This is a short but necessary rant: I think it’s funny/cringe at the incessant use of web 2.0-ish words in presentations, meetings, classes and conferences. Far too often, in the absence of actual strategy and ideas worth inspiring engagement, community, viral buzz or UGC submissions, these words are thrown around as meaningless space fillers.
“Our objective for this campaign for [insert generic brand here] is to…create…viral buzz. This… viral buzz will… increase…UGC submissions to our YouTube page and ultimately increase…engagement… build community…and have a direct effect on sales!”
Um… this needs to stop.
-Amanda Mooney
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And of course most of the time they don’t mean viral, they mean social…. ho hum! It’s alright, the wheels will all come off soon….
Not being a PR guy, I haven’t had that particular experience. However, it sounds really similar to a class of computer users that I end up services A LOT. These are the people that know just enough about computers to get in trouble.
Inevitably the know more than I do, can tell me all the things that I’m doing wrong when trying to fix their machine, and don’t have a clue until I hand them their computer right as rain. That’s when I have to pick up the floor from all the mouths that dropped open. It’s always been just a matter of doing what is needed and getting on with it. I suppose that will never change *sigh.*
And of course, when in doubt, say that your brand really needs to “join the conversation.”
Amen! It kills me when someone says we need to “create a viral video” for our client that will get 3 million YouTube hits … right that’ll happen…
Content is now the fastest commodity on the web. It is being produced and consumed by the users in an infinite cycle. The future of content is with users. I have an interesting video to showcase the same and future of media at
http://likeiknowit.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/prometeus-the-media-revolution/
It never fails. When you have to get to the road, the rubber suddenly gets really slippery and nebulous. Somehow, all of that engagement is going to lead to sales in some . . . nebulous . . . cloudy . . . way we can’t explain.
Social users don’t spend money! If they do, where’s the data?
Web 2.0; Consumer 2.0; Brand 2.0 welcome to the world 2.0
http://likeiknowit.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/brand-2-point-0/
http://likeiknowit.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/micro-interactions/
Our clients say “viral” when they mean “just put it on YouTube”.
Great Blog–I will definately be watching for more–don’t make us wait to long.
billy and Glenda
http://fortune4ever.truewealthathome.com
http://heavenlycashgifts.weebly.com