Do viral marketing and creating a buzz seem like concepts that are hard to grasp? I mean, we all know that if someone tells you a product, song or movie is good, chances are you’ll believe it more than if you see an ad for it. But, how do you get buzz going?
Well, two books came out during the last couple of weeks. Each was written by one of the pioneers of viral event marketing. Bill Wasik is the guy who invented the flash mob concept. One day he was bored and just wanted to do something interesting. He sent out an anonymous email to a few friends suggesting that they show up at a nearby furniture chain store at a specific time, and to tell all their friends about it. To his surprise hundreds of people showed up.
They all walked into the furniture store, stood there for the proscribed seven minutes, and then they all quietly left. He tried it five more times with different locations. Each time, hundreds of people he had never met before showed up, stood in Macy’s or wherever the next location was, and then quietly dispersed after the exact number of minutes went by. To his amazement, bloggers and then newspapers around the country started to write about these anonymously created events.
He then tried this kind of process with an idie-rock band, and eventually political projects. He found that after a few events, blogs and journalists came out of the woodwork to get the story. His book is called “And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture.” Because Bill is a journalist (he’s a senior editor of Harper’s Magazine), his story is really well researched. It is a high level learning experience, but a quick read. There are five chapters; I read it in a few hours.
The other book, “Causing a Scene, Extraordinary Pranks in Ordinary Places with Improv Everywhere” is written by Improv Everywhere founder Charlie Todd with Alex Scordelis. Charlie Todd was originally a comedian, who came up with the idea of getting a bunch of people together in a public place and filming (as he describes it) “scenes of chaos and joy.” While Wasik’s book examines the issues from a journalist’s skeptical point of view, Todd just tells the stories of putting on amazing events. Watch this MSNBC interview to get a sense of his methods. And then check out his work with Yahoo, (click on Elevator Music, Tanda first). Just like with Wasik’s flash mobs, eveytime Todd puts on an event, the press comes out to report on it. And that’s where viral marketing really gets the push, doesn’t it?
