Viral Marketing or Fear Marketing?

The more things change the more they stay the same…well kind of. As viral marketing is maturing we are beginning to see a conversion of technologies and strategies that allow us to use social communications to learn in new and different ways?  This combines the old school idea of carefully planning a highly creative strategy (this costs money) and a new means of a more immersive media experience ( this is where the new technology comes in). An important part of this process is the use of fear in the narrative of the viral campaigns. Think about it … we are hard wired to the verbal and visual narrative and keenly aware of anything fearful – it’s in our nature. Marketers use fear since it appeals to a wide audience as a narrative for advertising.   

 Below I have provided three examples of recent viral programs that are currently using fear as the primary sub-text of the narrative story in their ad. Some have been successful and show us the way to new and interesting learning opportunities while others ….not so much. These examples illustrate different levels of social communications and how they play out depending on how well thought out and creative the strategies are and how immersive the media experience is.  You will notice from the examples that the more fearful and immersive the story telling is the more we are engaged.  

We devour content today…more than ever - and this is witnessed in our cultures ever growing consumption of media, we feast on tragedy in the news, we increasingly watch horror movies and urban fantasy;  and we praise apocalyptic zombie television series. The mediums have proliferated and now we can consume more fearful information through more channels than ever. So what makes one better than another to us or what makes us choose one medium over another. I have put together a few examples of this …to show you the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of fear viral marketing…each if progressively a more immersive story telling experience!

Let’s start with the Ugly. Red Bull’s recent Titanic ad has resulted in many complaints as the ad suggests that passengers on the Titanic might have survived if they had drunk Red Bull.  They get marks for being bold – but the strategy that “any press is good press” really doesn’t apply here since these are tasteless ads that do not appeal to a wide audience and really don’t hit the mark with their existing customers either. Not particularly immersive and jot a lot of story hear

Next The Bad …well not really bad in the true sense of the word. If you count the end of the world and a quirky creative as bad …then this fits the bill. This ad delivers a viral video for LG it shows people, in a job interview witnessing the end of the world through an LG screen they think is a window. Great creative, not a lot of social interaction, certainly more immersive storytelling delivering great brand awareness through the viral effect.

The Good is much more integrated ad that utilizes social media, video, learning and a narrative story to enhances our participation and emerge us in the ad. This involves accessing an App that has been developed by the British Red Cross, that links to your Facebook page , and feeds in factious comments from friends as you witness a horrific knife attack on a bus. The viral ad teaches us how to respond and possibly save a life in the process. Great creative, good integration and great story telling to engage the audience - check it out

In each of the scenarios above we have witnessed a progressively increasing emersion in a variety of mediums and interaction with fear as the primary narrative backbone to feed our insatiable desire to be entertained, share with our friends and learn in the process. Maybe we are getting tired of sex as the primary viral attraction ?

 

 

 

What's New in E-Learning?

As an E-Learning development partner we (Ycommunicate.com) work with a wide variety of partners ranging from business/corporate to institutional organizations such as health care and with educational organizations such as colleges and universities. Recently we have noticed that the nature of learning is being discussed front and centre in more of these market segments. We feel that an exploration of the “nature of learning” is a change in the thinking process surrounding E-Learning, gradually the focus on technology and software has faded to more of a background discussion.

This is an important change since this brings the student and the content into focus and the value of applying e-learning to real world problems. It also combines two issues that have lived apart since the invention of learning, academic learning and practical learning. Now as we explore the ideas of learning and how technology can augment learning (notice I said augment not replace) we, for the first time, will begin to apply a set of criteria that allows broad education at a low or no cost through such tools as MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) which can be applied to both practical and academic learning.

These are still early days for this technology that is stimulating discussion around how we develop learning. It’s a bargaining chip that is being sold as a no-cost solution to learning around the world. As we all know - this is a fairy tale – since someone has to prepare the content (highly paid tenured professors), someone has to host the technology and someone has to update the E-Learning programs that can include simulations, all manner of visuals, videos,  photos, audio narration, (not to mention intellectual property) etc. Many forward thinking educational institutions in both Canada and the US are currently developing courses which offer education - not credentials.

While this is the first salvo of yet another build it and they will come (i.e., we will figure out how to make money on it later) struggle, the idea has merit and moves the discussion around E-Learning forward and it brings one big player into the discussion (educational institutions) that were previously on the sideline. Let’s faced it “bums in seats” education has been ruling who and how we learn for centuries.  Their participation signals that learning is about to change in new and unexpected ways that will affect learning and how governments support learning in the future.

Currently overlooked or perhaps we have just haven’t gotten around to this part of the discussion is teaching the teachers how to utilize this new technology effectively. Since it now demands a team approach to learning given the fact that you now need camera equipment and staff, editing facilities, graphic production, scripting and storyboarding – as learning becomes more complex the production of learning is escalating as well. This is where educational institutions will have an impact in helping teachers deliver this kind of content.

Teachers and industry professionals each have their barriers to implementing effective E-Learning through such new technologies as MOOCs. While teachers are ill equipped to take advantage of the benefits of multi-media course creation, business or industry professionals have been developing learning  for their organizations for decades – and for them “bums in seats” are not important – what is more important is cost and effectiveness. As you can see, cost, understanding the use of the technology, underwriting its cost and ensuring that content is meaningful to a broad set of audiences are issues that will be worked out over the next few years as MOOCs compete with current E-Learning strategies and traditional education programs.