Monday, July 24, 2006

The birth of the Spontanous Marketing Campaign

Add Daily Fix and Church of the Customer to the list of blogs chiming in on Universal's contacting Chris. As Ben says:
Pick up the phone and CALL A BLOGGER today. It's so simple but yet so novel that the phone call alone can generate some word of mouth.


My latest post on Daily Fix also goes into how one company contacting one blogger has evolved into a 'Spontaneous Marketing Campaign' for Miami Vice. Adding Daily Fix and Church of the Customer likely gets the combined daily reach for all the blogs that so far linked to this story to well over 10,000 readers A DAY. As I told Ben, what would happen if Universal had decided to contact as many bloggers as possible today? Just spend one day talking to bloggers.

If talking to one blogger is netting over 10,000 daily exposures for Miami Vice, wouldn't talking to 10 bloggers get you up to 100,000 daily exposures? Actually, it would likely be much more than that, since the more bloggers linking to a story, the more quickly it spreads.

So if Universal were to spend today talking to 10 bloggers, and those 10 bloggers and all the other blogs picking up on this story led to total daily exposures of over 100,000, it's not impossible to envision today's efforts netting them a half a MILLION total positive exposures for Miami Vice by the time it's released this weekend. How many companies would be willing to spend a day executing an online promotion that would get them 500,000 positive exposures in 5 days? FOR FREE.

And that's from just 10 bloggers. Imagine what would happen if you included 100 bloggers in such a promotion? No wait....someone's already thought of that.

6 comments:

Ryan said...

I knew it would come back to the original idea! The original is still the best, and slowly with all of this blog coverage it's going to be realized very soon.

Anonymous said...

I'm very tired of this crap. The only reason you bloggers are talking about this is becuase the studio "reached out" to you. So you aren't saying the movie is good, you are saying the movie marketing is good. But I've heard that the movie blows, and won't be seeing it. I have a feeling others feel the same.

Mack Collier said...

Sean I have no idea where you've been, but the fact that Universal contacted Chris is the story here. No blog, not this one, or any of the other blogs I've read that linked to this story have said, hinted, or implied that we were commenting on the MOVIE, but rather the movie's MARKETING.

Again, I have no idea how you missed this, but apparently you did. How could any of us comment on the movie itself....when none of us have seen it?

No the reason why this story is gaining such momentum (I've talked to 2 more big-name bloggers that will be chiming in shortly on it) is because of how Universal is marketing Miami Vice. You say that "The only reason you bloggers are talking about this is becuase the studio "reached out" to you.", but that's EXACTLY why we are blogging about this! You act as if we've been trying to deceive you, when in fact we've been very openly doing EXACTLY what you 'accuse' us of. So again, I have no idea where you've been this last week.

BTW why did you refer to us as 'you bloggers'? You don't have anything against 'us bloggers', do you?

Anonymous said...

Sean -

If you're reading these blogs enough to get tired of this topic, it's a little hypocritical to be denigrating the blog community as you do in your comment.

The movie might blow.

I'd even be willing to bet on it.

But The Viral Garden isn't a movie blog. (Sorry to speak on your behalf, Mack.) Go to Chris's blog to find out if the movie blows. Keep reading here to hear how the marketing world is changing for the better.

Anonymous said...

Yes the movie might blow. And yes, when taken objectively it's a lot of hype over a 1/2-hour phone call.
But the fact remains: that 1/2-hour "reach out" is 100% better than we've been getting.

It signals a shift in mindsets(they say little things make a BIG difference - this was a little act by a BIG movie studio). While it's in Universal's best interest to connect with their audiences (duh), it's a sign of respect--something that's been lacking heretofore.

Net/net, that's good stuff :-).

Anonymous said...

Does Sean work for paramount or something? Jeez.

You guys pretty much summed it up. He just missed the point.