Making Your Video Go Viral

Last week we discussed Dan Greenberg's article, "The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos" that he posted on TechCrunch late last year. He gave an impressive list of things his team does in order to make their clients' videos go viral. Our discussion about whether or not it's ethical to promote a video using these tactics started with the deck below....

Being Viral

view presentation (tags: videos viral pr)

Towards the end of our discussion we all agreed that our work doesn’t stop with adding a video to YouTube and crossing our fingers it goes viral, there is much more work to do beyond that. We also agreed that we wouldn’t feel comfortable promoting our clients’ videos with some of the shady tactics that Dan describes.

In order to help us develop a 'menu', if you will, of viral tactics for our clients to choose from we've decided to develop our own video and viral strategy using all the tactics we feel are ethical and smart to make our video go viral. I am now going to open this post up for Video Ideas - please post your ideas in the comment section below!

Global Warming, I Has It

If you like LOL Cats and care about the planet, you are going to lurve
Global Warming Hates Kittens

Cleverly disseminating global warming information, these little kitties have one request:

“Save me from global warming!”

Also qualifying for the “Peculiar Green Post” award is Puma’s collection of shoes representing endangered species.

Now, go forth and be green.

T-Minus 9

The unofficial countdown to my wedding.

Developing a Social Media Plan For Your Business In 5 Steps

Just read this article and it sounds a lot like what Emil and I presented at the Seattle Podcamp Unconference a few weeks back. We spoke about 3 steps: Listen, Engage, Build a Relationship. In the article below they included "Preparing" and "Measuring" and offer up a bunch of new websites for doing this. All add these new sites into the PR Resources section this week!

Check it out here: http://mashable.com/2008/07/10/how-to-develop-a-social-media-plan/

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The unofficial countdown to my wedding.

Put Some What? Where?!

In an industry where words are everything, we spend a lot of time counseling our clients on exactly which ones to use. When trying to cultivate or support an exact brand image, every word, phrase or punctuation choice is important. Good slogans or taglines support brand recognition and adoption, while bad slogans earn scorn and ridicule from the masses (particularly from those of us in the industry) before passing quickly from our minds.

Good ones are:
GE –We bring good things to life (memorable, succinct, conveys powerful brand messaging about the type and quality of products as well as what they enable)
UPS – What can brown do for you? (underscores their cornerstone value proposition of service, while solidly tying the brand to their logo for added recognition)
Nike – Just Do It (encourages the athletic mindset of “get out there and play or run or race or train or…” and appeals to the spontaneous side of us all)

Bad ones are:
Easily forgotten


On a recent vacation I found myself enjoying a “Pig in a Puppy”* at King’s BBQ in Kinston, NC where I saw signs for their Oink Express food delivery service. Being a fan of the “Pig in a Puppy” and being very interested in learning how to get one delivered to me at home in Seattle, I began flipping through the brochure. Unfolding it all the way, I learned that their tagline (I kid you not) is:

“Put Some South In Your Mouth, Ya’ll!”

Once I got over the misspelled colloquialism and a big case of the giggles, my mind immediately began evaluating the tagline for its validity in driving brand recognition. And while at first, it definitely makes me chuckle, I think it’s a great tagline for King’s BBQ’s Oink Express:
The rhyme is memorable but not obnoxious, it includes a call to action, highlights their key offering of southern food, closing with “ya’ll” lends credibility to their claim of expertise in southern food and endears them to the target audience and the (probably unintentional) double entendre adds intrigue and edge.

So with the combination of good food and a creative tagline, the Oink Express gets two snouts up from me. Next time you’re craving hushpuppies, collard greens or banana pudding, you know who to call for some south in your mouth.


*A “Pig in a Puppy” is a chopped pork barbecue sandwich, where the pig is placed in between two slices of a very large hushpuppy, rather than a bun.

T-Minus 11

The unofficial countdown to my wedding.

T-Minus 12

The unofficial countdown to my wedding.

Tapping Into Americans' Faith in Innovation

One of the toughest issues facing consumers these days is rising gas prices. The people are angry…very angry!

The Wall Street Journal discusses the aggressive marketing strategy used by companies such as ExxonMobil. By painting themselves as part of the solution to our growing energy crisis, oil companies have come under harsh criticism from Greenpeace and other environmental groups.

Don’t shoot me, but higher gas prices may help us in the end because money may be the only motivator which will actually result in a behavior change. How else are we going to get people to drive less, invest in hybrid cars and generally consume less?

