Viral ads get some rules

Do you remember the YouTube video showing 4 cell phones popping corn. I sure do. In fact a told some friends about it and they got all bent out of shape because they thought their cell-phones where frying there brains (popcorn pops at 300f).


Well it turns out is was just a viral ad and had nothing to do with the truth. Because of it's popularity it has come to the attention of the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus. Today they released a statement that said this (PDF auto download page).

The statements basically states the following:
"In non-traditional media, to the extent that advertising claims are communicated, advertisers are required to substantiate those claims with competent and reliable scientific evidence," said the statement.


So now if you plan on creating a viral ad please be aware that your content must not make crazy false claims. Of course you can still do cool things, but now you will have to vet the content a bit more.

Direct Encounter Marketing

This in probably the most effective direct mail approach I have come up with. It only works with small lists but it is very effective. If you can get your list of people that you want to communicate with down to 500 or lower this is probably the best way to get a response or grab there attention. It's not a way to save money, it's just a more effective way to communicate to a very specific target group.

The case study I am using is from a series of Direct Encounter Boxes we created for the Hotel Pan Pacific (Bangkok). They wanted to say "Hi and thanks for using us" campaign. Their target group where the top 500 corporate clients that booked about 80% of there meeting rooms and had many business clients stay at the hotel.

The boxes where all themed, we ended up doing a series of 6 over the nest 3 years). This one was themed as a James Bond Box. In the box you found a bottle of Perrier water (cross marketing opportunity, which we will talk about later), a water-pistol, gift card for 1 martini (shaken not stirred) every day at their executive lounge and an assignment sheet.

The assignment sheet told the recipient to came to the hotel during the Songcran Festival (Thai festival or water where everyone get wet). They where to enter the hotel and squirt any staff member wearing a yellow armband. After getting a staff member wet you where awarded a weekend stay at the hotel so you could enjoy your victory in style. The campaign had a 60% activity response.

Now lets look at what the campaign communicated.
- The hotel has a sense oh hummer
- The hotel was aware of cultural events in the country that it did business in
- It introduced or reintroduced people to the executive lounge/bar
- It get the attention of 300+ executives on a 500 person mailing list
- It produced an opportunity to create a press release around the event
- It invited people to experience the hotel in a new way (they where people who only used the hotel as a business tool)

Now if you have a well researched list of people you would like to expose to your business of product, this could be a great way to do it. If you would like to see some more examples please contact me through my website and I will send you those cases-studies.