It will be interesting to see how many tune in on Saturday and whether the Cowell Media Machine turns Britain’s talent into Frankenstein’s monster…

It’s been a week of surprises; both on the populist culture front and on the business front. First, we saw Susan Boyle shoot to instant stardom, courtesy of a breathtaking performance of ‘I dream a dream’ from Les Mis on Britain’s Got Talent, which was immediately uploaded to YouTube and has already attracted over 17.5 million views throughout the world, attracting comment from celebs like Ashton Kucher and Demi Moore. Then we have the photos of anti-capitalist Nicky Fisher who was ‘brutally attacked’ by an unnamed police officer, all conveniently captured on video/camera and sold to the highest bidder for c£50K (I thought the whole point of anti-capitalism was that money was the root of all evil?) Nokia, the once darling of the mobile phone world, fails to curtail growth forecasts and suffers a 90% downfall in profits, citing the popularity of the iPhone as one of the principal reasons. Finally, a couple of employees at Domino’s have become infamous for shifting the perception of the brand from positive to negative in a couple of days (according the market research firm YouGov) by releasing a ‘day in the life’ video on YouTube, which shows them doing inhuman things to food in preparing it for general consumption. Domino’s went quickly into damage-control mode, inevitably firing the employees and producing its own video of apology and reassurance, as well as succumbing to the inevitable and delving into Twitter. All too late.

As you can see, our theme this week is about the viral element of campaigning. We live in such a short-termist society, that a well-planned and well executed viral can have a huge impact on a campaign; something that marketeers have recognised over the past few years, but struggled to implement consistently. The great thing about using the web as a medium to drive viral campaigns is that the advertising regulation isn’t as stringent, so you can push creative boundaries a lot further. The challenge is that is can be extremely tricky to know what will and what will not take off. Given the rise in prominence of brand response advertising in HR Recruitment, it is something we should all start thinking about, so I’ve got a couple of sites to help get you started.

Viral Video Chart (http://www.viralvideochart.com/)

I’ve seen Jim sneakily peeking at this site during his lunch hours and aside from the guffaws/sniggering it induces (well, it’s better than his mobile ringtone) it is a pretty useful site. Imagine YouTube with tracking capability. The site allows you to deconstruct the popularity of a video by tracking how and where people are talking about it – just click on one of the video links and look at the data on the right hand side. Great stuff.

Viralbank (www.viralbank.com)

Once the darling of the viral world, this site has fallen by the wayside of late, but it is still a useful repository of videos, microsites, emails, photos and games.

PotNoodle (http://www.potnoodle.com)

Pot Noodle are the kings (or queens) of viral and can often be relied on to come up with engaging, weird and whacky campaigns to keep us on our toes. The most prominent from last year was PotNoodle, the Musical but I can’t get the link to work (www.potnoodlethemusical.com) So I’ve sent you a link to the main website. I love the fact that there is a section of the site called ‘Nutrition’ that, when you actually look at it contains two facts about the product and then some general useless tat.

Twitscoop (http://www.twitscoop.com/)

Part of your planning approach for viral campaigns will be to understand what is current and how to adapt it. Twitscoop is a site that provides a live feed on topics that are being discussed. The site trawls hundreds of tweets every minute and extracts the words which are mentioned more often than usual. The result is displayed in a Tag Cloud, using the following rule: the hotter, the bigger (no joke here). Quite often you will find that you have access to hot topics way before the they actually hit the mainstream information channels! For those of you who remember how accurate Google Trends was at predicting the outbreak of ‘flu epidemics, just imagine how much more potent this is…

]]> http://hodesdigital.co.uk/hyatt/2009/04/friday-mail-the-price-of-fame/feed/ 0 http://hodesdigital.co.uk/hyatt/2009/04/hope-springs-eternal/ http://hodesdigital.co.uk/hyatt/2009/04/hope-springs-eternal/#comments Sun, 12 Apr 2009 11:59:36 +0000 Andy http://hodesdigital.co.uk/hyatt/?p=255

In these days of manufactured boy bands, media manipulation, short-termism, capitalism gone haywire and “reality TV” it is incredibly easy to be cynical. The daily press is rife with tales of greed, theft, selfishness and extortion; if one were to read each item literally, it would paint an incredibly depressing picture of humanity.

And every so often something like this comes along. One of those moments that shocks you and captures your attention so immediately, it is, quite literally, unforgettable.

For those of you who are unaware of the background, Britain’s Got Talent is a reality TV show designed to find the most talented person (or people) in the country. Individuals or groups are given their 30 seconds of fame in a series of (seeminly never ending) auditions until they are either voted off by a panel of judges, or voted through to the next round. The idea is that we get to laugh at the arrogance of people who have the audacity to showcase their ‘talent’ (categories range from acts like  juggling, contortionism, magic, stand-up comedy through to the ever popular music) and quietly applaud those who are acceptable enough to make it through to subsequent rounds. To be frank, most people aren’t really interested in seeing the genuinely talented acts until the ‘dross’ has been cleared, so most of the early rounds is about the TV producers finding the weirdest people they can and allowing us to laugh at just how crass they are.

So here we have Susan Boyle. A 47 year old single woman from Scotland, who lives with her cats in a small town in the  regions of Scotland. She looks odd, dresses like Anthony Perkins’ mother character from Pycho and has eyebrows that meet in the middle. We are teed up from the onset to expect a dramatic failue – she is overconfident when being interviewed, wants to be a “professional singer”, like “Elaine Page” and the reason that we have never seen or heard of her before is that she “hasn’t been given the opportunity” and what’s more, she chooses a huge song to sing – “I dreamed a dream” from Les Miserables.

The music starts and whilst we wait with baited breath for a hideously tuneless screeching, we are treated instead to an incredibly powerful, goosebump-enducing rendition. It might not be musically ‘perfect’, but it certainly makes your hair stand on end.

But, more compelling than the notion of an individual who belies their appearance and proves their worth, was the reaction of the audience. From the first note, they recognise that there is a genuine talent on the stage and the tone instantly switches from cries of derision to roars of encouragement. The crowd are on their feet, applauding and willing Susan to deliver the performance that they have immediately recognised she is capable of. And that she does. Then, having delivered the performance of her life, she simply walks off stage.

For those of you who get depressed in the cynicism and self-centred nature of humanity, it is a humbling experience to watch. And on a weekend where the theme is about rebirth, it is quite fitting , really.