Month: March 2011

When I was 5 and first began playing soccer, every other kid on the team had a role model they wanted to be like. I remember being the only one on the team who didn’t want to follow anyone. Sometimes though, I wished I had some who influenced me. My coach once told me, it’s never too late to get influenced by someone.

This is a blog about how I got influenced by someone who I barely understood or knew the existence of until 16 months ago. Mike Sorrentino. Do you know him? Born in 1981? Italian-American? Maybe you’ll know his nickname. The Situation. Yeah, that’s right, the biggest influence in my life(only within 16 months) is The Sitch.

MTV aired a reality show about the Jersey lifestyle. And the rest as they say, is history. Although MTV comes out with many shows, not all of them do well. Jersey Shore surpassed all expectations. The first episode attracted 1.375 million viewers. That’s unprecedented for a premiere. It has only grown in popularity and the season three episode 2 garnered a whopping 8.87 million viewers. It has inspired an entire genre of similar shows. With a minimal promotion budget focussing on commercials, the show created a phenomenon, which is worthy of being studied in classes.

Back to The Sitch, He’s was an assistant manager of a fitness center who got unemployed and then shot to fame. A party animal, he uses his popularity not only to endorse his own line of clothing, vitamins, workouts, shoes, vodka and rap, but also being socially responsible about The Candie Foundation’s Pause Before You Play campaign.

His most famous contribution to mankind will be the discovering and categorizing the existence of“landmines, grenades, grenade launcher, submarine, tank and a-bombs.”

Did you hear about Alexandra Wallace? Hasan Baba? Rebecca Black? I’m sure you’ve heard of Justin Bieber then..no? Peter Chao? Each and every one of them is a Youtube phenomenon. While some turned out to be heroes, others flops. Irrespective of that they all share something in common, an unbelievably stratospheric rise in popularity and recognition. Whether or not their popularity is positive is another matter.

Let’s start with Justin Bieber. An obscure little kid from Ontario who hit big time through his viral videos about popular covers. While it can be argued that he had the talent, the fact that he got signed by Usher, under his music label is what counts. Rebecca Black, being touted as the next Justin Bieber, came out with a new video called Black Friday. Uploaded on February 10th, it skyrocketed to a point where she now has over 13.5 million views. Finally, let’s bring in Hasan Baba, while he has not made it big yet!, a video of his techno moves, rivaling Jersey Shore fistpumps, have already hit 6 million views in just 20 days.

Popularity is just limited to those who can perform, Alexandra Wallace who uploaded a rant about “Asians in the Library” created a sensation with almost a million views in less than a week. On the other hand, Peter Chao gets lauded for his risque racist humor and gets movie contracts.

This brings us to the potential of E-Marketing via viral videos. I truly believe that youtube videos are quickly becoming a preferable PR and attention grabbing tool by people wanting to create a sensation. The fact that videos are uploaded into the anonymous world of the internet assuring no consequences offers promoters a chance at promotion without creativity and time limit makes this one of the best forms of media.

P.S. Click on the Hyperlink to see the video.

Have you ever been on a website where an advertisement popped up, promoting something in the same geographic location?

While I do believe that it is absolute genius on the part of a company to target customers that way, I also believe that from a consumer’s point of view, it is a complete turnoff.

Honestly, it’s scary! Isn’t it weird to know that not only do these companies know where you live but, they also know what I like. I have a completely empty Facebook profile, very strict and high security settings and regularly clear my cookies but somehow, i’m still being tracked.

The funny part is I actually do remember most of the brands offered to me this way. I make sure I never buy from them again. Most of these advertisements are poorly conceived, relying on price as a basis of promotion. In my opinion, they lack creativity tying to entice the consumer by trying to differentiate the product based on price, which strips away almost all value from the product. Quite often they advertise sales/clearances, something which shows no confidence on part of the company in its product. I hope they stop soon. Because they are really annoying and are eating away at the reputation of the company.