{"id":3934,"date":"2010-01-23T21:14:53","date_gmt":"2010-01-23T20:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebkmag.com\/?p=3934"},"modified":"2010-01-23T21:14:53","modified_gmt":"2010-01-23T20:14:53","slug":"viral-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebkmag.com\/rebuild\/eclectic\/viral-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Viral Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"
by Per Zennstr\u00f6m<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/h6>\n

For a long time now I have been intrigued by the work of Studio Total<\/strong> and their work in communication, PR and advertising and especially their unconventional and highly successful methods using viral marketing and\/or guerrilla campaigns. Recently I had the privilege to be Skyping with Per Eriksson<\/strong> from Studio Total on the realities of the New Media and I asked him do tell me more about their work.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u00b4t see ourselves as a typical advertising, or typical PR agency or even Marketing bureau for that matter. In fact we quite enjoy or somewhat diffuse position on this playing field, which gives us great freedom to do pretty much what we want\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe as an agency are constantly trying to find out what we actually are, and we\u00b4re therefore constantly re-defining what we are. One of our main realizations and strong points is that we have truly understood, and acted upon, the fact that a lot of traditional advertising is a massive waste of the clients resources. There are countless of \u201cnon-traditional\u201d ways of getting Your message across which have proven to be more effective (and more fun) and we tend to explore those avenues. I guess the keyword here is \u201ceffectivness\u201d We see ourselves and our solutions as being very, very effective\u201d
\n<\/em>
\nI came across Per and Studio Total through the very popular blog Black Ascot<\/strong> which shot to prominence and controversy in Sweden in just 4 short months and with just 100 posts managed to illuminate the creativeness, confusion and general \u201canything goes\u201d attitude in todays frenzied new media landscape. Not so very long ago it was revealed that the blog, chronicling the life of an orphaned teenager, Erika, living in the Stockholm equivalent of Upper-East Side, in an apartment with \u201c750 dresses and doing my best to drink\/shop my brains out<\/em>\u201d was in fact an advertising campaign for the Malm\u00f6 Opera\u2019s production \u201cVanessa<\/em>\u201d seeking to \u201cexpand their audience beyond the obvious core loyalists<\/em>\u201d
\nThe blog with it\u2019s hedonistic and sometimes very dark streaks, featured \u201cErika\u201d, a privileged Stockholm teenager doing what a lot of young, urban women do… Postings of \u201ctodays outfit\u201d, documenting sloppy kissing and casual sex and hang-overs, mixed with images of white lilies and the descriptions of the smell of certain perfumes… Other posts deals with popular drugs, what wine tastes best with semen, (Trimbach Gewurztraminer Selection de Grains Nobles) and references to certain boyfriends new Dior Hommes pants. Name-, and label dropping on a very high level with that sort of expertise that only a certain media\/pop-cultural\/Stockholm elite possesses. All of it done with an absolute deadpan arrogance and delicious morbidity…<\/p>\n

\u201cErika\u201d, quickly developed a cult following with her observations and musings on fashion, sex, upper-class life and death, (sex, drugs & rock\u00b4n roll) and for me being a visual person I was jealously realizing the power of a text well written. Some of the comments revealed a deep connection with this character, firmly in place on the dark side… Reading the comments I couldn’t help fantasizing that maybe some of them actually come from the writer\u2019s team responsible for the blog, they were just to perfectly, lazily lingering over sensual details like the type of silk best used while masturbating. … or languidly examining dildos in a sex-shop.
\nPer, reflecting on the cult following Erika attracted (Erika Ascot has at present 1601 Facebook friends) and the unusual intense relationship she spawned:<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my favorite blog comments from a reader was \u201c I don\u2019t care that You\u2019re not real ! I still want to have sex with You\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Once it was revealed that this was not a \u201creal\u201d blog some readers felt cheated that Erika was \u201cjust an\u201d invention by a \u201clowly\u201d PR agency. The teenage-angst ridden content had obviously put a hook in a lot of readers and some of them felt \u201cbetrayed\u201d I assume. Fuming, moralistic \u201cYou cannot do this\u201d type comments where mixed in with glowing \u201cThank You\u00b4s\u201d I found it very interesting thing to see how readers struggled to make sense of something they couldn\u2019t quite understand… OK, You know an ad when You see one and we all have gotten fed up by the endless ad\u00b4s on TV, but a blog ?<\/p>\n

Erika, perfectly well aware of it, stuck her neck out, especially in Sweden with it\u2019s political correctness and wall-to-wall-carpeted uniformity, with posts like:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe European nobility. Seems nowadays everyone wants to join our little club. Some guidelines: spend at least one fifth of each year in a place beginning with \u201cSt\u201d (At Anton, St Tropez) and if you are vomiting from panic anxiety, do it in matching underwear.\u201d<\/em> Of course this wouldn\u2019t go un-noticed. …or how about this one:<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo new years resolutions. Stop fucking people in Acqua Di Parma and start blogging\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Consulting a prime example of this new (media) world order, Wikipedia on Viral Marketing, You get this definition:<\/p>\n

