Wanted to pass along another example of excellence in viral marketing.

This thrilling 3-minute epic is a Nike tribute to the excitement, glamor and high stakes of the upcoming World Cup competition.  It features celebrity cameos including Kobe Bryant and Homer Simpson (who has the only speaking role in the video!).

It has also received 10 million page views. In ONE week.  Wow.  The bar for quality and entertainment value just keeps getting higher and higher, doesn’t it?

And by the way, you probably recognize that raucous theme anthem but can you name the song and performer?  OK 70’s music fans, time to get your game on!

When does online parody cross a line?

By now you’ve probably become aware of the “fake” BP global public relations account on Twitter spewing humorous observations such as:

“We feel terrible about spilling oil in American waters, we’ll make sure the next spill happens where the terrorists live. #bpcares”

“Just wrapped up a meeting with the EPA. Terry kept farting out loud at all the right moments. Not sure how he does it, but it’s SO FUNNY!”

“Oh man, this whole time we’ve been trying to stop SEAWATER from gushing into our OIL. Stupid Terry was holding the diagram upside down.”

According to Ad Age, the account started last Wednesday afternoon with this tweet: “We regretfully admit that something has happened off of the Gulf Coast. More to Come.”

Fewer than 50 tweets later, the feed had nearly 13,000 followers — compared to the 5,000 or so at the “real” @BP_America — and as of today, the account had about 40,000 followers.  Its humorous blasts have been re-tweeted by everyone from filmmaker Michael Moore to singer Michelle Branch.

Toby Odone, a spokesman at BP, told Ad Age: “I’m not aware of whether BP has made any calls to have it taken down or addressed. People are entitled to their views on what we’re doing and we have to live with those. We are doing the best we can to deal with the current situation and to try to stop the oil from flowing and to then clean it up.”

While there have been plenty of fake Twitter accounts before, perhaps none has spread so rapidly or gained this kind of momentum. The timing is right, the content is superb, and people are eager to connect emotionally to anyone poking fun at the easy target.

Let’s take a look at some of the realities and implications of this development for our own businesses.

1) Is it legal?

According to Twitter’s guidelines, it is perfectly acceptable to set up accounts that parody real companies, celebrities, etc. as long as it is clear that it is a parody. Their rule states:

The bio should include a statement to distinguish it from the real identity, such as “This is a parody,” “This is a fan page,” “Parody Account,” “Fan Account” or “This is not affiliated with…”

The account should not, through private or public communication with other users, try to deceive or mislead others about your identity. For example, if operating a fan account, do not direct message other users implying you are the actual subject (i.e., person, band, sports team, etc.) of the fan account.

As of today, the fake account bio reads: “This page exists to get BP’s message and mission statement out into the twitterverse!”

So no, it is not an account that meets Twitter’s standards. Further, it is causing a lot of confusion because many people are actually taking this as a serious BP account.

2) What should BP do?

BP has much bigger PR problems than a rogue Twitter account.  And making an issue of it and spoiling the fun would probably just heighten negativity against the company.

However, if I were working for BP right now <shudder> I would at least approach Twitter and ask it to enforce its own rules and declare clearly that this is a parody site.  Given the number of people who actually think this is a real account, there is a high probability that quotes from this parody site could start showing up as legitimate quotes from the company and stress the PR department further.

Really, BP’s only real option is to withstand the public fury and and eliminate the core problem — the root cause — at the source deep in the ocean and spreading across our shores. And that is going to take years.

3) What should YOU do?

The social web has imparted a whole new sense of meaning and urgency to PR planning, monitoring and response.  How have the rules changed? Or have they? What are your thoughts?

I’ve been teaching classes on social media marketing to business professionals for about a year now and I’ve found that there is definitely a group that “gets it” and a group that doesn’t.

The successful ones keep in touch with me long after the class is over and tell me how the social web has dramatically changed their lives through exciting new connections and business opportunities.  For others, I can usually tell by the end of the first class that it isn’t going to “take” no matter what I say or do.

I’ve thought a lot about what separates these two groups because I care about my students and I want them ALL to succeed.   Both groups start out motivated enough to plunk down their money and attend a class.  Everybody is attentive. They take notes and engage. They’re all successful business people receiving the same content with an equal opportunity to learn the strategies and channel tactics. So what’s the difference?

I’ve decided that it boils down to one important difference: MINDSET.

