Lamentations of Viral Marketing

Mind you, it's not something I ever wanted to do. Like most jobs, it's something you fall into. Only after a few years have passed do you have the moment of comprehension and can say to yourself that, "yes, I market information strategies for a living. Yep, that's what I do." Or, "I arrange fundraisers". Or "I haul dirt". And by that time you're already going to the conventions, subscribing to the trade magazines, and wearing the t-shirts. Good thing I got out before all that. I can imagine a convention of viral marketers would be a literal den of thieves handing out free keychains without you even knowing it. And of course, at these jobs they never used the words "viral marketing".

When I first interviewed for the job, they sat me down in the office and used every trick of their own trade to tiptoe around those words. "We use unconventional marketing techniques", said in a very exciting tone. I was thinking they would have guerilla performance artists covered in paint forming company logos on the tops of buildings. "We do political marketing for every shade of the spectrum", meaning they one time bought a Nature Conservatory coffee mug when they were in a pinch, but the rest of their clients would strangle kittens if it gave a return on their investment. These were real faceless companies too. Ones that don't really exist except for an amorphous entity to be referred to as "the client". Maybe it was just an escrow account floating in the ether. These clients never stopped by the office. They never called to discuss the finished product. Not even a mention of getting the client to pay. Did they even care what we made for them? It's as if we were working on our own and if we did things properly then money would suddenly appear in the account for the office Christmas party.

At one point I imagined it to all be part of a particularly mediocre cult like most office environments can be. Workers might seem friendly at first but there was always something not quite right lurking underneath. It's in the glossy stare in response to certain questions or the randomly cruel outbreak of to demean somebody in the middle of a meeting, possibly as some right of shaming. I've been in a few mediocre office-cult environments before and didn't think this current office fit the bill. And it wasn't like that other office my friend worked at; the one where the one guy would drink in the bathroom during lunch and everybody would viciously backstab each other to get the others' Aeron Chair. The pay here was decent, the location was good, and things were relatively relaxed. We made website designs filled with meaningless stock photography. I barely knew what it all was for. Maybe somebody else was in charge of filling online discussion boards with the exaltations of Pepsi Blue (the client managers I suspect), but the designers were in semi-blissful ignorance.

We made sites that told people information. Did you know that 10% of people in the U.S. suffer from diabetes? I didn't know that. Like heroin, nicotine is a physical addiction not just a psychological addiction. That was news to me. Government tax write-offs can get you free computer training and there's a medical conditions exist to cover about every aspect of daily life. Hey, if a company wants to give away information to help sell something, that seems like a semi-respectable advertising strategy. Seems like everybody benefits. Maybe people can learn while being bombarded by consumerist culture. Most of the time I was able to work by myself since legal issues prevented half the staff from talking about the projects we worked on. I had little complaint but would sometimes run into design problems from the isolation. If there's no client to speak of, and half the staff can't speak to you, who an you ask? And then there were the problems more commonly associated with graphic design.

"This site needs to exude intimacy. No cold harsh colors. We need warmer tones. No supermodels. We need down-to-Earth people. It can't seem like we're trying to sell them anything."

"But we are trying to sell them something. Why else would we have all of these focus-grouped stock images everywhere? Everybody can see that it's a corporate site. If we really wanted to help them we'd just give them the information."

"It just doesn't work that way. Just add some more faux finishes".

There was plenty of high-minded effort put into all of the jargon about initmate telegraphics, information grenades, and new media distribution tools, but who knows if it actually worked. Nobody really seemed to know what they were doing or who was in charge. Focus groups tested everything and always came back with a hodge-podge of answers from the useful ("It seemed honest"), the intelligent ("what are they trying to sell me here"), to the Ralph Wiggum ("where can I get free cigarettes"). For a time I was comforted to think that it was all some sort of double-con to bilk money from an unknown millionaire who thought viral marketing actually works. Instead of swindling nicotine addicts, we would just draw out the process into revision hell and never get anything done. Then there were the political campaigns...

"Photoshop this protestor to make him look more detestable. Blacken the eyes. Change what his sign says."

Glad I didn't have to work on that one. We assumed that the fellow in that photograph being used had signed off to allow his image for advertising, but who knows. Few of these ads were seen in places I, or the protestor, would likely ever see. Maybe on the website for the Podunk Tribune or through an email campaign aimed at select markets. That was something nobody seemed to know about. Direct mail companies worked in the offices above and below us and probably did their own version in print.

I recently ran into somebody at a bar who worked in viral marketing for public health issues like nutrition, food pyramids, or getting tested for HIV. They seemed to be complacent about this as an advertising technique.

"Isn't it dangerous to use the same dishonest techniques as those used by companies selling drugs for non-existent conditions?"

"Oh, it's no big worry. Viral Marketing has been around for some time. All those "very special episodes" of sitcoms from the 80s that teach people about the dangers of drugs and promiscuous sex, most were paid placements by health advocates. The drunk-driving episode of Cheers and Family Ties, the coke episode of Growing Pains...etc. And it works. Focus groups have tested it over and over."

"Who can argue with focus group success?"

—October 18th, 2005

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