In the world on internet digital advertising, it seems like there is such a thing as a free lunch. A WSJ article about a YouTube Star, Felix Kjellberg aka PewDiePie, is a testament to this phenomenon. The article seems to suggest that some companies now rely on an open advertising policy, leaving their brand in the hands of teenager or twenty something kids in the hope of getting free publicity and traction. Not surprisingly, only a handful of very open minded companies (mostly tech start ups) have hesitantly adapted this advertising technique. Its all based on the pretext that there is no such thing as "bad publicity".
PewDiePie became of YouTube star by reviewing the games and uploading videos on YouTube. Because he had such a large following, even his bad reviews (read Flappy Bird) resulted in millions of downloads from people who were just "checking out" the new game. Any new start up would simply love this sort of marketing as it provides them the virality for a big fat zero spending.
So now the question is, can the big corporations also adapt this risky marketing model? In fact, some companies are already tinkering with this idea. A couple of years back, Ford created the "Fiesta Movement" to market its newly launched Ford Fiesta. Ford was aiming to catch the attention of young drivers and it gave away its Fiesta car (for six months) to these hip cool young bloggers and YouTube stars (called Fiesta Agents) to create a buzz on the internet. The "movement" never got the virality Ford hoped for, and Fiesta still isn't a mainstream car in US. Ford again restarted this movement last year, but its yet to yield any results for Ford.
Among the billion dollar club of companies, Redbull is probably the most successful in employing this free marketing strategy using RedBull Records as the marketing machine. An example is the user generated videos for AwolNation's Sail. The views on some of these videos is an order of magnitude more than the official RedBull Record's video. This now creates the illusion that the official video of Sail is actually the one created by a teenager in a small town (see the Google search result for Sail).
RedBull Record could have taken down the above video in a matter of second, but they didn't. They wanted to be true to their fan base that they trust them and want to engage with them. Again, the video didn't cost them a penny and generated a ton of fan following.
In short, the world of internet marketing is shaking the very core of what was traditionally thought of brand management. For now, it seems that the name of the game is "virality". How you achieve it, doesn't really matter.
PewDiePie became of YouTube star by reviewing the games and uploading videos on YouTube. Because he had such a large following, even his bad reviews (read Flappy Bird) resulted in millions of downloads from people who were just "checking out" the new game. Any new start up would simply love this sort of marketing as it provides them the virality for a big fat zero spending.
So now the question is, can the big corporations also adapt this risky marketing model? In fact, some companies are already tinkering with this idea. A couple of years back, Ford created the "Fiesta Movement" to market its newly launched Ford Fiesta. Ford was aiming to catch the attention of young drivers and it gave away its Fiesta car (for six months) to these hip cool young bloggers and YouTube stars (called Fiesta Agents) to create a buzz on the internet. The "movement" never got the virality Ford hoped for, and Fiesta still isn't a mainstream car in US. Ford again restarted this movement last year, but its yet to yield any results for Ford.
Among the billion dollar club of companies, Redbull is probably the most successful in employing this free marketing strategy using RedBull Records as the marketing machine. An example is the user generated videos for AwolNation's Sail. The views on some of these videos is an order of magnitude more than the official RedBull Record's video. This now creates the illusion that the official video of Sail is actually the one created by a teenager in a small town (see the Google search result for Sail).
In short, the world of internet marketing is shaking the very core of what was traditionally thought of brand management. For now, it seems that the name of the game is "virality". How you achieve it, doesn't really matter.
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