\u201c…viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.[1] Viral promotions may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, adver -games, e-books, brand able software, images, or even text messages. The basic form of viral marketing is not infinitely sustainable. The goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to identify individuals with high Social Networking Potential (SNP) and create Viral Messages that appeal to this segment of the population and have a high probability of being taken by another competitor.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Now, viral marketing is nothing new, actually quite the contrary. Your basic Ponzi- and Pyramid schemes are very early examples of viral phenomenon where \u201ca message\u201d is spread from user to user, just like a viral infection. Super con-man Bernie Maddoff<\/strong> relied on this word of mouth effect to expand his rooster of seemingly happy investors… Some more recent pop-cultural examples are the marketing of The Blair Witch Project<\/strong> or the launching of email giant Hotmail. … or just take hugely popular CraigsList<\/strong> which managed to spread solely on the basis of word of mouth. What is new is the enormous power and potential in using all the new social media such as the obvious ones: YouTube, Facebook or LinkedIn, to more specialized, \u201cless open\/more focused\u201d networks such as Vimeo (if Your into moving image \/ video) or Glossom \u201ca social network for fashion style and creativity\u201d, and to use these networks to virally spread the word.<\/p>\n

Curtis Silver <\/strong>wrote this<\/a> in Wired Magazine:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe power of influence is ever present in this discussion, which is what social media tools add to viral marketing. The crowd mentality is heavier within a social-media community, which makes it easier for viral marketing to do its job. Honestly, it seems like marketing through social media is the new form of viral marketing. That\u2019s the wave of the future in marketing, a new and improved marketing platform.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Another successful campaign by Studio Total was the highly controversial launch of a new political party, Kulturpartiet ( The Cultural Party.) Announced at the annual political show-off and spectacle , Almedals veckan, where the absolute politico – cultural – media elite grandstand and network, the press conference headed by some of the swedish cultural heavy-weights, who with absolute perfect pokerfaces deadpanned into the TV lights that they intended to run for seats in parlament on a one-issue-campaign of more money for culture ! For a few intense days the speculations and media pressure was enormous until it was revealed that this again was an effort by Studio Total to gain some publicity for Riksteatern.<\/p>\n

At some point in a viral campaign the creators need to accept that they give up control of the message and let it live it\u2019s own life, changing and going through \u201cmutations\u201d as it\u2019s being passed on word-of-mouth, or through the social media networks. This is a radical difference to a more conventional campaign where everything is researched in minute detail with focus groups, test panels and what have You…<\/p>\n

Now, it may seem like the successful Viral Campaigns are created by a bunch of guys just goofing around, coming up with funny and outragous things that gets taped and uploaded on You Tube and subsequently passed around and at some stage reaching a tipping point but some rules seem to exist and there seems to be a method to the madness and anarchy:
\nWhen You talk about anything Viral it\u2019s easy to get the impression that it\u2019s a little bit like the Wild West !
\nI mean like \u201canything goes\u201d and creative’s relying on their gut feeling to put strategies together
\nOr are there theories, procedures or protocols to follow ? How do You see this ?<\/p>\n

To get the media attention in order to get people to talk about your brand it\u2019s difficult to rely on theories. We\u2019ll have to rely on our sense for what catches peoples interest.
\nThe structure of stories is in one sense theoretical as constructed in classic literature and film and that might work as a theory that we could apply. We use basic story elements as finding an enemy, moving things around in order to create something new or not trying to blend in by looking good. Since we cannot predict exactly what part of our campaigns that will be retold we need to keep them simple. People aren\u2019t stupid, if you interrupt them with a story that isn\u2019t relevant or clearly speculative you will not get the viral effect. Anything goes applies better for traditional advertising where you don\u2019t have to earn the attention.<\/em><\/p>\n

At some point in a viral campaign the creators need to accept that they give up control of the message and let it live it\u2019s own life, changing and going through \u201cmutations\u201d as it\u2019s being passed on word-of-mouth, or through the social media networks. This is a radical difference to a more conventional campaign where everything is researched in minute detail with focus groups, test panels and what have You…
\nAny thought comments on this ?<\/p>\n

We haven\u2019t experienced problems with messages that mutates in a bad way. If you think of your campaign as a headline in a newspaper, for example as our iPod speaker for Brothers – the WOS, the headlines was \u201cThe worlds most powerful iPod dock\u201d and this was what people told each other and our client Brothers was there in the background as the manufacturer of WOS. In general we launch our campaigns in many different channels at the same time and this probably help to keep the campaigns together. In combination with a simple story I don\u2019t see the risk of bad mutations as a problem when working viral. You\u2019ll just have to accept that when using people for getting your story out it will be re-told in slightly different ways, but a simple story will keep on course.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>
\n… on the same thread about losing control.
\nAre You guys more about a \u201cHappy Creative Chaos\u201d or is it more a disciplined war-like campaign effort with flow charts etc etc ?<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not flow-charts guys, thats for sure. Not to say that there\u2019s chaos in the office but a certain amount of improvisation is needed when launching our campaigns.<\/em><\/p>\n

