Mysterious billboards get plenty of attention
(7/16/06 - LOS ANGELES, CA) - It’s tough to get people to notice billboards in New York and Los Angeles, but giant signs of what looks like a scorned woman have attracted attention. “Hi Steven, Do I have your attention now?” the sign reads, and then goes on to call Steven immoral and unfaithful. The open letter ends with a “P.S. I paid for this from our joint bank account.”
OK, so my catalog of pet peeves reads like a dog-eared copy of War and Peace. This latest one- viral marketing- is something I find particularly aggravating. I admire creativity, particularly when it comes to advertising. If it’s something we’re going to be subjected to anyway, it’s nice to not feels as if my intelligence is being insulted (singing toilet paper rolls, anyone??). Nonetheless, I detest deception. When something is presented as something it ultimately is demonstrated to not be, THAT pisses me off. Before, I no longer know what’s real and what’s fabricated, so I end up feeling as if I need to be cynical about everything.
Of course, the whole idea of viral marketing is that it’s attention-grabbing. Something as simple as a billboard gets people talking, and before you know it, you’ve got some real buzz on your hands. It’s also an excellent way to get maximum bang for a minimum investment. Nonetheless, when this form of “creativity” involves wholesale deception, that crosses the line.
On Ryan Seacrest’s radio show on 102.7 KIIS FM Los Angeles, people called in to discuss the billboards. One skeptical caller to Seacrest’s show said she didn’t believe the message was truly part of a lover’s quarrel. She said she’d seen one of the billboards in another location. “I saw one yesterday over on Englewood and Washington,” she said.
“Let’s then deduce that there was no individual woman who was cheated on here, that this is obviously an ad campaign,” Seacrest replied. “That ad agency is having the greatest day of their life.”
This billboard is part of a mystery ad campaign for a new cable TV show. It’s part of a larger trend of ads that don’t look like ads at all….
And that’s exactly what I find so maddening. Viral marketing feels a lot like manipulation. An artificial event is created, and yet by the way it’s designed, people begin to treat it as the real thing. When the true nature of the event is revealed, as it eventually must be in order for the product tie-in to become known, it just leaves me feel deceived and angry.
“The key word — and this is what every advertiser is looking for — buzz,” said Jerry Della Femina, chairman and CEO of Della Femina, Rothschild, Jeary Partners advertising agency in New York. “They want buzz.”
And I want to be able to know that something is what it’s puported to be, instead of having to wonder whether it’s some ad agency’s creative idea to draw attention to a product.
This buzz has a more technical name: viral advertising, so dubbed because the ads spread from one person to another by people talking about them and, in the case of online ads, e-mailing them to friends.
Ad agencies large and small have creative teams dedicated to the viral concept, because these ads are cheaper to produce and because more young consumers are likely to pay attention. Ground zero of viral advertising is the video sharing Web site YouTube.com, which has more daily viewers than MTV.
“It’s so deliciously sneaky,” Della Femina said. “Most people say advertising doesn’t affect me. Well, it does. It does and it works.”
Why, though, does it have to involve wholesale deception and manipulation of their target audience?
But the heavy impact of viral marketing carries a risk. A video clip of a Middle East terrorist blowing himself up in a Volkswagen drew millions of online hits. Even though Volkswagen had nothing to do with the clip, the company apologized after a storm of bad publicity.
Man, some people will do ANYTHING to sell a few more cars, eh?
Viral marketing, while no doubt effective in generating the much-coveted “buzz”, does run the risk of numbing it’s audience. When events prove to be little more than the product of a creative advertising agency, how will we react when something very real and compelling occurs?
No, I don’t suppose you can outlaw this sort of thing, and I don’t suppose that you should be able to. I’d like to think that advertising agencies would be responsible and mature enough to recognize the risks of the activity they’re engaging in. Of course, I’d like to think they’d knock it off BECAUSE IT’S PISSING ME OFF, but no one pays attention to me anyway….
