Insightful articles, opinion and commentary about mobile and web.

Simon van Wyk hails the emergence of viral marketing by Australian marketers but questions the lack of interactivity.

At long last Australian marketers are catching the bug and are waking up to the power of viral marketing - today’s equivalent of good old fashioned word of mouth.

‘Big Ad’ - the new Carlton Draught television commercial is proving highly infectious. The Sydney Morning Herald reported in late July that half a million people had viewed the ad on the Carlton Draught website in a matter of days following its online launch and long before its first official TV broadcast. And so they should, the ad is highly entertaining and certainly rates in the pass on factor.

If you haven’t seen it, ‘Big Ad’ takes its cues from the big budget television commercials which were once commonplace - think British Airways and Qantas. The ad shows throngs of men dressed in different coloured robes running across a field, chanting their Carlton Draught anthem to the stirring music of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. The men run in formation to create an image which from the air looks like a guy drinking beer.

No doubt it was seen as a brave move to launch the TV spot on the web before its TV broadcast, but I’m sure the team at Foster’s is delighted with the buzz its viral marketing exercise has generated.

Indeed, the mass adoption of broadband means that rich audio and visual content is accessible to an ever increasing number of consumers on the web. And undoubtedly many marketers are now beginning to seize the opportunity to use the web as another distribution channel for their high production value television commercials.

Whilst Foster’s marketing team should be lauded in creating a novel and entertaining ad, and I applaud their imagination, creativity and chutzpah, I also think they’ve missed a huge opportunity. The viral marketing approach should capitalise on engagement and provide a meaningful brand experience beyond mere entertainment. And you shouldn’t need huge TV budgets to do viral well.

Maverick New Zealand-based, super premium vodka brand 42 Below prides itself on its non-traditional uses of marketing. The story of 42 Below parodies what the world thinks about New Zealand whilst the Britain version pokes fun at the British in much the same way. The quirky, unsophisticated style of the animation clearly suggests that they do their marketing on a shoestring and don’t take themselves too seriously. It also proves that they understand their target market and don’t really care what anyone else thinks. As the number one selling super premium vodka in Australia and New Zealand, their campaigns must be working and generating word of mouth - but again, engagement is limited to passive entertainment.

Unlike TV or print, a web campaign begs interactivity. Running a passive, albeit entertaining, ad on the web can generate brand awareness, but surely incorporating interactive components would maximise the impact and power of this most engaging medium.

Master viral marketers, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, creators of Subservient Chicken, used technology beautifully to engage the user and drive home the Burger King brand value - which in this case was - chicken any way you want it. The engagement was based on interaction not simply passive entertainment. The website was supported by highly targeted late night cable 30 second spots showing the Subservient Chicken living and interacting with 20-somethings, who all wanted that chicken.

Such was the momentum, six months later another website ‘Chicken Fight’ and a second round of TV spots aired on cable. The last stats I read showed that Subservient Chicken had something like 14 million unique visitors (396 million hits) and Chicken Fight had a more than respectable 750,000 unique visitors.

But more importantly, consumers were interacting with the website for an average of 7.5 minutes. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to equate that to fully watching 15 30-second spots on TV. And we’re still talking about it over a year later. Without doubt, Subservient Chicken is regarded as a master study of using the internet at the centre of an integrated multi-media marketing campaign.

This year, the team at Crispin Porter & Bogusky are behind Gap’s brave new venture into highly interactive viral marketing territory with a website called watchmechange.com. The site guides visitors through steps to create a virtual likeness of themselves whether male or female, fair or dark-skinned, right down to body type, hair style and colour and facial features.

With just a few clicks, the computer model dances energetically, removing its clothes - just down to its underwear - before retreating to the changing room and coming out nicely attired in a chosen Gap outfit.

It’s too early to see whether this approach works to get shoppers back into the American clothing store but it is certainly creating a lot of buzz for the brand.

Gap is hoping that people will stumble across the site, its interactivity a major factor in keeping them there and telling their friends. Apparently, Gap is not promoting the site and is not doing anything to advertise it beyond inviting visitors to email their animated character creation to a friend with a message that says “Meet me in the back of Gap”.

Likewise, Procter & Gamble in the UK developed a highly interactive viral concept around their Sure Men brand, in promoting their sponsorship of the British Lions recent tour of New Zealand.

Their website acknowledged that there was nothing like the New Zealand Haka in the Northern Hemisphere and so invited the user to create their very own British & Irish Lions Haka by selecting from eight animated movie clips and sequencing as desired to form their own, unique tribal war dance that they could save and email on to friends. I haven’t seen the results of this viral experiment, but I’m pretty sure it performed better than the British Lions team.

With consumers enjoying so many media choices, advertising has to go beyond entertainment. It should engage and involve. Clearly, the 30 second TV spot is not dead, but simply running the TV spot on the web is one dimensional and not capitalising on the power of digital technology nor employing the rules of engagement.