Meet Social Sue. She’s urgently trying to get on Facebook and Twitter because she’s heard all about social media and she’s afraid of falling behind.  Her marketing budget has been cut and she needs to find a way to sell more with less — fast!  She’s already overworked and sees the social web as just another source of pressure.  That makes her a bit skeptical — and even afraid — of opening up this Pandora’s box. Her customers have been complaining about her business on various sites and she wants to find a way to contain the damage and even eliminate the negative comments if possible. She thinks life will be so much easier if she can just find somebody to set up a Facebook fan page for her … like me : )

Sitting next to her is Social Sam. Sam is open-minded and excited about exploring the possibilities of an entirely new communication channel.  He realizes that he needs to focus on the bottom line, but he’s eager to immerse himself in this new platform and learn more about his customers and marketplace. He wants to meaningfully connect his business to customer wants and needs.   Sam knows it will take time to learn, listen, experiment and master the channel, but recognizes this is a wise and necessary investment if he is to be relevant in his marketplace — traditional advertising measures seem to be less and less effective. He’s heard a lot about Facebook of course, but is open to matching the appropriate marketing ideas with his business strategy.

There is a subtle difference between these two folks.  Both of them have an urgency to learn and an obvious business case for integrating the social web with traditional channels. But the difference in mindset seems to make all the difference in the world. At least that’s my experience but I’d like to hear from you of course.

A challenge for me — finding a way to work on this mindset with students upfront in the class.  Is that possible?  Some people seem to have a pretty strong bias toward “Sue” from the start. Maybe I’ll even use this post as a teaching tool!

What about you?   How would you convert a Sue to a Sam?

In the rapid-fire world of the social web, blogging will surely evolve. What might the future hold for our beloved blogs and how should companies prepare for inevitable change?

Will blogging die? It was trendy a few months ago to predict that micro-blogging (like Twitter) would kill blogging. But Twitter NEEDS blogging. Twitter is like the movie trailer but you still want to watch the movie. About 70 percent of all tweets link back to a blog.  Content publishing through blogs is important.

Publishing platforms tend to last for a long time and I think in many cases blogs have supplanted newspapers, magazines and even books. It’s not going anywhere but it will evolve.

Make me laugh – Blogs won’t die, but boring blogs will. The pressure to produce entertaining content will be keen as the roar of competing content on the social web becomes deafening.

Consolidation — There are too many blogs and it’s becoming difficult for individual bloggers to compete against companies with a staff of paid bloggers.  Look for consortiums to emerge and thrive.  An example of this is the Social CMO blog. A group of individual bloggers contribute to the content of one themed-site.

This approach also creates diversity of thought, consistency of quality content, regularity in publishing, and a greater opportunity to get the critical mass needed to monetize. For corporate blogging, this might mean deputizing many people in your company to blog (IBM is a best practice), or joining others in your industry to contribute to online “trade” content.

Aggregation — Sites that aggregate vertical-themed content are becoming popular time-savers for readers. For example, aggregating top industry headlines can make your blog more attractive as a customer stopping point.

Integration — If you’re working the web well, you probably have content in a number of places like YouTube, Twitter and Slideshare.  Provide a mechanism on your blog for readers to find your content wherever it might be. Look to integrate  features like video, podcasts, forums, job boards, classifieds, chat features, and voting tools to increase value for readers.

Mobile — Today, consumption and creation of content happen not just on traditional computing systems like a laptop, but also on highly mobile devices. Imagine the volume of information we’re going to create and consume when we have ubiquitous broadband speeds on our on-the-go devices.  This trend is making creation even more immediate  and collaborative.  Posterous and Tumblr are trying to tap into in-the-moment blogging but who knows where it will lead? How about instantaneous video blog comments?

New journalism — Blogging is already filling legitimate journalism niches left vacant by the decline in traditional media.  The edges of what is, and isn’t, blogging continue to blur. What does this mean to the corporate blogger? Blogs will increasingly be an important source of news stories, leads and product placement.  How does your industry traditionally get information? If it is through dying institutions such as trade shows and publications, can your blog help fill the gap?

Facebook — No discussion of any aspect of the social web can exclude a mention of Facebook.  This platform has leveraged partnerships, momentum, and an intuitive interface to become the web’s most important social networking property.  For millions of people. this is their ONLY home on the web. How its ubiquity and growing power will affect blogging remains to be seen … but it probably will.  A presence on Facebook has augmented — and sometimes replaced — traditional websites. probably the only thing keeping Facebook from being a dominant blogging platform is the issue of ownership — Facebook’s terms of service dictate that they would own the content.

What ideas and trends do you see out there?  Will blogs evolve or die away?