There seems to exist some rules to viral marketing like:
\nA successful viral campaign…
\n…gives away products or services, (Free)
\n…provides for effortless transfer to others, (the digital \/ mobile lifestyle)
\n…scales easily from small to very large
\n…exploits common motivations and behaviors,
\n…utilizes existing communication networks, (Social Media)
\n…takes advantage of others\u2019 resources, (Let the consumer \/ prosumer do the heavy lifting)<\/p>\n

Do You follow these rules, or is it done by gut feeling ?<\/p>\n

Of course the presence of social media helps certain campaigns to evolve. The rules above might describe parts of a successful viral campaign but it will not necessarily help you create one. In order to fulfill all the rules above you\u2019ll have to start out with something that\u2019s worth telling. Once you\u2019ve got this you can utilize social media and other means to get the story out. Focus on what matters, the story. <\/em><\/p>\n

Please tell me more about the concept of, the strategy of, and the actual release of KULTURPARTIET (the Cultural Party) ?
\nHave seen the press conference tapes and the chaos and pandemonium is total… Fun or scary ?<\/p>\n

Haha, a bit of both I must say. The mission was to help The Swedish National Theatre (Sweden\u2019s largest theatre, with a turnover of more than 40 million euros) to get the cultural issues on the political agenda. Theaters need public funding. How could we show the importance of culture to politicians?
\nThe conclusion was that everyone wants to get attention from politicians. So why not become politicians? We put together our own political party and baptized it \u201cThe Cultural Party\u201d and invited famous writers, actors and musicians as spokespersons. Our fake party was featured as headline news in TV, radio and newspapers. A newspaper poll indicated that 16% of the population would vote for the party. After revealing the party was only an advertising hoax the chairmen of all the political parties liked the campaign (easy to say when the threat was gone). As a secondary effect the theater experienced a 10% increase in ticket sales that summer.<\/em><\/p>\n

… as always more at 10.horses<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Per Zennstr\u00f6m For a long time now I have been intrigued by the work of Studio Total and their work in communication, PR and advertising and especially their unconventional and highly successful methods using viral marketing and\/or guerrilla campaigns. Recently I had the privilege to be Skyping with Per Eriksson from Studio Total on the realities of the New Media and I asked him do tell me more about their work. \u201cWe don\u00b4t see ourselves as a typical advertising, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[47],"tags":[44,45,46,48,21,49,35,50,51],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thebkmag.com\/rebuild\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/Health_virus.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paG8MM-11s","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7198,"url":"https:\/\/thebkmag.com\/rebuild\/the-featured\/photoshop-per-zennstrom\/","url_meta":{"origin":3934,"position":0},"title":"Photoshop shenanigans in the \u201cMaking of MKK 2 image campaign\u201d by Per Zennstr\u00f6m","author":"Benjamin Kanarek","date":"March 26, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Per Zennstrom shooting the last campaign for Swedish Top Hair & Beauty Salon Mikas Koivisto-Karlsson and Making of video","rel":"","context":"In "the-featured"","block_context":{"text":"the-featured","link":"https:\/\/thebkmag.com\/rebuild\/category\/the-featured\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thebkmag.com\/rebuild\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/mkk-2-654-Edit.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thebkmag.com\/rebuild\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/mkk-2-654-Edit.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thebkmag.com\/rebuild\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/mkk-2-654-Edit.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4171,"url":"https:\/\/thebkmag.com\/rebuild\/bkblog\/fashion-photographer-per-zennstrom-contributes-benjamin-kanarek-blog\/","url_meta":{"origin":3934,"position":1},"title":"Fashion Photographer Per Zennstr\u00f6m contributes to Benjamin Kanarek Blog","author":"Benjamin Kanarek","date":"January 19, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A portrait of Fashion Photographer Per Zennstr\u00f6m who is now contributing to Benjamin Kanarek Blog","rel":"","context":"In "BKBlog"","block_context":{"text":"BKBlog","link":"https:\/\/thebkmag.com\/rebuild\/category\/bkblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thebkmag.com\/rebuild\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/WorkPerZennstromforAirFranceMadame.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thebkmag.com\/rebuild\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/WorkPerZennstromforAirFranceMadame.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thebkmag.com\/rebuild\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/WorkPerZennstromforAirFranceMadame.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":4941,"url":"https:\/\/thebkmag.com\/rebuild\/photography\/advertising-new-editorial\/","url_meta":{"origin":3934,"position":2},"title":"Is Advertising the new Editorial ?","author":"Benjamin Kanarek","date":"February 7, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Per Zennstr\u00f6m I have been very fortunate to be able to work with an advertising agency such as loved.de and their client G\u00f6rtz17. For some time now we have been doing some pretty cool shootings that I (hands down) consider some of my best, see above... 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