Viral Ad Network

Well, it seems that our regular KittenCamp in London has made quite a name for itself, so much so that our friends up north have begun twittering about being left out of all the action! So in the interests of fairness and because Rubber Republic & the Viral Ad Network are always keen to spread more kitten love, KittenCamp packed up its tent and all its camping goodies for a little holiday in Manchester (don’t worry London Campers, we’ll be back soon!)

For anyone out there who has not yet heard of KittenCamp it’s probably not what you are thinking! It’s a monthly meet-up in London for web-loving ad industry type people to chat memes, drink beer and generally share some kitten goodness. Last week the Campers gathered at the Common Bar in Manchester’s Northern Quarter to watch Chris Quigley dress up as a giant cat (Jess out of Postman pat if anyone’s interested) and chat about some of the recent top memes.

Of course it wouldn’t be kitten camp without at least one kitten clip to supply the mandatory dose of cuteness so the show began with Slide Kitty, aaaahw!

One of my favorite clips was the recent Youtube sensation Double Rainbow Guy, whose rather intense emotional reaction to a double rainbow has generated over 7 million views and counting, coining the phrase ‘what does it mean’ and sparking a series of copycat spoof videos and remixes like the Double Rainbow Song (hilariously now available to buy on iTunes)

And the YouTube award winning Rainbow Guy Film Trailer

Of course with all the recent world cup mania, love it or hate it the trumpeting racket/tune of the Vuvuzela became the unofficial soundtrack of the games. Kicking up a lot of noise with all the bloggers out there and generating a host of goodies on youtube like Gandalf Goes to the World Cup

Hitler and the Vuvuzela at the 2010 Fifa World Cup

and a new installment of the brilliant Will it Blend?

One of the most popular brand virals of the year and top of our New Media Age Viral Chart for weeks was the Old Spice Man ad.

This genius  series of short youtube clips took the internet by storm providing a prime example of the power of Viral Seeding. The Old Spice creative team bombarded twitter, facebook and other social networking and blogging sites inviting the audience to ask questions of Mustafa’s character. They then made real time video responses to viewer’s comments posting them as replies online. This was a fantastic way to generate audience engagement and interaction with the ads, creating a story about the lead character that can continue indefinitely in future campaigns and giving everyone a chuckle along the way.

Finally the last clip of the evening was Charlie the Unicorn 3, just because we start every Camp with a kitten and end with a unicorn, don’t ask me why that’s just how it goes. For a full list of all the clips visit the Rubber Republic blog.

After some more chats and drinks that were kindly sponsored by the Viral Ad Network we were joined by our guest speaker Victoria Stansfeld from Manchester City Football Club who lead the campers on a little journey through their online site and chatted about the social strategies of the football world.

Much merriment was had by all and many interesting things were learnt. Manky KittenCamp was a great success and we promise to be back some time soon!! We would like to say a big thank you to the tweet-loving @Rebeccawho who helped organise the event and the lovely people at the Common bar, thanks for spreading the kitten love!

P.S. you can now connect with KittenCamp on Facebook, come and join the party to hear updates on future events!

At yesterday’s VAN lunch the team discussed (in perhaps too much detail?) the merits of travelling unfeasible amounts of miles for the perfect lunchtime steak (including hiring stretch Hummers with on-board chefs). Maybe it’s just a coincidence, or perhaps it’s fate, but a link for Grillstock 2010 arrived in my inbox this morning.

Dubbed as “The UK’s first full-blown US-style barbecue competition & food show”, it’s taking place down at the harbourside in Bristol this weekend (17th & 18th July). To say I’m excited is an understatement

Just when you think Bristol can’t get any more culturally diverse or eclectic, they throw in the UK’s first chilli eating contest to keep you on your toes!

We love Bristol!

You can now follow the cyclists from Team HTC live on Google maps as they race through the different stages of the Tour.

Interesting to follow the whole team and see their tactics, or you can also click on a rider to see his speed, power, cadence and heart rate.

