ideasarehere

Currently revisiting Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing, it came clear to me that you can’t help but smile about the illiteracy of today’s marketing departments, especially when trying to come up with something viral. Over the last decade there are so many examples of “this is how you do it” (still outnumbered by “this is how you should NEVER EVER do it”), that everybody could easily come up with a checklist of no-gos, such as:

• mentioning your brand slogan-wise
• including statements that boil down to “this thing is sooo average, you have to like it” (subtext: “because we spent sooo many hours tweaking it down from being very edgy to so-so”)
• having a “professional look” (like shot on film or high def camera, proper (=boring) lighting etc.), but not being at the edge of what’s possible in ANY direction.

Well, basically everything that makes a TV ad the way we know it ever since. Once again, the web is not another TV channel where your message can be forced onto the viewer and they keep their mouths shut. On the web, the best that can happen to you if someone dislikes your interruption, is clicking it away. Far worse is when they decide to spread the word that you suck big time and are boring and they wish you’d rot in some nasty place. They are very likely to get more leverage than you.