When Viral Doesn’t Work

By WebProNews Staff · May 17, 2007 · 12 Comments

Paul Steinbrueck, CEO of OurChurch.com, was pretty jazzed about his AIDS Clickathon idea – like a walkathon, except people click and sponsors donate to a home for orphaned African children – and he thought it was the perfect basis for a viral Internet campaign. A short time and shorter amount of money later, Paul’s trying to understand what went wrong.

Paul set a goal of raising $50,000 for missionary friends of his who were to set out for Africa to build the orphanage – and what a sad state for a large cluster of children, to find themselves alone in the world as AIDS ravaged their parents.

But maybe that was a little heavy, Paul wonders. Maybe we’ve grown used to sad video footage of the starving and destitute. Maybe Internet users (when surfing, not necessarily in everyday life) are still too self-serving and utilitarian, looking to fill their own needs online.

Maybe Bono was too busy with his own AIDS in Africa campaign (Paul did try to contact Bono’s One Campaign, but never received a response). Or maybe he didn’t set up his campaign right. After 5 weeks, the AIDS Clickathon collected just $1500.

And so, Paul is losing faith in social marketing. "I’m undecided about how successful a viral campaign like this can be," he told WebProNews. "We did it in conjunction with the viral marketing competition on Andy Beal’s site. That was done in the hopes that the people who cover viral marketing would pick it up."

Sorry we missed you, Paul. The Web is an easy place to get yourself lost in.

Steinbrueck’s strategy is easy enough to find on Marketing Pilgrim. He outlines it with 12 different focus points that include search, blogging, posting video on YouTube, submitting to Digg, directories, sending press releases, emailing friends, setting up the website, soliciting links from related sites and forums, and setting up a MySpace profile.

The AIDS Clickathon MySpace page currently has 66 friends – not nearly enough to raise some serious green. Barack Obama’s MySpace page hauled in thousands of friends in a matter of months.

But just 66 people cared enough to make a few clicks (that’s all it was really, they weren’t asking for money directly). So what gives?

Paul’s main theory is that it was too heavy a subject. It may be that viral marketing doesn’t work if the subject matter isn’t "funny or outrageous," as Steinbrueck put it. He took his concerns to our WebProWorld forum to seek advice, with an admission that he made mistakes from launch that may have affected the outcome.

"Doing it right the first time matters," he said. "When you first kick off a viral campaign, the biggest supporters are people you know. And it depends on a lot of people picking up the ball and running with it."

Even that WPW post had viral elements, posing humorous analogies beginning with "Viral marketing is like…," and fill in your favorite. My favorite was "Viral marketing is like Sanjaya’s hair. Sometimes things are popular because they stand out not because they’re good."

Indeed they are. The forum presented their theories with little real consensus other than sometimes viral just doesn’t work.

So let’s conclude this case study with an invitation to our readers to drop into the WebProWorld forum, or into the comments section on WebProNews (which we in the news room are affectionately – okay, sometimes begrudgingly – calling "the water cooler").

Maybe a robust discussion of Paul’s campaign and what went wrong will be a great learning opportunity.

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There are 12 Comments. Add Yours.

pdstein
May 17, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Reply

Hey Jason, thanks for doing the article on viral marketing and the AIDS Clickathon. Hopefully it will spark some further conversation as to whether it’s possible to do a successful viral campaign for something as serious as helping children who have been orphaned by AIDS.

One correction I wanted to point out… the Clickathon has been going on for 5 weeks, not 15 as reported in the article.

Thanks,
Paul
- Jason Lee Miller
  May 17, 2007 at 2:12 pm
  Reply
  
  Sorry about that and thanks for letting me know. It was a typo in my notes — I never have been very good at hitting those number keys!
  
  Anyway, I thought it was a fascinating case study and a good cause, so good luck with it.
Chris Duncan
May 17, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Reply

Sure, you didn’t hit your target, but you raised $1,500. I would say keep on, keeping on. A lot of the “mistakes” you made can probably be overcome by time.

More time to fix things, more time to build trust, more time to build traffic, etc.

I certainly wouldn’t give up after your first attempt.
- pdstein
  May 18, 2007 at 3:01 pm
  Reply
  
  Thanks Chris (and others) for your positive comment and encouraged us to keep going. We certainly haven’t given up hope. We had no idea what to expect going in, and so the $50K goal was just pulled out of the air. (Aim high, I always say)
  
  What’s ironic is that the “failure” of the Clickathon has created more buzz than the Clickathon itself. The Clickathon received more clicks yesterday than any other day except for the day it launched it.
  
  One thing I didn’t make clear to Jason in our conversation leading up to this article is that while doing this in conjunction with the Marketing Pilgrim SEM competition didn’t result in result in any A-list bloggers talking it up, the AIDS Clickathon is one of the 5 finalists in the competition and has a shot at winning it all.
  
