How to Go Locally Viral
If you listen to Radio 1 (which I now do being the radio station of choice on the wireless in work), or you have friends from North Wales you will have no doubt picked up on the fact that One Big Weekend is this weekend. Two days of live music and acts in Bangor, North Wales. Friends of mine are going crazy, promoting the concert on facebook with publicity you can’t buy, but outside of my North Walian Facebook & Twitter friends not much have been said (except for me shouting expletives to the radio every time their ads & stereotypical Welshness has come on & how their catchment area for tickets benefits tax dodging students rather than actual local people).
Anyway, bar that, one of the most incredible things to come from the promotion has been this parody song of probably one of my favourite songs at the moment – “Empire State of Mind (Part II) Broken Down”:-
This has pretty much been tweeted & facebooked by everybody from North Wales (myself included), but outside of North Wales, not a sausage. I guess it doesn’t resonate with them.
I’m not a viral marketer, but I do know how this works – because it mentions things that resonate with so many people (which are the towns of North Wales). We have a phrase in wrestling – cheap heat. It’s when you deliberately praise or deride the local town – Mick Foley was an expert in it. Hell I’ve done it before now & it worked. You’re more likely to connect with people.
Okay, on the flipside you sacrifice a lot of your audience who you won’t connect with, but with an area such the size of North Wales (around 250,000 people), connecting with enough of them and you should get – say – 50,000 views of a video on Youtube, which as Jordan Cooper found out & reported to on Problogger, is more than Mashable send you.
Tags: bbc, one big weekend, radio 1, viral content, web 2.0, youtube | Comments: 6 Comments
Rhys Wynne, the author of this blog, is a 20 something web designer from Colwyn Bay. 
Rhys, you’re absolutely right that “cheap heat” is a form of viral marketing – because it focuses on the *context* more than the substance.
This is where many ad agencies get it wrong… in looking to appeal to the largest demographic, they lose all sense of context and then find their latest attempt to “go viral” was a dismal failure.
When I followed wrestling religiously back in the late 90′s boom, it was always the “smart” references the wrestlers threw into their mike work that caused a major buzz & virality online. Sure, 90% of the audience has no clue about it, but in giving the evangelists something worth spreading which is in *context* – it accomplishes your brand awareness goals much better than stupid gimmicks.
Great article, and lovely song. Who sang this cover, do you know?
Me & my boyfriend sometimes sing this one about Hucknall – a place near us that’s bit groggy, where we used to take the dog for training & we make up lyrics…
As for viral marketing: I’ve never done anything viral before. I assume it’s easier to, as you say, try and appeal to one group of people and not ‘everyone.’ I suspect if a song got done about Derbyshire or Nottinghamshire (where I’m from and live, respectively) I’d probably retweet it & share it too.
They did that last year in maidstone. My housemate applied at 4 different maidstone addresses and didn’t get a single ticket, we applied for two lots in Canterbury and won two lots to the same house.
he was angeryyy! but it got everyone talking!
It was amazing!
FWIW, some of us outside of North Wales have heard it and thought it was hilarious. They played it on BBC Shropshire last weekend (if memory serves me correctly). I think I prefer it to the original, tbh.