a result of campaigns this effective, Buzz Marketing itself is a rapidly expanding segment of the advertising economy—nearly 80 percent of marketers spend some money on it. How else to reach all those kids IMing while Surfing and TMing?
But here’s the problem—the “Dr. Myra Vanderhood” ad for Pherotones does not include the traditional disclaimer that she is an actress or that Pherotones have not proven to be effective by the FDA. In ads we are all used to this occurs, albeit for a millisecond, at the bottom of the screen in a type face so tiny no one can read it. But at least it’s there. In the case of Buzz marketing, however, it is not only not there but for it to work it cannot appear because these ads, if they are to be passed along, need to be believable. Or at least make people willing to be fooled, which studies have shown people are quite eager to do.
In other words, Buzz Marketing is an out-and-out form of very intentional lying. Thus, BM has revived within the advertising industry their historic, soul-searching question—Is it acceptable to use advertising to trick people?
Like selling Coke as “the real thing” isn’t tricking people? What’s “real” about it? Since Coke sales are down, I wonder if Dr. Vanderhood might be available to explain.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
1:48 AM
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