  And perhaps one of the reasons the Clickathon didn’t get blogged about in the SEM community is because a lot of the top-teir bloggers are among the competition’s 16 judges, so it wouldn’t have been approprite for them to blog about something they’re judging. That’s my story, anyway…
  
  Paul (OurChurch.Com / AIDS Clickathon.com)
Terry Clark
May 17, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Reply

It is my belief, and I have no statistics to support this statement, that only fun things will benefit from a viral campaign. The entire “word of mouth” concept of people spreading the word about a product or service will only work if people enjoy discussing it. AIDS is not fun for anyone and to bring it up in mixed company is a downer that will gain nothing but stunned looks and will leave the person who brought it up standing alone in the middle of the room. Trying to use viral techniques for such serious subjects is a waste of time. The benefit of “word of mouth” is an asset often called Goodwill and it is valuable for a business. If the news is bad there is no “good” will and the sobering facts will migrate quickly to the back of the mind, not the front where viral advertising actually operates.
fibo99
May 17, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Reply

I did not see the message, so I’m just guessing.
- Lots of people (including me) have been doing stupid things like forwarding a mail to 100 friends THEN discovering this mail was a hoax. So we are all trying to educate ourselves, and our family, and our friends etc. that the should NOT forward a mail that seems like a miracle thing (eg Bill Gates will give 1$ for every mail that you forward).
- Therefore, you need to wordcraft very carefully your message so that it is clearly received as a non-hoax, trusted and acted upon.
- To do that, I would probably contact some sites like the hoaxbusters to ask for their help both in crafting the message AND having them post a preemptive message confirming that the email is trustable.
- And I would also email some people with a link to this post asking for their help to relay the message…
OF COURSE, if this proves useful, lots of hoaxers and spammers are going afterwards to send fake mails similar to the genuine one…
Don
May 17, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Reply

Ok I did it all… Well except the Digg.com thing. Maybe when I have time I will go back to that page and read up to see if I want to join. I didn’t have any Idea what Digg was. Although I thought I might. You see, on another audio – video Pod Casting web site, they use the term “Dig it” to let someone know that you like them or their music or video. But Digg.com is a site I have not yet come across. I think, probably the best thing for this campaign has just happened. This Article… It sure got me clickin:) I have a Pastor friend in Uganda who need help too. He also is helping Children there in Uganda and right now he needs Bibles to give away. But I have no Idea how help him myself. I’m watching for good Ideas, but most everyone has their own thing they are raising money for and are of course mostly focused on that. As with “One”. I’m sure the biggest factor with their success are the Celebrities involvement. I am a singer – song writer my self, but relatively unknown. I have two albums online now and all available for free downloads. I have hoped to receive donations with which to help start a ministry to help children and teens. Admittedly I have not finished out my web pages with donation buttons as I need to. But I have joined several music download sites, as well as youtube and of course myspace. Actually I have about as many “friends’ on myspace as the AIDS Clickathon, but I have been a member for allot longer, at least a year, can’t remember… Anyway, the one thing I have learned about “Social Sites” is, that in order to gain “friends” AKA traffic, is to Be Social. Everyone I have seen who have gained allot of exposure on these sites, spends allot of time on them just “being social”. Other than some wild or weird or sexy video, just being social is what I see working. I for one just don’t have it in me to spend hours a day just chatting or posting comments online. Yes, I’m doing it right now!;) But this one is different, this is important to me… I hope and pray to find a way to help sick and starving children. You see I suffer from illness myself that has completely taken my ability’s to make a living my self. If it were not for my family, I don’t know where I would be now. Incidentally, I have been a member and have a small web site on OurChurch.com since 2001 and have a small free site there my self. These guys have been there since 1996, so I bet they will figure something out soon, which will work to help this important cause Charity.
God Bless,
Don – Psalms 68 Ministries
John Tolhurst
May 17, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Reply

We need an instantly trusting relationship between the money raiser and the clicker, we need it outside the usual channels (charities in this case) and we need some form of personal connection to the cause.

Just my 2 cents worth.
Tom O'Leary
May 17, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Reply

The fact that this article was written suggests that the viral nature of the campaign is alive. Perhaps conversion goals have not been met, but the project is still skipping from tube to tube through the Internets. Some viral campaigns become overnight sensations, like a one-hit wonder in the summer of ’88. Others build a slow momentum.

There is certainly some merit to the suggestion that viral works best when humor is involved. As a matter of fact, humor is the topic most likely to become viral, according to a Sharpe Partners Study last year.

Perhaps more important than being immediately viral is being sticky and ever present so that the campaign can bring awareness over time rather than a quantity of clicks in a specific period of time.

Best of luck with the Aids Click-a-thon.

All the best

Tom O’Leary

Editor, The Messaging Times
lonelybloggers
May 18, 2007 at 10:54 am
Reply

I just read all of the comments and they all hold true. People don’t typically pass this type of thing around, also being cautious with all of the scams out there is also a sad reality on the web.

Other than YouTube there are 100′s of other decent video sharing websites as well to post to, 99% of them won’t bring you any volume though…

IF you could produce additional videos I would continue to produce additional videos and grow your video inventory and allow the series of videos help promote each other, rather than having a single video responsible for driving all of the action. If you’ve raised $1500 so far, that’s pretty decent actually – Getting results from video is VERY tough with the millions of videos floating around there on the net each day.

I experimented with short/long format videos, webisodes etc.. http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=lonelybloggers — Just keep testing creative and keywords for best results. It’s all brand new and you have to keep tweaking the formula to learn what brings the best returns.
edward
May 18, 2007 at 11:11 am
Reply

I have tried many times but it fails me to get more member.
health and wealth
alex
December 9, 2008 at 6:02 pm
Reply

save to my Bookmarks )