Alright everyone, sorry for the long wait but I'm finally hear to speak my mind. But, before we get to that I'll go ahead with a quick introduction. I'm Steve Parobek, born in Asheville, North Carolina; raised in Louisville, KY. I was an avid and competitive tennis player for most of my life until a recent shoulder injury has sidelined me. Other than that, I am a Social Media Marketing major and a brother of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity here at Western Kentucky.
Now that the intro is over with, I'd like to talk to you all about this promotional video I found on YouTube the other day for San Francisco Mayoral Candidate Bob Lee. Now before I start, when I saw the thumbnail next to the link, I thought it was just some goofballs making a comical video but regardless, I clicked on it. The video was entitled Ed Lee Is...2 LEGIT 2 QUIT, and within the first 15 seconds I had realized the video was nothing like how I had anticipated it to be. It was a music video stemming off of the one only MC Hammer's track Too Legit To Quit, and had numerous cameo appearances of athletes, musicians, and other big wigs. There was everyone from NFL hall-of-famer Ronnie Lott, the owner of the 49ers Jed York, Wil.I.Am, and a few more, but what impressed me the most is that they got MC Hammer himself to be in the video. On top of these people, Co-Founder of Twitter Biz Stone, and YouTube's Hunter Walk were featured in the video.
It turned out to be a legitimate promotional video for Ed Lee. I soon "Googled" the video title and found a link to an article on the video on the NYTimes homepage entitled Too Legit To Watch. The article explains that the video was put together by technology moguls, Ron Conway and Marissa Mayer, put together with the help of an "Aish-List" cast to help promote the Mayoral candidate to the people of the internet. I commend the group for going against the grain, in a sense that they are targeting people through social media, but I'm not 100% sure why it had to be made this way. For a political candidate, this seems almost immature. I'll leave links to both the article and the video for you to view. Let me know what you think...Good viral marketing? Or will it crash and burn?
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/too-legit-to-watch/?ref=socialnetworking
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbdd_Fasz0k
The issue with viral marketing is that it seems as though its pretty much un-pioneered on some levels. Viral videos can be huge to the success for certain organizations from an advertising standpoint, but can also go overboard in an attempt to gain attention, sometimes ending up in notoriety or indifference due to immaturity as Steve mentions above. This video mentioned was humorous, but I agree with Steve in that it may have gone a bit too far. This potential candidate may have been trying too hard to connect to the youth, and may have lost older more informed voters.
ReplyDelete