Petite Lap Giraffes – Viral Marketing Done Right
Everybody loves fantasy, but nobody likes to be made a fool.
When I blogged about Spiral Moon Media Inc.’s recent viral attempt, I left it about as ambiguous as the company itself left things. Is this for real, or is this a prank? What’s going on here?
The difficulty is that people are going to get angry. If a person sees the video, spends time thinking about how stupid this whole thing is, and then discovers that it was just an ad for Spiral Moon Media, there’s a reaction at that moment. What you WANT is: “Gee, that’s great! I’ll hire them!”
In the case of the “Share The Air” viral campaign, I don’t think that’s the reaction being generated. I try not too swear too much on this blog so I won’t type out what people’s reactions are.
Take, by way of contrast, Opulence, I has it:
Dogs playing poker. Gold grapes. A miniature giraffe. Plus, as an added bonus, an entire hoax website for Sokoblovsky Farms, “Russia’s finest purveyors of petite lap giraffes.”
The website itself has gone viral, and people find it completely awesome whether or not they think it’s real. But… why?
When you “peek behind the curtain” and see the wizard back there, you smile and laugh along with him. He wasn’t trying to trick you. Rather, he was putting on a show for your benefit. This was about you, not him. More to the point:
- If you call people stupid, they’ll hate you.
- If you call people smart, they’ll love you.
This is true whether they are, in fact, smart or stupid. It’s also true if they actually believed the deception or not.
Also see The North American House Hippo:
Respect the audience at all costs folks.
Hmm. This has to be the cutest blog post I’ve ever done.