Blog | Ladies underwear, social media & viral marketing: 3 situations where less is better than more

Before you read on - just so you aren't too disappointed - I think I should warn you that this is actually a post about viral marketing and not about ladies underwear.

Sorry.

I was sat at home on Thursday evening checking out Facebook status updates as I do most evenings of the week, when I noticed that there were a lot of people posting colours and nearly all of them were girls:

‘Red'
‘White'
‘Green'
‘White'
‘Black'
‘pale green with yellow stains' (that was a boy)
‘black with gold tassles' (so was that)

And so on...

This caught my attention as I couldn't for the life of me work out what it was about. Now I don't want to be professionally egotistical - but I do like to think that at least most of the time I know about most social media and viral trends that kick off long before many of my friends who don't work in digital.

So when I found all these ‘green' ‘red' ‘white' purple' posts my head started buzzing with questions.  

• What were all these people I know going on about that I didn't know about?
• Why would they be involved in something that I hadn't heard of?
• How could I not get the joke - am I missing something?
• Why was it nearly all girls?

I was motivated to find out more!

The ultimate source of instant information: My Wife

In order to find out more about this trend I did some searches on Twitter and Facebook, but sadly Social media drew me a blank.

Unfazed I turned to Google Search. Admittedly I only did a few first page searches, but rather surprisingly, I still drew a blank.

Clearly frustrated by not being in on the action, and being sorely let down by my searche engine, I turned to my usual vestige of assistance in the last resort: My Wife. As usual my wife was exactly where I expected her to be: one step ahead of me.

‘What are all these color posts about on Facebook all about? They seem to be mostly girls?'   I asked.

‘It's a breast cancer awareness campaign - girls are posting the color of the bra they are wearing.'

This is one of those statements for which there is no appropriate way to respond to your wife...

Viral Communication is Powerful

So it was a viral campaign to raise awareness about Breast Cancer. Awesome.

In an effort to find out more, I did a bit of digging around online and now I had some more keywords with which to better  target my search, I was astounded to find huge amounts of content about it on Twitter, Yahoo answers, Google and Mumsnet. In fact the net was buzzing.

What interested me most was that I really couldn't pin down when and where the campaign had originated.

My first thought - and why I was inspired to write this piece - was that it was an inspirational viral campaign where lots of noise and conversation about Breast Cancer was being created. However the volume of contrary comment made me questions this.

In fact, the more I dug the less sure I was that it was actually a breast cancer awareness viral campaign. Many people clearly felt it was showing support for the fight against Breast Cancer, but a lot of people were talking about how ineffectual the campaign was because colors were so loosely related to Breast Cancer and it wasn't clear what the campaign was about.

And then there were some who were saying it was one of many subversive campaigns started by viral spammers: just a cynical viral gag that had nothing to do with Breast Cancer at all and that the joke was on those who thought it was.

Confused? I was.

This drew me to start considering one of the most controversial elements of social media and viral marketing.

Once you put a message out there and it spreads, you no longer control it. People will make of it what they want.

I must confess that to date I haven't been able to work out whether it is a genuine campaign for sure. I have an opinion which I will come to shortly, but for now, here are three way in which the viral can be perceived:

Scenario 1: This Viral Campaign is a purposeful one that will positively raise awareness of breast cancer and save lives.

Raising awareness about a disease like Breast Cancer that can be treated so well and easily if it is caught early enough is always a good thing. If this little campaign gives girls a ‘viral nudge' and 1 in a 100 women who see the viral check themselves then this is a genuine good because some of those people will find a lump and then seek treatment and all of them will have a much better chance of survival than if they hadn't had the ‘viral nudge'

With this in mind, I was going to spend this post evagelising about how this viral campaign worked so brilliantly and raised awareness precisely because the campaign was simple, exclusive and made people inquisitive.

The big joke was going to be that Viral campaigns - like ladies underwear - tend to be much better if there is less to them. The ‘less is more' rule is always a winner and tends to lead to a ‘KISS'!

However as I read of other copycat subversive campaigns where girls were posting numbers on their status I felt my own cynicism rising to the level I found on Twitter, Mumsnet and elsewhere.

• Was it a real campaign Breast Cancer Awareness campaign?
• Was it really just a big joke on us?
• If it was real, why couldn't I find out who started the campaign?

