Viral marketing and the credulity of journalists and bloggers

A recent video clip that appeared on Youtube purported to show a man 'hacking' the video screens in New York's Times Square so that they showed a clip playing from his iPhone rather than what they were supposed to be showing.

The fact that what was being shown was extremely unlikely didn't stop people all over the internet from reporting it as though it were fact. Metro's reporting is particularly asinine, with the clip retold as fact at the top of the story, followed by caveats below (and topped with a headline that neatly straddles the fence).

This week, the New York Times carried a profile of the company that made the video, a marketing firm called Thinkmodo. It turns out it was a promotional film for a forthcoming movie called Limitless.

It's an example of so-called 'viral' marketing, in which a company with something to promote makes something that's designed to be shared. With all the internet sharing services around, that process of 'going viral' happens faster than ever.

The same film is currently being advertised on the London Underground, though you wouldn't know it from the ads, which talk about something called the Clear Pill:

The NYT piece says:

The two men, founders of a viral marketing company called Thinkmodo, are tapping into a growing desire among marketers to attract and keep the attention of online viewers with videos that get shared on social Web sites like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. The strategy for Thinkmodo is to make videos that viewers will think are clever and authentic without overtly pushing or mentioning a product, Mr. Percelay said.

"We're pushing the engagement of an idea which leads you then to the product," he said. "It just is a whole new mind-set where you don't have to wrap everything up in a bow and if you don't, people are going to be a lot more interested in you and what you're selling and what your message is."

Marketing people aren't to blame for viral marketing. Now that more and more people are 'media-savvy' and more and more choose to cut themselves off from traditional methods advertisers use to reach people (such as using a DVR to skip television ads) it's necessary to turn to clever new means to hook people in.

And of course we all forward on and share videos and images when they make us laugh or think. Most people don't stop to think, before sending something on, 'does this come from an advertiser' and nor should they.

But when supposedly respectable newspapers are publishing silly internet rumours as they happen, it becomes harder to sort the dross from the things that matter. One function of journalism is 'curation', the collection of things that are important and the presentation of that to readers.

Journalists and bloggers - who now more than ever stand in for the role of journalists - should be sorting through the stuff they get sent and making sure that it's legitimate before passing it on. But in the hunt for clicks (because clicks mean more ads, so more money) that gets lost and people end up publishing any old rubbish because they know it'll be popular.

There's something irritating about some kinds of viral marketing. It may be that the ones where it seems underhand are the most annoying. When a clip goes around that's clearly branded with the logo of a car or beer company, everyone knows that it's advertising, but if it's good, they're happy to pass it on anyway.

When advertising masquerades as 'ordinary people' doing extraordinary things, the deviousness only serves to hurt the thing that's being promoted.

Limitless, incidentally, looks rubbish.