I wanted to show you this awesome music video because it’s creative, hilarious and it also reinforces a theme I’ve been writing about over several months …

Toyota paid big bucks to produce this YouTube video. It’s not meant for TV. It’s meant for the viral web … and viral it went. Point one: The big guns are pouring on to the social web. And they will dominate.

This video is about a minivan. But it is a ton of fun.  Doesn’t it just make you forget all those annoying little Toyota brake problems? Point two: To cut through the clutter, you have to be entertaining. In fact, the pressure to be entertaining is going to intensify for all of us if we want to cut through the clutter. The actual car is secondary in this piece.  In fact, not a single product feature is even mentioned.

Point three: Small businesses are not necessarily going to be squeezed out of the social web, but the expectations for quality content are going to be high.  Get ready.

Final point: Content is king baby.  Yeah, you have to develop relationships but you get there through content. Send your kids to journalism school. Seriously. The future for writers is bright.

By the way, my buddy Ike Pigott turned me on to this little video gem. We’ve never met but we’re going to see Rush in concert together in September. Viva La Twitter.  Rock on.

What do you think about this trend?  What would you say if your ad agency came to you and suggested spending $500,000 on a two-minute video that actually makes fun of your product?  How does this build an emotional connection to mini-vans?  To Toyota?

Consider …

When the financial system collapsed, the national spotlight turned to banking practices and regulations.

When drunk drivers could slip through the system and get  back in cars to injure or kill innocent people, a national movement was created.

And when the safety procedures on a Gulf of Mexico oil rig failed, plans for offshore drilling came to a grinding halt under the glare of public alarm.

All it takes is one crisis, one crime, one whopper of an oil slick, to change public perceptions forever.  What does this have to do with marketing?

Here is the first prediction I’ve ever made on this blog: In the near future, we will have a social media crisis that will turn enough negative attention to the social web to arouse public alarm to the point of a backlash and perhaps even legislation. It will be our very own oil slick.

Specifically, I believe there will be a crime or tragedy that shines a spotlight on the incredible flaws and dangers inherent in the social web. Perhaps it will be a Foursquare stalking crime.    Maybe new research will emerge that demonstrates the shocking effects when teens live their lives through text messaging.  Perhaps a significant database or privacy fail.  A Twitter-delivered virus?  Or perhaps it will be a financial scam that dupes the elderly … the fastest-growing population on Facebook.

There have already been several documented cases of social-media-related robbery. One U.K. woman was recently burglarized after posting that she would be attending a music festival.

We can look to recent events in South Korea as a precursor to what might happen in the Western World.  A 28-year-old South Korean died from his video game addiction. The man literally killed himself through exhaustion-induced heart failure by not stopping game play long enough to sleep or eat. So the South Korean government is responding with legislated curfews on video games. The gaming industry has an oil slick.

Facebook is teetering on the edge of a privacy disaster. The social network has come under fire for a series of recent changes to its policies that have limited what users can keep private, as well as embarrassing technical glitches that exposed personal data.  And yes, privacy advocates have called on regulators to intervene.

So far, the benefits of the social web have outstripped potential dangers. But when will the line be crossed?

What’s your opinion on this?

If you enjoyed this post, consider a free email subscription to {grow} by clicking the RSS feed button at the top of the page. Thank you!

Here’s a chance for you to participate in a live social media experiment and receive an interesting piece of free research at the same time.

Our friend John Bottom, a regular contributor to the {grow} community, is giving a talk at the IDM B2B Conference in London. To demonstrate the viral power of great content, he’s conducting an experiment over the next 24 hours (May 18-19) that involves YOU!

In preparation for this event, John asked 150 senior marketers attending the conference: “What is the single biggest benefit of social media to your brand – and what is the single biggest obstacle to achieving it?”

He compiled the answers in a snappy little eBook you can download for free by clicking HERE.

In fact, downloading the eBook is the whole point of the experiment.  John wants to achieve 1,000 downloads in a single day.  It’s free, fun, and there is no obligation whatsoever. So please, go ahead and do it.  I’ll wait. : )

Thanks!

A link that is possibly even more interesting is this one – http://bit.ly/bJbrb5 – which provides live blog coverage of the experiment throughout the day (May 19 in case you’re a little behind in your blog reading!)

By the way, I really liked the content in this little eBook.  One participant said social media is a chance to demonstrate brand humanity (isn’t that a great term?). Sounds like a potential blog post for somebody.

Thanks for stopping by today and helping John out.  Oh yes, it would also be great if you could click the little green tweet button at the top of this blog post and ask your tribe to participate too.

Disclosure: I have no commercial or financial stake in this demonstration. I am simply helping out a friend I met through Twitter with an experiment I believe in.

