Apr 12th, 2009
Are you my man in the Jacket???
As you can see in the first video, the girl named Heidi Clarke, found a jacket, which was lost by a man she admires. She tries to find her Prince Charming through the web. As I first watched the video by accident, I thought: Is she really trying to find one single person on earth through a YouTube video?
No, of course not. This video is aimed to find thousands if not millions of people, preferably men, who want to have exactly this jacket, she is talking about.
Heidi is not Heidi, she is Lily. Furthermore, she is not Cinderella but an actress, and said: “I was employed by Witchery Man and yes I even managed to get my face on national TV.” Witchery is launching its first menswear line and this is the corresponding viral marketing.
Her confession can be seen below.
In general, this campaign reached approximately 60,000 people within four days and nearly 200 comments were posted, for the most part by men.
There were quite different reactions to her video, as mentioned some men answered her and state that they were her man in the jacket and some made fun of her.
As well the blogger world talked about the video. Some found that Heidi talks in too much detail about the “really nice” jacket with its “beautiful silk lining“.
Nevertheless, it is the question how successful this campaign was. Of course, the company reached a huge amount of people, but still and even more important is the sustainable image of the company, as many complained about this campaign. A comment to an article of the story was posted in the Australian news.
“I have already emailed them to inform them I will boycott and will take great pleasure in telling friends to do the same. The educated public is sick of these stunts and cheap antics.“
It is estimated that the “man in the jacket” campaign get a free media coverage of about $8 million, which was as fact itself beneficial and desirable for all companies. However as Gruen Transfer stated “But is any publicity good publicity? Was the gamble worth the negative press?”
As stated in the Sydney Morning Herald, such campaigns can potentially scratch a brand image, but web pages like YouTube will still be a mean for marketing activities as experts state. The only thing, which would harm the potential impact, is that marketer will be more careful in this area. Furthermore, “Posing as an ad isn’t the crime but crossing the line between all out lying and being clever is“, says David Whittle of digital agency Mark.
Just one more video in the end. I will show you a response to the marketers of this viral campaign.
You make a good point here. It’s naive marketing to think you can fool people with fake consumer virals. It’s always going to come back and bite your ass at some point.
Many people will appreciate interesting company produced virals if they are honest about them. Consumer generated media may be a more powerful marketing tool, but the consequences of being uncovered for lying far outweigh the benefits.
If companies want people to make videos about their stuff, they should be working hard to engage potential evangelists and interested parties and to give them something to talk about.