OUGD406: SB2- Communication is a Virus

Going Viral
The brief is to create a viral marketing campaign and launch a product resolving a pre set problem. This will be our first group task since the beginning of the course and one I'm greatly looking forwards to. Firstly however it was important to understand what makes up a viral campaign, good or bad, and the many platforms and medias available to a marketing team when trying to create a 'buzz' for a product. 

What Makes Something Go Viral?
Or how to build a strong viral campaign?

I began my research into viral marketing by watching a TED talks on viral videos and what makes some so much more effective than others. Kevin Allocca, who works as a trends manager for Youtube gives a few examples of popular and famous vids and outlines the three key things he believe are essential for producing a successful viral video.  The first is having a trend setter endorse or promote the video, when a celebrity tweets about something it reaches a much larger audience than the average twitter user. The second is audience participation, allowing people to become a part of something can transform a seemingly average experience into a memorable one, the sense of ownership an audience is allowed to feel over an idea or a product adds a personal touch to something that could feel quite distant. And finally the third is unexpectedness, with the internet containing tonnes of voices all desperate to be heard, it's only the original and the surprising that will be recognised. 

Despite this talk being focused on funny youtube clips, I believe the same rules apply to good viral marketing, and with more than one platform to work on, the potential for creative promotion is endless. A good campaign, like with viral vids, requires a way to spread the message to millions across the web, a sense of audience participation to draw in interest and finally a sense of the unexpected to make it stand out from all that has gone before. There's one more rule that I would add after looking at the many examples of campaigns out there and that is a strong understanding of TARGET AUDIENCE. 

In all the examples provided there is a clearly defined target market which the advert appeals to, and many of the design decisions (tone of voice, the idea behind the campaign, time of airing/release of advert, place of display) were determined by who the advert was for. 

Old Spice 
The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

The original body wash for men wasn't doing particularly well in the modern day body wash market, having a lot of new and more refreshing smells and designs for people to choose from. So Old Spice decided to launch a new campaign for the product in attempt to draw in some new customers. Despite the product being designed for men, Old Spice discovered that it was women who made majority of body wash sales, and so they would be the most appropriate audience to target.

The campaign 'The man your man could smell like' started as a viral video and was hugely popular, featuring a very manly example of a man informing the women of America that they may not be able to be with him, but they could certainly make their man smell like him. The advert's comedic tone and random jokes appealed massively to both genders and the products sales rose dramatically. Old Spice were very careful to air the advert during programmes couples would most likely be watching together and to air it at the time couples were most likely to be watching TV in order to reach their target audience the most effectively. 

The campaign didn't just stop at the advert. Due to the massive popularity 'The Man your Man could Smell like' had stirred up Old Spice decided to produce real time answers to twitter and face book questions posted by fans. They produced 185 videos in total and caused a huge amount of response with more people following the brand than ever before. 

Why it Works
What made this campaign so popular was a combination of three things, a well defined target audience who were appealed to at every step of the way, a sense of humour and random that made the advert stand out from the others and it's interactive nature where fans could pose questions and potentially have them answered. 



Grey PouPon
The Society of Good Taste

Despite existing only on a Facebook page, the Society for Good Taste was a very successful viral campaign used to promote Grey's PouPon mustard. Keeping in tone with their product and their values when it came to relaunching the brand Grey's was very keen to set itself apart from other Facebook product pages who seemed to be willing to go to any lengths in order to get likes and promote themselves further. With the Society of Good Taste, a different approach was taken. With Grey's PouPon being a classy product they felt that not just anyone should be allowed to like it and if a Facebook member did want to like the page, they would have to go through a rigorous application process to see if they would 'cut the mustard'. 

If the applicant were deemed not worthy then they would be rejected from the society with instructions on how to improve themselves before they apply again, and many, many applicants were rejected. Despite the company seeming to turn away potential promoters, in taking a risk, they managed to cause a lot of buzz and interest around the product which eventually improved sales. And they managed to do it whilst keeping the tone of the product in place. 

Why it Works

It interacts with its audience in a way many Facebook pages failed to do so, their application process made viewers engage with the product and the potential for rejection meant that getting in became a form of achievement that Facebookers were proud to share all over their wall, promoting the product further. It also stands out, managing to leave a mark out of all the millions of pages that exist.

Threshers

'Accidental' Voucher

People will do anything for a discount. Thresher's cleverly used this and sent out 40% off vouchers to a select number of their customers 'accidentally', pretending that the vouchers in question were meant for supplier use only. The stunt caused sales to rocket mixing a combination of high savings, secrecy and mystery in order to rope it's customers in.

Why it Works

People love to be 'in' on something, they love to be the one with the latest news and this stunt plays on that perfectly. The accidental vouchers caused a wave of mystery and secrecy that became akin to gossip meaning the brand spread quickly over social media with friends messaging each other about the accidental voucher. 

Dollar Shave Club

Cleverly Targeted Advert

A perfect example of appealing to the target audience, it wasn't the product that made this brand strong, it was the way the advert was presented that drew in the numbers. With a clear target market in mind (men) Dollar Shave Club were able to produce a low budget advert packed with plenty of humour and tongue and cheek to appeal to their audiences. The advert takes risks that other target markets wouldn't get away with including the use of profanities, which in most cases would only cause an audience offence. In this case it adds to the humorous tone and helps leave a lasting impression.

Why it Works

It's unique, good comedy that knows who it's appealing to. The low budget humour engages us on a personal level and the fact it makes us laugh means the video is more likely to be remembered and passed on, shared across the internet via social media sites.

Guerrilla Advertising

Whilst researching viral marketing I came across a blog dedicated to creative and unique forms of marketing and promotion, creativeguerrillamarketing. It not only included articles about what makes successful viral, social media, and ambient promotion but also a huge archive of examples and ideas.

As a concept, Guerrilla Advertising is something that vastly appeals to me, and like with viral campaigning its something that requires trend setting, originality, surprise and a strong sense of audience interaction by making the everyday a little bit more interesting. It can include installations, 'hidden' secrets and public stunts/displays.

I feel that in order to make our campaign as strong as possible we will need to use a combination of real world guerrilla advertisements and viral and social network campaigns. So, alongside viral marketing I've also been gathering examples of guerrilla marketing.

Advertisment for Shark Week

Promoting Mascara

Ariel Stain Remover Ad

Rock Radio

Coffee Ad

True Blood Promo

Fertiliser Guerrilla Ad

 Sopranos Promo

 Sony Slim Camera Ad

 Camera Digital Zoom

 Mac Book Air Ad

 Changing careers advertistment

 Mc Donalds 

The Zoo


Amnesty International
The very successful players of Ambient/Guerrilla marketing are the charities, Amnesty International manages to find incredibly creative ways of getting their messages across. They manage to cause a reaction in an audience already over-bombarded with charity images and use a streak of reality in their campaigns, they really shock and disturb the audiences into fully understanding the situations Amnesty International is trying to prevent and leave an impression that will take a long time to wear off. 

Viral/Public Stunt in Movie Theatre

OUGD406: SB1- Secret 7"

Music Make You Loose Control

Every year for the last three years, the competition secret 7" takes places, inviting designers to create unique vinyl covers for previously selected band. As as part of our assignment, we're all going to enter it. The idea is to design a 7"single cover for one of seven songs selected previously. No mention of the artist or the name of the song must be used, hence the 'secret' part of secret 7. So the songs to choose from this year are:

Age of Reason- Black Sabbath
Grounds for Divorce- Elbow
Team- Lorde
Virginia Plain- Roxy Music
Get it on- T-Rex
Strange Creatures- Jake Bugg and
Karma Koma- Massive Attack


Research

Before the sketching and initial ideas began I needed to research and collect previous examples of good (or bad) record design. So I took a walk in search of Leeds's finest examples of record shops (Jumbo and Crash) and took plenty of photographs whilst inside, I made sure that I liked each design example I gathered, but also, made sure to keep my search varied for different styles.

So what do I like and why do I like it?

Eels seem to have an affinity with very good album cover design and the other examples I have are very nice, clean, strong designs, however I chose this one because it appeals to the illustrator and comic fan in me. I love strong lines and patches of black used as shading, very comic book. As well as creating mystery/possibly story that links to the album this illustration seems to set the feel of the album too, I mean you can tell it's not going to be a thigh-slapping affair but rather a toe-tapping tragedy. The bedraggled, homeless look of the man, the colour blue streaking its way across the cover and the darkness looming behind him- the story doesn't seem hopeful. ALso the way he looks directly out of his cover and into your eyes means it really reaches out to its public in attempt to pull them in. 

Simple, old fashioned looking typography, contrasting colours and big letter grab your viewing attention. Honestly though, I was very happy to find this design, it reminds me of Urban Outfitter's bags that they stock sometimes and I've always liked that particular bag design so it's nice to see something similar for an album. I think the reason I really like this cover though is because it looks like it could've been screen printed and hand produced- it gives the sleeve a more personal feel and a sense of character- it may sound silly but you can feel the little guy's personality, he's light hearted.

Uncannily this example looks like, and may well have been inspired by, the cover design for the penguin books, which I'm a fan of anyway: black, white and orange announcing it's presence. I'm also a fan for design that shows similar traits to photomontage- and that microphone looks like it's been cut out and layered onto the background, or at least, it does to me (however the way the orange leaks through it is just visually tasty, it messes with the sense of depth, making that microphone look... interesting).

I love this cover, so very much. I think it renewed my waining faith in typography not being essential for good record design, which is something I had been worried about after learning we couldn't put the name of the band or the title of the song onto our designs. So why do I like it, it's very punk isn't it? Which rocks. The hand-drawn quality, the use of stars (which seem to have leaked their way into youth culture and popular tattoo design) and that their upside down to to mess with the established norm and that fire or blood streaked off of them, it makes me think of meteorites and shooting stars. This design is simple and it relies on this to grab your attention, whereas title and band and image bustle for viewer appreciation in normal record design, this one doesn't have that problem, it feels confident of itself and a little rebellious. Like with the 'Electronic Sound Patterns' design the hand-madeness has given it a personality, a distinctly different one to Electronic Sound Patterns, but a punk rocker and a confident one. 

The Pet Shop boys are another band with particularly good album cover designs and I really like this one (for similar reasons to the Billy Bragg/Penguin looking design) because of it's use of image and colour, black and white 'popped' over with bright eye grabbing green. I like the way that the text dominates over the image and in fact dominates the entire design, it produces a 'layering' effect where you feel like there are three layers to the image, white, photo, and finally green. (Or maybe that's stemmed from too much time on PhotoShop) 

I really love the abstract shapes used in this design, as well as the non traditional dark colours. It's a brave desicion to not have any colour doing your attention grabbing for you and relying on the strength of the image, but this design pulls it off well. Though I do have problems with this design, other than the very clean and clear type, I can't honestly tell you why it's strong- it just is. It's visually interesting and a well balanced looking image, despite being full of shapes and detail it manages to not feel over-cluttered.