One of the Adweek’s latest blogs addressed that several companies in the last years have tried to use Adolf Hitler for their advance. For example, a German Anti-HIV campaign has promoted the use of condoms by displaying pretty women having intercourse with Hitler, Mussolini and Co. Now, a TV commercial in Turkey has launched a campaign to increase their sales revenue by addressing Adolf Hitler’s convincing communication skills and how passionate he spoke in public:

Summing it up, the video basically claims that if you are a real man, you should not be using women’s shampoo, but a real men’s one.

Well, here’s the point. Is it really going to increase sales revenue, since Hitler had terrible hair himself? Also, how on Earth does the campaign believe that it can create a positive impression in their consumer’s mind and encourage buying the product?

Aren’t there any other ways to make an add successful, maybe without linking the brand’s product to national socialism? To my mind, these Hitler campaigns go against all rules and I doubt they work. After all, I believe that even our simple COMM 296 class has taught us skills that can create a more effective campaign than any association of a product with Adolf Hitler.

YOU BETTER READ THIS POST, IF YOU HAVE WATCHED THE KONY 2012 CAMPAIGN

Timothy Scott Cheong, as well as approximately 100 Million others, have watched the KONY 2012 video in the last month and have been moved by it. Most viewers believe many facts that are actually significantly contrasting reality. Ugandans, as well as many other Africans, who are aware of the situation, believe that this video is a huge offense, as Invisible Children distorts the current situation in Uganda. If you get more familiar with Uganda, the LRA, KONY and Invisible Children, you will be surprised by how bad this video is and how much it differs from the present state in the country.

After having watched the KONY 2012 campaign video, I informed myself further, watched other videos, read other articles and attended panel discussions at UBC with speakers, who had been directly affected by the war against the LRA. Given this second source of information, I am strictly opposing the KONY 2012 campaign and anyone, who supports it.

Here are some facts that are reality and not based on the deceptions of the Invisible Children organization:

1. Uganda is currently not at war.
2. Many Ugandans are deeply offended by the video, who – after all – should be the ones to evaluate and judge the true state and situation.
3. Although nobody is certain, Joseph Kony is believed to be either in the DRC or Sudan, but not in Uganda.
4. Joseph Kony and the LRA officially left Uganda in 2006. Today, his followers are believed to be less than 200.
5. The video totally disregards the fact that the LRA is deeply fundamentally Christian. If that had been mentioned in the video, I am 100% sure that its effect would not had the same effect, especially in the U.S. and Canada.
6. The campaign claims that Joseph Kony is the worst war criminal in the world. Actually, this past Saturday, a major Ugandan newspaper published a list of currently nationally chased war criminals – Joseph Kony was not on that list.
7. The publication date of the viral video was badly chosen. The same weekend the campaign was published, the Ugandan Health Minister went to visit children suffering from a terrible disease that is believed to be a late effect of the past war. More than 3,000 kids have died of it in the last three years. Instead of hunting down Joseph Kony with the millions of sales revenue that the campaign generated, these funds could be used more efficiently to fight the disease.
8. Etc. etc. etc.

Despite all this, EVERYONE AGREES that Joseph KONY needs to be STOPPED. The campaign of the for-profit organization Invisible Children is, however, not the right way of doing it. If you want to help, ask Uganda first. I am sure that by the end of the year, Joseph Kony will be caught, but what will that change?! Thousands of western citizens will feel like they have paid committed $30 and engaged global citizenship by posting Joseph Kony’s face everywhere – but how much will that really change Uganda?

Here is a response video from the Ugandan president Amama Mbabazi. Although, not as well done as the KONY 2012 video, its content is 100% correct and every person that watched KONY should watch this as well:

Actually, as indicated in this speech, most effects will be negative. The downturn of this summer’s tourism will cause a dangerous and intense economic downturn in Uganda, as many tourists cancelled their vacations already, because they are now convinced that the country is at war.

