Viral Marketing Gone Wrong

Inspired by the video of Coke and Mentos on youtube in the first class, I have recently found the controversy surrounding a Danish youtube video very interesting:

It features a woman named Karen who discusses how she met a male tourist and ended up going home with him and bringing the Danish concept of ‘hygge’ to life (loosely defined as the presence of and pleasure from comforting, gentle, and soothing things’). Karen is now trying to find the man she spent the night with to tell him that he is now the father of her child!! Hence the YouTube appeal. Karen even publishes her email address and highlights a website.

It quickly generated several million views and was talked  about quite a bit – until someone dropped the bomb: it was in fact FAKE! It had been sponsored by the official Danish Tourist Board “Visit Denmark” in an attempt to generate awareness of the liberal Danish values and independent, proud women. As has been pointed out by many people, anyone who watches the video, however, could also just as easily get the impression that Danish women are “loose, and careless skanks” (translated from a Danish politician). It generated so much controversy because it was  sponsored by the government and represented an image that many Danes do not particularly want to promote through their taxes and the Director of the Bureau ultimately had to resign

Now that it has all been exposed as fake, however, all the good benefits of the viral marketing* approach where the power of social networks and video sharing websites ensures the quick spread of a message, are now haunting the makers: Visit Denmark  has desperately been trying to take back the video but it has in fact been “hijacked” by the users of e.g. youtube and for every video the Bureau deletes, there are 5 more uploaded.

These were just my quick thoughts on one of the dangers of viral marketing.

Karen

 A picture from “her” website before it was cancelled (http://karen26.mono.net)

Please follow the link below to see one of the newly uploaded “hijacked” videos (or simply type in “Karen”, “danish woman”, “payoff”, you get the picture of the spreading of the video):

 

*Definition of Viral marketing:

viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.[1] Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, or even text messages.

The goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to identify individuals with high Social Networking Potential (SNP) and create Viral Messages that appeal to this segment of the population and have a high probability of being passed along.

(source: Seth Godin: Unleashing the ideavirus, 2001,  wikipedia. org and USAToday)

Tags: Karen, marketing, networks, social, viral, visitdenmark