In a great article in AdAge last week, columnist Scott Donaton warns readers to beware of the tendency among marketers to pile-on to any and all cool new trends. Donaton calls this the "Get Me One Of Those" (GMOOT) syndrome:
"[Too] many of these sponsored viral-video (and fake-blog and social-networking) thingies really, really suck, and there’s a reason for that: They are not the end result of an actual idea or strategy but are born of a desperate desire to do something, anything, in the new-media space …
"It’s the dreaded ‘GMOOT’ syndrome, short for ‘Get me one of those,’ the basic command from CEOs to CMOs or CMOs to their agencies … It sounds oversimplistic, but if you get a few drinks into a marketing exec, he’ll admit that at some point he’s been directed to do something because his boss read about it in Ad Age or saw that a rival company was doing it or was told by his neighbor … that he had to get in the game."
Brilliant. I know that it’s not just advertising agencies that face the GMOOT monster. It certainly happens in PR, too — and more and more often, in the Social Media era. There has been more than one occasion when I’ve reviewed a PR program proposal, and felt compelled to challenge one of our own execs about, "Why are we pitching a ‘viral’ video concept to a B2B company?"
That’s not to say it’s automatically a goofy idea to consider cheeky video storytelling for B2B applications — in fact, I think one of our clients, BigFix, did a good job of it with their "Software Truth Hearings" campaign (pictured) … In fact, I would love to see additional examples of video storytelling — whether via staged pieces or authentic vlogging — that humanized a big corporation. That’s what Scoble did for Microsoft, back in the day, as a blogger.
But, it’s harder and less obvious to come up with reasons to shoot a video for the relatively staid B2B market, and thus, "Let’s Do a Viral Video" should never, ever be a check-box element in a B2B PR program (or any PR program, for that matter). Whenever a client or employee pipes up with "Let’s do ‘One Of Those’" ("those" being a fill-in-the-blank tactic that "everyone is doing"), it’s usually time to run in the other direction.
UPDATE: Shel Holtz also approached this topic from a worthy angle, a week or so ago. Noting the rise of specialized social networks, e.g., Toyota’s network for hybrid owners, Shel asks, "How many of these [social] networks do you think you could belong to before your participation became an occasional diversion instead of a consuming passion?"
Tweet This Post!
Subscribe by Email
View on mobile phone
Click here for my LinkedIn profile