After all, this is UBC and we are supposed to think critically. It is really disappointing that, even though students go to this world-class university, they cannot even judge critically by basing decisions and judgments on an entire country on this simple half-hour video!

I am disappointed.

(I am sorry that this post went way over the word limit, but I did not see this only as an assignment anymore. This is not the right situation to be short on information, as the KONY 2012 itself already is.)

Hand in hand with social networking, goes a trend that – as far as I know – actually started a little bit earlier than Facebook, Twitter, etc… Whereas several blogs such as Rochelle van der Linde‘s or Jennifer Labrie‘s touch on social networking in general, none address the actual techniques to apply marketing on the web.

The keyword of course, is, as stated already in the title of this blog, VIRAL MARKETING.

It is interesting how viral marketing increases steadily with the constant increase of usage of, for example, Facebook. People post videos, commercials, etc.  “It is the modern way of telling jokes.” If these few lines caught your attention so far, you should definitely check out this short article (only 3 pages!) and read three more, really interesting and easy to read, pages about viral marketing, why it is like telling a joke and how it becomes a success. The article actually goes even one step further and compares sending videos and commercials to friends to some sort of “social currency.

Also, a major advantage of viral marketing is that once a commercial is one the web, it is circulating. Whereas conventional posters and billboards will be taken off and replaced over time, the web can actually store information “eternally” and to very minimal cost (Remember that sending an Email or posting it on Facebook does not cost you anything – No sharing cost).

To make this viral marketing a little bit more…hm… viral, I would say that I should really contribute my part to its succes. So, here we go:

Smirnoff Vodka – Tea Partay (2006) (exceeding 6 mio. views as of Feb 6th, 2012)

WestJet – Owners Care (2010) (34,000 views as of Feb, 6th, 2012)

Having watched these two videos, I would like to point out mainly one thing: Even though the Tea Partay video already started circulating in 2006, it was a huge success, as can be partially seen by its views. The recent WestJet one was not as successful, probably partially because of the much higher competition in 2010 compared to 2006.

I would like to conclude this post by raising the awareness that although social networking has been becoming the biggest keyword most recently, it should not be forgotten that viral marketing has been out there, circulating on the web.

Recent economic crises have pushed general marketing trends broadly towards a focus on value-based marketing. Tim Berry, founder of Palo Alto Software, argues on his blog that: “We break the ice by criticizing someone else because that unites us.”

He relates back to negative marketing in his book “The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan” and claims that the average dissatisfied customer tells close to 20 people about his customer experience, whereas the common delighted customer tells only 3 people.
Why is it that people prefer criticizing over complimenting? One way of looking at this is to consider the amount of information that we are being flooded with every day.
Think about it that way, in a conventional decision process model, a need is being created in the first place. Then, information research starts, including looking for alternatives. – Well, and here is where some businesses are trying to cut competitor’s throats.

The current consumer is used to be overwhelmed by products and advertisements. In the end, all he looks for is reasons to eliminate alternatives from the decision process. Therefore, I am convinced that the over-saturated consumer market plays a major role in the effectiveness of negative marketing.

Thinking about it from a company’s point of view, the effort of a company in actively degrading competitors’ brand image  instead of promoting its own one is relatively reasonable and close.

The extent of these negative commercial can go from funny and relatively harmless to very aggressive and attacking commercials. A well-known brand, which is known for regularly having to ban commercials that address the fight for customers with its major competitor, is Pepsi.

In our case, Pepsi and Coca Cola are both really big brands and it can be argued that negative marketing feeds a “healthy” competition.

Where things start to become more questionable, is when bigger brands have the market power to hinder smaller companies from catching up to them. In some case, this may even lead to the collapse of entire companies and the image they had created in their customer’s perception.

In case, someone wants to get a little more scholarly about this topic:
http://www.allbusiness.com/marketing-advertising/advertising/260512-1.html