wannabeMogul

I saw The Dark Knight at the first IMAX midnight showing Thursday night. In the long line of fans and fanboys, some dressed in Joker or Batman costumes, I kept thinking about the viral marketing and alternate reality game, or ARG, that has now come to an end, I assume, with the release of the [...]

First, it was just a silly scene at the end of The O.C. episode “Dear Sister” — I know, of all TV shows to create a meme, The O.C. Then Saturday Night Live (SNL) made it into a digital short. After seeing it spoofed on SNL, YouTube users made remixes of popular Internet videos based [...]

Dan Ackerman Greenberg’s guest post on TechCrunch sparked heated discussion about the ethics of gaming YouTube to get more views. I am not a fan of gaming the system with fake comments and trickery like changing titles, tags and thumbnails, but there is no doubt that many “viral video specialists” use these tactics to get [...]

If I am going to open a conversation on social media and community building on this blog, we are going to have to discuss Web culture from time to time. Hence, a new category! Want to know what makes a video go viral? Just look at the history. Here’s a quick Web culture test to [...]

When I heard the news that Heath Ledger was found dead yesterday, I couldn’t help being a little skeptical. Not to be disrespectful of the dead, but I thought in the first minutes of the reports that it might all be a clever ruse by a very risky marketing team. Let me take you back [...]

I love ARGs–or alternate reality games–as a marketing tool. I personally find them fascinating when used effectively. Two of my recent favorites have been the ILoveBees campaign from 42 Entertainment for Microsoft’s Halo 2 release, and the “Ethan Haas was Right” mystery currently marketing J.J. Abrams’ new movie codenamed “Cloverfield” online. If you haven’t seen [...]