Scenario 2. It is a campaign but it doesn't work

My research seems to show that negative comments on this viral fall into three main categories.

1. ‘How does it promote Breast Cancer Awareness? I doesn't raise awareness!'
2. ‘I don't get it. What's it all about?'
3. ‘It's viral spam, ignore it, the jokes on you '

Dealing with the first, I find the fact that people are talking about this campaign saying it doesn't promote Breast Cancer Awareness rather incredulous. Every post or comment on it is one more person talking and thinking about breast cancer that was not before. And this is happening on tens of thousands of sites across the globe.

Ask yourself again. Does it raise awareness? I would content that millions of posts on the subject - positive or negative - prove it does.

You don't get it... but I do!

Another reason people rubbish the campaign is because they don't initially ‘get it'. Exclusivity has a wonderful affect on people. Feeling you are a part of something that others may not be has a very powerful psychological affect on the people. We love it.  We all want to be party of a gang, secret club, in on the joke or

It is about belonging. It is about being social, and it is why social media and viral marketing work.

If everyone gets it, there is nothing to talk about. If everyone is on it, there is nothing that makes me different or better than you.

Viral marketing has to have a level of perceived exclusivity in order to work. People have to want to be part of it.

Scenario 3: Its Viral SPAM, subversive joke virals or a case of Chinese Whispers

One issue with viral marketing is that it can suffer from what we used to call as school ‘Chinese whispers'. The original message can get lost as it moves form one person to another and change beyond all recognition.

For example - here are two messages received by two different women online asking them to take part in this viral.

Message 1: Some fun is going on...........Just write the colour of your bra in your status, just the colour, and send this on to only girls, no men.....It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the girls have a colour in their status! .... ha ha. PS if you're not wearing one right now, just put the last one you had on or you're favorite

Message 2: Put the colour of your bra in your Facebook status, forward it too all the girls you know and do not tell any boys so they will be really confused.

The first message is clearly tying the campaign to Breast Cancer awareness. It even looks and sounds like a viral marketing message to me.

Message two on the other hand doesn't mention Breast Cancer at all. It makes it seem like a silly spammy viral joke.

As I have stated, it isn't absolutely clear from my online research which is closer to the original message/intention. However I think that it is highly likely that the original message is part of an awareness campaign, and the different takes on it have just evolved over time as a result of Chinese whispers.

However, there is of course the possibility that it some sort of Viral spam or subversive joke. Some people online are laying claim to this viral and making it out to be a subversive joke which has nothing to do with any cause whatsoever - the point being simply to mess with people's heads. This is possible but I choose to think otherwise.

If it isn't a Breast Cancer Awareness viral then in all honestly I don't really care because it is still doing something valuable and doesn't really have any negative connotations. Over the years I have seen a lot of very nasty and distasteful online ‘in jokes' at the expense of others and I think it is part of human nature. Oprah Winfrey famously got caught by one particularly bad one, but I would struggle to see how even that actually did anyone any actual harm. The message of original campaign could easily have been lost of subverted over time, and this only raises the profile further.

I still don't know for sure if it is a campaign to raise Breast Cancer Awareness or just a silly spammy viral joke. Personally I think it is but its just been distorted over time. I don't think this says anything negative about viral marketing, rather it says something about the nature of people. Everyone knows that once you launch a marketing campaign, people will form their own opinions and some will be positive, some negative. If it is a campaign then it is working very well indeed because the web is full of it and it will raise awareness.  

Summing up

I think the point has to be this: It doesn't matter if it is a real viral campaign or not (although I think it probably is). The fact it is has been subverted is part of its success and only serves to demonstrate the power of social media and viral campaigns.  It clearly demonstrates the power of a simple, exclusive viral within a social media context.

A good viral social media campaign will move so far beyond the people who originally expounded the message that they are bound to loose control of it and it is bund to get misinterpreted. Look how far the ideology of Marx got distorted, or even the ideas of Darwin, Islam and Christianity.

The fact is that the message is out there, it is viral and it will have a positive effect on peoples lives. That may just be some cheap thrills - or perhaps it could save someone's life...

The only bit of valuable adivice I can offer from analysing this campaign is this: Whether you are talking about social media campaigns, viral campaigns, or even ladies underwear - if you want get a lot of people talking - less is most definitely better than more.
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