Hi mez, agree with you totally; a while ago I wrote about something I
called the "clever" which relates, and ranges from slogans to lego
constructions that do "neat" things. We use Boxee here (like Roku) because
we can't afford cable (among other reasons), and when you sign in, there
are always "clever" or "neat" or "quirky" short films - three of them - at
the bottom of the screen, which you can access before you go to whatever
you really want to watch. We've seen a lot, and almost all of them are
corporate one way or another, hidden in small print, as if the corps are
in fact _blushing_ at the fact that you have to give them any attention at
all...
On Tue, 26 Feb 2013, mez breeze wrote:
[From: http://geekgirl.com.au/blog/2013/02/26/quirk-geekgirl/]
"For a while now I?ve been lazily developing a theory about a marketing trend
I term ?the quirk?. The quirk = the occasionally annoying [but mostly endearing]
use of the whackjob absurd and/or novel in attempts to peddle product or
sell services [alliteration #ftw].
[To be fair, the use of the quirk is much older than the Internet: it's been
prevalent in promotional bursts since (at least) the advent of broadcast
media, though here I'm reffing its deliberate pairing with social networking
rather than use in a one-directional platform like cinema, radio, tv etc.
Also, the quirk doesn't necessarily equate to viral, though most marketing
boffins who attempt to leapfrog off organically formed viral media pray to
their unspecified deities that it will].
We?ve witnessed the quirk in great gouts of captioned cat pics/videos, and
watched it flourish in social media advertising packages like ?The Old Spice
Guy? campaign. When used successfully, it captures a target population?s
attention through the offbeat presentation of lateral material designed to
elicit an off-kilter emotional reaction [that bypasses logic or reason]
resulting in high conversion rates. The quirk taps into emotional pockets
designed with the novel in mind, a type of side-swiping of the traditional
?pander to a consumer?s desires? type deal with an added bonus of immediacy
through user-crafted feedback [think: a Facebook "Like" or a Twitter "RT"].
So what?s my theory regarding the quirk for all you impatient types out there
yelling loudly in the background to get the feck on with it? It?s simply this:
that alongside the bloated, privacy-killing blight that?s being increasingly
perpetuated by popular social networking platforms [you know who you are],
we?d better make sure we [as users] are aware of this type of co-optive
manipulation bundled in cutez0r form. A hyper-awareness of this method of
quirk advertising probably won?t save you from subconsciously falling for the
product -or-service-wrapped-in-?lolwut?!?-or ?awww!!?-bait, but at least it
might
encourage you to selectively support those companies [or individual
campaigns] you think are worthy of your time/investment/money."
chunks,
mez
--
| http://mezbreeze.com/
| http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mez_Breeze
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