but at least it hasn't truly invaded our public space, right? or has it? the idea was sparked at an indian restaurant, while dom and i discussed the pairing of spicy food with beer. for me, it's a big no-no, unless you enjoy hurting your tastebuds. for dom, having ordered chicken bhoona and a heineken, he had to stand up for his meal choices. "they go perfectly well together." uh huh.
the restaurant offers an indian beer called cheetah, specifically designed for indian cuisine and other spicy dishes. i kept telling dom to get it, but he wasn't so sure.
"it'll probably taste like shit."
i shrugged. then out of nowhere, the group of college boys behind us start praising the cheetah.
"this beer is so good!"
"it's so smooth! so excellent!"
"can we buy it here? i want more of this stuff."
they start asking the waiter about it. dom and i exchange glances, amused by the coincidence.
"well you have to get it now."
"sure.... unless this is viral marketing."
that got me to thinking. your local college red bull rep, the one who walks around on campus distributing red bulls, he would be the perfect candidate. instead of the hipster-avon-saleslady-approach, he goes to a bar and innocently starts chatting up a coupla girls. he steers the conversation to drinks, then to caffeine, then to red bull. he adjusts conversation to their intelligence level: if they're dumb and giggly, he keeps the language simple; if they're bookwormish, he offers social commentary on caffeine drinks and amazes them with his intellect. he admits how addicted he is, raves about the wonders of the drink, and tries to convince the kids ever so subtly that "it's worth checking out!" he then pulls out a coupla cans from his jacket, and casually gives them to his new friends. "it's on me." he keeps talking for a few minutes, but eventually tells them he'll catch up with them later, moving on to his next target. he then repeats this process all night, barhopping if necessary.
wouldn't that be scary? we already see this on the internet. there were the fake amazon book reviews. the blog sponsored links nobody knew were sponsored (*cough*fark*cough*). msn joined in. there was axe's feather website. bmw's counterfeit mini commission. and the controversial mazda3 blog. evidently, the web has been overtaken by this marketing bug, but is it really that surprising, given its spamridden and spyware infested nature? public examples of spam and spyware (junk mail, squeegee kids, jehovah's witnesses) are tame in comparison, and i doubt it'd be anything to worry about unless viral marketing actually came to play in the public playground. then we might need those tinfoil hats.
as annoying and ethically compromising as it is, you cannot deny the intrigue of viral marketing, at the very least from a cultural perspective. not to mention the fascination with the brain's interaction with media. how it plays with our intelligence. if it attacks us subliminally. how challenged does our sense of trust in the world become?
we live in a world where toeclippers can be used as a weapon, celeb sidekicks can be hacked and revealed to the world, and any program we download could sneakily track our favourite websites. we have evolved as skeptics. but viral marketing has yet to really surface in our realms of cynicism. even a noncomformist angsty goth kid could fall for it. especially if he liked halo 2.