Update: Results of the Great Content Marketing Experiment from John Bottom ->  http://bit.ly/bJbrb5

Fara Hain grabbed my attention in a big way. In a recent comment on {grow} she mentioned that Twitter had led her to discover a new market for her company’s product. REALLY? I asked her tell us more and here she goes:

To some, Twitter is surely the Paris Hilton of new media, a place popular only because of its own popularity, fascinating because it’s so clearly pointless. And I admit my initial impression of Twitter was similar. But it didn’t take too long to make me a believer because I saw first-hand how Twitter helped our company create an entirely new line of business.

While working at Gizmoz (now digime), I was pulled into the world of Twitter by two friends who were early adopters.  They encouraged me to try it out and I started by “listening” through a daily search for Gizmoz on the Twitter search box. I thought it would be interesting to see what, if anything, people were saying about us. I collated responses into a spreadsheet to see if I could find a theme or locate emerging influencers.

I found that there was a group of people using my site in a completely different way than I had expected. Gizmoz is a B2C 3D animation company which had launched a web-based tool for teens to create greetings and videos using 3D avatars. On Twitter, our tool was being discussed with hashtags like #edtech.

It turns out we were being discussed on the podium at a major education conference!  To my surprise, teachers had been using Gizmoz in the classroom as an interactive tool for students to create presentations (science classes, social studies, even a kindergarten class!). We were blown away.

By making some simple changes to our product, and asking teachers for their direct feedback, we were able to make Gizmoz more classroom-friendly. We added avatars like Albert Einstein and other historical figures and we started to be more aggressive about hiding public posts which featured less appropriate content.

In our new marketing effort, we actively targeted teachers – who are, in fact, major viral influencers – one teacher influencing 30 students is a marketer’s dream! In this example, teacher in Australia embeds a Gizmoz example in his blog post.

It’s doubtful that I would have ever discovered this amazing new market for our products without Twitter. So while the occasional, “I’m drinking coffee” tweet may be annoying, I now know there’s deep value in there if you know how to look for it.

Fara Hain tweets on Marketing and Financial Media for her company Seeking Alpha

I’ve compiled a list of the world’s most chronically boring bloggers.  Some of them are pretty well-known. Of course I would never publish such a list, but I wonder if boring bloggers even realize how dull they have become.

If you sense you’re losing your edge, here are some warning signs that you’re becoming a boring blogger.

1) Your posts are too damn long. Occasionally a very long blog article is absolutely justified by its scintillating content and vision. But 99% of the time a long post only serves the ego of the author, not the need of the readers.  Once you hit 600 words the yellow caution flag should come out. Long blogs = snooze time.

2) Stirring up fake controversy.  Some bloggers huff and puff and write of their indignation about something ridiculous to provide an image that they are being controversial. ZZZZzzzzz.

3) Self-decoration. Do you commonly illustrate your posts with pictures of yourself?  Even MULTIPLE pictures of yourself? I might be taking a leap here but this just could be a sign of self-absorption. I actually saw one blogger recently quote himself in his own blog.  Nap time.

4) Blogging by the clock.  Some have obviously been blogging too long or have too little new to say. I get the impression they write simply because it’s time to write. I realize you can’t hit it out of the park every time but if you are blogging on a schedule that is probably not going to work.  The theme of one recent post I read was “Be proud to be a marketer.” Does that really need to be said? <yawn>

5) Does anybody read those sponsored posts?  Writing a post every month about a company that is paying you to write about them … deadly.  Better than Ambien.

Overall the world has too many blogs.   And we can always un-subscribe.  And I have : )

But if you have a hunch that you’re getting stale and want to re-charge, try this:

• Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you … figure out what you have to say.
• Take a break that includes a change of scenery.
• Attend a conference.
• Go back to your very first posts. That was fresh by definition, right?  What made your writing special?
• Do some reading outside of your field. Look for differing styles and subjects you can incorporate into your themes.
• Stop reading posts by your contemporaries. Just puts you in the echo chamber.

What would you add?  How do you keep your writing fresh?

If you enjoyed this post, consider a free email subscription to {grow} by clicking the RSS feed button at the top of the page. Thank you!

I mentioned a few weeks back that I contributed to a new book called “Age of Conversation: It’s Time to get Busy.”  It is now available through Amazon. As a reminder, all profits from this book go to Make A Wish Foundation so this is not an “affiliate link!”

One of the things I like about this book is that introduces us to a lot of new voices.  Sometimes my blog reader starts to sound like an echo chamber and this book has some truly fresh business perspectives from around the globe.

I hope you’ll check it out.  Thanks for your support!