Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

In a story that unfolds every day in conference rooms around the world, the client asks the agency, “How can you help us reach our (insert descriptor here) audience through viral marketing?”

Uh oh…

Sincerely - that phrase strikes fear in my heart.  Not because it’s impossible to create viral campaigns, but because it’s impossible to predict what will become viral. 

(I watched in amazement while a YouTube video of a corgi puppy moved from 25,000 views to over 1 million in a weekend.  I’ll admit, we watched it four or five times in a row, it was so cute.  Who knew?)

And it is especially daunting when a company like Intel says it in the same breath as, “We want to be different and edgy.” 

Uh huh.

So imagine my delight to be invited to work with Saltmine and Intel in creating a ‘viral marketing campaign’ where they’re determined to be edgy and different enough to make the corporate watchdogs “nervous.” 

Sign me up! 

Oh, and one more thing:  we have three weeks to do it.

My part in this play has been twofold:

1. Push the client’s envelope: You want edgy?  Well, this is edgy, want to go this far? 
2. Paint a vision for the future of a collaborative, energized, interactive community, and provide the steps we can take immediately to get there.

(I’m in a pretty good place to do both of these things, having been on the bleeding edge of an inadvertently viral blogosphere campaign in 2005; where, in the words of Donald Rumsfield, “I have benefited from criticism, and have never suffered from a lack thereof…”)

We’re two weeks into the production of the campaign, and so far, I’ve been pleased with Intel’s willingness to push the envelope and live in this unsettled state of nervousness as we move toward the edge (really, it’s not that edgy, but it IS for Intel).

And I’m very pleased with the creative process on the agency side.  From the initial brainstorm to the exhaustive script edits, the team is working quite literally around the clock to make our deadline.

Will the program go viral? It’ll depend on the developers we’re trying to reach. 

Will the corporate brand police (and others) at Intel be upset? Maybe. My goal is that they’d never be embarrassed.

Will the communication and collaboration between agency and client be frank, honest and a little scary?  Absolutely.  On all counts.  I hope the work will speak to those attributes as clearly as anything else. 

The conversation starts in the conference room.  Who knows how far it’ll go?