“Pushing and pulling a wig out. YouTube’s addictive reality”

Okay this will go down as a classic case in many books and articles. Innovative today, classic by tomorrow (in Interent and technological marketing timelines).

I love this story on so many levels. It’s a beautiful thing.

If you are a “YouTuber”, watch The Today Show, listen to CBC ro follow some current event RSS feeds you must have heard about the “Bride Has Massive Hair Wig Out” story.

If not. Here it is in my words.

A video on YouTube shows what seems to be a bridesmaids getting ready for the ceremony in a hotel room…You know what? As I write this post ABC television’s 20/20 is doing a show all about viral video and this exact type of thing. This is everywhere in the media. Just do a quickie Google and you will get it in a click-beat. Oh I’m sure there is many Wiki posts on it already.

Just a second…


Wiki wig out here .

I’m sure the top execs in advertising and television are watching. On the 20/20 show they interviewed a kid who made a parody about MySpace, and eventually had a sit down with a top exec at Fox to essentially give him what he wants (his own show).

The critical thing about viral video and this type of marketing is the pull-style versus push. The push marketing is the traditional method where advertising goes out in a blanket campaign (with some demographic target). It is akin to casting a net to see what you can catch. It is broad but because it is so broad it pays off. Well it used to.

Pull marketing is exactly the reverse. It is creating some type of buzz that attracts people to the product. Pull marketing draws the person to your product in a way that they have the control. They want to and seek out the product or website because it interests them. This type of control, on the part of the audience, lets the feeling of being “marketed” fade into the background. Usually they realize that, in the case of a marketing campaign, that this is a marketing ploy or tactic but they are comfortable with the relationship.

It almost a post-modern relationship with marketing.

Now back to the wig out.

On CBC radio I heard that not only was the video was fake but it was funded by Unilever to get the catchphrase “Wigout” out. Apparently a television campaign is to follow.

This is a dangerous game to play if you do not understand the medium. Not the medium of marketing but rather the Internet itself. I have said before that net users have a very keen bull meter and it will turn on you if not careful. Also the shelf life can be measured in minutes if you do it incorrectly. But this is probably true for traditional marketing too.

So, I have given this campaign an additional thirty seconds of shelf life but I love how it played and continues to play out. The people behind it realized how to work the medium and knew that it out come out in the wash at some point. To their credit they easily admitted to it and rode the wave like Eddie Aikau on a big North Shore closeout day.

For the record. I thought it was real.

CM
www.cmcreative.ca