Table of Contents
My Views on Social Medias , Bullet Theory and Viral Marketing.
By RIG
Lets start from the basics, Advertiser of a product need Customers to sustain their products. The cycle goes like Advertiser Advertise on Media, Viewer acknowledge the advertisement, Potential Customers Comes to have a query about the product , and Buyer pays for the product and the advertising. The hallmark of this cycle is, the more the viewer , the more the potential customer, the more the buyer and the more the revenue which help to sustain the product in the market and motivate the company.
Bullet Theory
By its name it can be targeted hit or non targeted hit. In Traditional warfare, when you shoot out a bullet from a nozzle of a gun, there is probability you will hit the targeted person, another probability is , it will hit another person other than the target , another probability, it will hit nothing, and another probability is , it wont fire at all. With such chances in warfare, it is a bad thing, when the target need to be hit no mater what. Sometimes one hit is fatal, and sometimes requires multiple hit to achieve the same effect. Hence evolve Mass Killing Machines like Machine Guns, Gatling Guns, Carpet Bombing and Nuclear Bombing etc… it will ensure that the chances of the target been hit will be high, of course, with a higher cost of spending in initial investment in weapons, and involvement of other innocent people as well.
In Marketing, however, similar technique been adopted. the advertiser knows who to target, what is their targeted population, and how to target them. However, For a message to reach them is tricky. Like pasting an poster at the streets, Sometimes it just hit and instant death (means once see the advertisement , straight become a buyer), Sometimes it just hit and go (means see the advertisement once and ignore it) and sometimes never hit at all (means don’t even bother to look a eye on the advertisement). And hence advertiser goes mass media. Everyone sure use mass media, somewhat or the other. Newspaper, TV, Broadcast, Radio, website …… Like releasing bullet rain to the public, someone will eventually gets hit. Each hit of the bullet leaves a scar. A scar that never heals. Some scar are deep (means you are attracted but not intend to buy yet) , and some scar are shallow (means you are acknowledging the advertisement, but not fully interest yet). Not to forget , these scar have addictive effect. Each time the scar builds up, the interest will be more, it creates a mind set in your brain, and your brain will start to associate things and integrated it to your lifestyle. First the colour , then the logo, then the product … Everytime you see something yellow …. you will think of DIGI …. Everytime you see Red pages in newspaper … you will think of AirAsia … Everytime you think of a light morning drink … you will think of Milo …
These advertiser even go further , but not introducing a product, it also introduce a culture into our daily living through simple and yet powerful motto. In the era of globalisation , there is no longer “your culture” , “my culture” , the aim is to hit the world and become “Our Culture”. The cycle further enhance by branding and self image improvement. Who say Jeans is trendy and everyone must wear Jeans to be up to the trend, although is started to be a minority culture in the western desert. In the end become well known Global Brand and trademark, even the rugged ones with holes are sale at higher prices which at first seen as spoilt and old. Hence The bullet not only hit an individual , but along with it, the promoting of self image , which eventually everyone wants, to be stand out and be diffrent. However , most of the people unaware of how many scar they have on their body and in their minds.
Social Medias is the mainstay of internet surfing. Social medias like Facebook, Twitter, Google Friends Connect, etc… have one similarity, To stay connect with your friends & family and share information with them at the more efficient way than just talk at the coffee shop and chat on the phone. Viewing at the world populations, although each individual is unique and not connected and appears to be a chaos and randomised product of re-population, but each chaos have their order pattern . It appears as multiple social-able groups and clouds of people either by work, school, neighbours, internet, etc… The internet have bring everyone closer, and hence more clouds and sub clouds have form. The culture of “always stay connect with your friends & family” and “Share good things with your friends and family” had been embed in our life long time ago. with emergence of social medias, social contact had never been easier. You can make new friends and recuirt old friends to join your group. You can just click “share” button and the information you interested is share among your groups instantly. At times when everyone is free, chatting as a group online is not a problem, and when chatting is impossible as not everyone free on the same time, comment and reply system been introduced to leave traces of your view and your opinion.
