Tom Purves – Product Management, Fintech & AI

# How to do Viral Advertising: Scoble on Will it Blend? Aren’t you dying to know what happens when you put an ipod in a blender? (spoiler warning: the blender wins…)

# How not to do Viral Advertising: Penny Arcade on Sony’s Latest fiasco (how many is that for Sony now just this year?) .

And Tycho’s commentary:

‘The reality is that no agency can create viral marketing, this is the sole domain of the consumer. Viral marketing is what happens when a campaign works – when we allow their message to travel via our own superefficient conduits. Perhaps it is entertaining on its own terms, divorced from the message… What distinguishes this … is that we are aware of the message. When we are not aware of the message, or when the agents of the message misrepresent themselves, we call this “deception.”‘

Just returned from an interesting talk Mark Evans of B5 Media gave at the Toronto Board of Trade this morning. He compared startup environment of the last boom to the current with a few pointed and entertaining examples, though nothing you probably didn’t know already:

• how wasteful of capital the last boom in retrospect overspending on perks, offices and superbowl ads
• how raising 2M dollars really isn’t as much cash as you might think
• how nonetheless the web2.0 boom is so much more about frugality (everything is cheaper to build, and even with funding B5 doesn’t need status-symbol offices they do just fine out of Mark’s garage and Jeremy’s basement)
• And (what I find interesting) how basic office/enterprise2.0 tools gmail, writely, freshbooks etc has let build out out the world’s 3rd largest blog network with hundreds of “staff” with almost no physical infrastructure.

Ultimately though it was just inspiring to see the canadian venture community (Rick Segal, J L Albright, Brightspark ) having the courage to get behind a deal with B5. Sure, B5 is still at the early stages of capitalizes on this new disruptive force in the media world, but they’re a smart bet if you ask me.

As Mark was saying, prior to joining B5 he was writing both for his blog and for the National Post. He felt like he was holding one foot still on the platform and the other on the train that was leaving the station. And for him, it was a no-brainer which way to jump.

Some excellent points Lars, while I myself sometimes take certain (mischievous?) pleasure in declaring various “old” media like email just plain dead, the reality ( if we want to get picky about it) is of course far more subtle.

Better quality and availability of alternative communication mediums (e.g. so-called “social media” – not that that phrase makes as much sense in the business context) really just provides a greater choice in communication options for users/systems/humans/yourdog/cat etc.

Ideally, new mediums just let users select from the available tools those best suited to the job a hand. Which, in a lot of cases, won’t have to be email anymore.

What with the (nearly-alarming) proliferation of social/professional/marketing/media/hobby etc. community sites these days, I have this fear that within a few years 90% of all email (not counting the other 90% which will still be spam) will consist entirely of password reset emails and add-me-to-your-friend/buddy-list confirmation e-mails…

Posted by: Thomas Purves | 12 December 2006 at 14:03 GMT

You can read what argument I was replying to here on Lars Plougmann’s blog cheers. [hint: Lars has another good post in his ongoing conversation on social media killing off email as a useful tool for collaboration (or in this case, if social media like wiki’s are really any better or a complete substitute and so forth)]