$5.00 gas…here we come.

T-Minus 13

The unofficial countdown to my wedding.

FriendFeed Is In. Twitter is Out.

Last month Twitter was all the rage, this month it's Friendfeed (Think Twitter on steroids) - what will it be next month? I read somewhere that there are only about three months in an Internet year, which means that by the time I finish this post... nevermind. With technology advancing as fast as it is on the internet and news being thrown at us from every which way it's hard to keep up with it all. This blog post is my attempt to provide you with some more information on FriendFeed and why it might be worth your (or your clients') time to check it out. What makes Friendfeed so hot right now? It's all those Millennials, or those otherwise known as Generation Y. I actually am a Millennial myself so I know a thing or two about it. We are masters of multitasking - texting, emailing and IMing all at the same time is second nature to us. We are digital natives seeking instant gratification where ever we can find it. We live online, it's how we stay connected to friends, peers and other's like us. It's others like us that we're interested in. Enter FriendFeed. 

According to FriendFeed's site they "enable you to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos and music that your friends and family are sharing. It offers a unique way to discover and discuss information among friends. " "On FriendFeed, you and your friends contribute to a shared stream of information - information that you care about, because its from the people that you care about." If I didn't know any better, I'd think they were talking directly to me and perhaps, just maybe, the 75 million other Millennials out there.  So lets say you are currently blogging and are active on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. FriendFeed will allow you to create a feed for all of these online services in one place and share your content from all these sites with your friends and others. Check out this article on PRWeek that talks about how PR professionals can utilize FriendFeed for their clients. 

So where is FriendFeed headed? The same place Google, Facebook and any other self-respecting social search site is headed. According to Steve Ruble, all of these sites will "build businesses around social contextual search advertising" which will allow me to search for content created by my peers, people I trust. Danny Sullivan calls this, Search 4.0: The Human Factor. This basically means that search engines, like Google and FriendFeed, will be serving up data custom-tailored to you. 

Keep an eye on FriendFeed, many predict it will replace Twitter. I'd love to hear your ideas for using it to interact with consumers and reporters.

United at Seattle's Unconference

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It was a time of firsts. It was my first time at UW. It was Seattle’s first Podcamp. It was Sydney’s first time spending more than 5 minutes in the same room as me. It was also the first time that certain agencies ever heard of us. We did PR for the Dalai Lama, you might have heard of us?
Anyways, Sydney and I recently attended an unconference at University of Washington. Although I have reason to believe that the term "unconference" is only used so that event organizers don't actually have to do much in terms of structure, it turns out that there are some merits to it. If someone expressed interest in learning how to distribute podcasts, they needed only to ask and an impromptu session would be organized on the spot. It was a very cool way for people to get exactly what they want from the event, while still maintaining some semblance of order.
We presented an overview of Do’s and Don’ts for blogger engagement, which we basically boiled down to Listen, Engagement, Relationship. Although we had to scrap our School House Rock theme song and dance that would likely accompany this presentation, it still went down without a hitch. Our presentation can be found here.
Other agencies were present and talked on a variety of similar subjects as well. Unfortunately, given the nature of the “unconference” it was impossible to see everything, but some highlights from other presentations are below:

A preso on twitter and why you should use it

Social Media and PR

Communication in an Always-On World

T-Minus 18

The unofficial countdown to my wedding.

Ad Agency Nerdgasm

When Cyberdyne isn't ignorantly plotting mankind towards destruction via Judgement Day with its creation of Skynet, they need to drum up some new business just like the rest of us. I mean, its not like creating Terminators and flabby Arnold look alikes is gonna be able to sustain business forever. That's why they use ads like this one, to show you that they too are Building Our Future...Today! Too bad nobody ever told them that their money would be better spent making terminators that can write press releases, track and engage blogs, and search and destroys bad rumors.

This is actually the genius side project of ad agency GiantIdeas, who have an ongoing series of Geek Ad Wednesdays where they mock up ads for fictional mega-corporations from various movies and shows such as Lost, Bladerunner, Terminator and Jurassic Park. It does an excellent job of showcasing their creative talent and technical skills as well as highlighting their sense of humor and personality. Something to consider as we wrap up our marketing materials for the office and continue looking into other creative ways to show ourselves off to the local Cyberdynes.

Who wants to help me host a podcast interview with the Joker about how he's always been so successful at promoting his brand identity.

T-Minus 19

The unofficial countdown to my wedding.