Social Medias had attract attention of younger generations. The fact is, at age of middle school, high school and University , you will be mingle around with many different friends from different background and different level of education. in span of 10 years time of these age, there is at least 3 groups of friends that is totally different. Some people will study in different places in different level of education. at middle school, you will know more of the locals, in high school, you will know more of people from different schools, in university, you will know more from different countries. It is different than the working group of age 30-60, where people you are meeting may just the same people everytime for 30 years of working. Compare to schooling and college age where a new friends may just means meeting at the same class for 3 months of short course, or same high school for 2 years and same university for 3 years, and there have high tendency to loose contact after that. Hence there is tendency for this age group to add everyone they know and create a huge group of accumulative friends. It is a drastic changes if compare to older generations where if you can stay close contact to at least 5 of the school friends and 10 of the college friends,till you retire, you are great.
Social Medias to stay social, further elements had been added to sustain the connection. Such features are like games, photo & video shares, Shout outs, News & Events , Notification & Alert, etc… Score board is infectious. People are encourage to compete each other in hitting higher score. Social Media use personal information such as name, sex, age to provoke more user to use. Who will not be tempted when ” (your close friend’s name) had beat you in this game” . By using personal information, the social medias become more personal than before. Your name and picture can appear in games and other applications. Social Medias like Forums , Chats and Blogs uses avatar or profile pictures to create your identity on the internet. With further integration of other social media with major social media like Facebook , Google , Yahoo, etc … the “one accounts all logins” concept had propagated and people no longer need to remember what service to login and what password to type. With social media intergration, you no longer need to think “what else i need to login to check for updates” and end up forget to login some of it and suddenly get a complaint from your friend, “I already post (something) in (some service) and you never reply me, have you not check it lately ?” .
Viral spreads on organism by contact, either direct or indirect, as long at there is portal of exit , transport medium, and portal of entry. One virus may just need to affect one cell, and then the cycle of propagation will continue without stop. to say it is a chain reaction, it is true, when one neutron with sufficient energy hitting an uranium, the uranium will break and release three neutrons that will effectively cause another 3 Uranium to break, and such chain reaction will only take a short while to produce the maximum reactions. This is what the advertiser wants.
Imagine that now every educated ones, have at least one social media account. Well, not to forget, one social media is enough to exert the viral effect. The advertiser need to only invest on those who actually interested in their advertisement, rather than multiple blank bullets that hopes to kill someone eventually. One people have friends, and have friends of friends and the list goes on. Hence advertiser nowadays aim social medias & network as their ultimate spread of information in a very short time. You can say it is a bullet smart targeting. Our consciousness will always tells that, good things is shared by close friends we trust, and thats how direct marketing works. One will spread ten, ten will spread hundreds. And obviously you know your friends well, better then the advertiser, hence the smart targeting is also achieved through social media. With share functions on social network, when you feels like liking the product, just click share and it will work automatically to the next cycle of friends and family. with attractive wording and packaging ” (your friends name) liked this, you may also like this, click this for more information”.
There is allot of Social Media Marketing around in Malaysia, but here i will talk about Nuffnang and Churp Churp.
Nuffnang is one of the Biggest Malaysian blog advertising company that target all Blog user, with motto “Asia Pacific’s First Blog Advertising Community”, enable blog user to post the advertisement link to their blog, and in return the blog user will get revenue from the placement of advertisement if it is clicked. The concept is that , reader comes to that blog will have some interest in that blog the blogger written, hence by targeted placement of advertisement based on the blog content and blogger interest (through survey).
Churp Churp , however a diffrent concept of advertising. Churp Churp (sounds like another noisy bird of the bigger brother twitter) motto “A Community for social media influencers” , means the main mode of advertisement is through pay per unique click that user can post the unique links generated when you join a advertisement campaign. The pay outs can be quite attractive, about RM0.20 per unique clicks and Rm1.00 for each new user signup, and all you need to do is to post or share the unique links generated in any social media, from facebook , twitter to messenger and e-mails. The more power your group is the better the influence will be , and the more return you gain.
For all Nuffnang Users, there is a great news that Nuffnang Grapevine had been launched lately. Not only you can earn by people clicking your blog, but also clicking the link you shared in other social medias other than your blog. They had moved beyond blogs advertisement by incorporate both methods. And one more added advantage, the Grapevine will appear occasionally on skyscraper unit of the traditional Nuffnang Advertisement, grap the unique link and submit your e-mail and share the link on your social medias. And furthermore , the one who share the link need not need to be a Nuffnang member. Their concept, Share The Great Word With Your Friends and get rewarded for it with cash and prizes. Hence not only the bloggers may earn money from ad placement, blog readers can also earn by sharing the advertisement.
Useful Links :
Churp Churp & Grapevine
Register as a Member at Churp Churp
Nuffnang Website