It would have been good to have kitted me out like that so everyone could see my progress on my recent cycle (London to Paris – nearly killed me! more here), although the speeds would not have been quite so impressive!

Check out the progress of Team HTC (HTC make the Google android phone btw) here

I love the fact that youtube is willing to put a vuvuzela background on their player.

Big companies + fun = Awesome

Go try it now.

The viral charts that we put together for New Media Age have featured in this weeks magazine – on page 11

The top 5 entries of our Viral Brand Chart and our Viral UGC Chart are listed along with their views, tweets and facebook shares.

Also one of our directors, Chris Quigley, is speaking at NMA live on Friday on Viral Marketing De-mystified. You can book tickets to the event here.

Cheers then.

Got lots of love for this film. An infographical adventure around a whiteboard from the RSA. It summarises a talk by Dan Pink on ‘the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace’.

Class

Originally posted by RoryA at Rubber Republic
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[Image courtesy of : Wendelboe on Flickr]

The *devil* in question was indeed the force of office evil that is Powerpoint, and Tom Alcott from the Social Network Company gave us a masterclass in how to keep presentations succinct, engaging and conversational while remaining in total control of your material.

His PechKucha style talk on social network analysis lasted exactly ‘6 minutes & 66 seconds’ and covered everything from a crash course in social psychology, the ambiguity of what being ‘connected’ actually means to mapping the *viral* spread of information within networks.

At the heart of it was that key question: Who is the most valuable node within any social network? The ‘hub’ (the most connected individual within a community). Or the ‘broker’ (the person who bridges between two communities and therefore allows that idea to spread to new audiences)?

Finding this overlap is something we are fascinated by, as it potentially allows the conversation to evolve and new participants to join. This was also a central theme to ‘Connected’ our last Rubber Book Club mail-out which explains the various ways information travels with some very entertaining illustrations.

So all good stuff and many thanks to Tom for coming in on a very warm and humid Friday afternoon.

Incidentally if ‘666′ is the number of the beast, does that make ‘668′ the neighbour of the beast?

Many people believe that the best way to spread your viral to niche interest groups in to manually target users within the niche themselves. But is this the best way to truly spread your [viral] content?

It’s a very controversial suggestion, as it goes against the perceived wisdom – but it’s not a new suggestion.

The concept was very heavily covered a few years ago in the business press (e.g. D.Watts – Harvard Business Review ‘07), although it’s been known of for far longer.

There are a couple of simplified examples in the video below:

So why do these examples work?

A social grouping consists of people who are connected to each other – assuming that your viral really appeals to that group, the task at hand isn’t being spread inside a social grouping – it’s reaching as many social groupings as possible.

You can only reach one social grouping by contacting someone inside it (if they are connected to another grouping then it’s all one grouping) – by elimination, the only option left is to target people outside of that grouping.

The great news here is that it’s cheaper to target those people – you don’t need the overhead of all the time spent searching for “the perfect seed”, you just show your viral to people.

Not only is it cheaper per viewer, but it’s almost always the case that there are more people closely connected to the grouping than there are inside it – so you’ve got a larger target to aim for with your seeding efforts.

Of course you can narrow down who you’re contacting – people are more likely to be connected to the target market if they’re in the same country, or speak the same language for example.

Other targeting methods can be used to help narrow down the target to people close to these groupings too – targeting broad categories of interests can be a very cost effective way of targeting this wider subset of people, rather than hand-picking site lists, which puts you firmly back towards only reaching the groupings around the sites you’re placed on.

That’s just about the scope of this blog post – hopefully you’ve found it interesting, feel free to comment below.

Below is a little presentation we have put together to exemplify our prowess in the football sector and how we are able to take your footie related ads to a footie loving audience. Ahem, this happens to be a coincidence that we’re so close to the World Cup; a stroke of luck if you will…

Please take a look, and let me know if you have any questions: