Tim Ho » Viral

Pop Music and Cuban Music of Social Media

Tim Ho — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 04:17:59 +0000

I’m often very sad about the music culture these days, when songs are all produced for profit and how they make people love their music with all the lifestyle marketing tactics. Cuban music (or any other non-mainstream music) on the other hand don’t do that, they aren’t desperate for attention, they aren’t playing music for money, they just love music and believe in it.

PR/ Social Media Agencies that produce Pop Music:

Social media is this new shiny thing to all business owners and decision makers, like a new trend of music culture comes up. What agencies do is that they create proposals filled with useless tactics (aka “creative ideas”), they go into client meetings and propose some sort of viral campaigns to the clients. Many clients like to give it a try, they think it’s too good to be true, but they don’t have enough knowledge on it and got greedy after seeing all these viral videos with 2 million views.

Obviously, many agencies like that might not know what they are talking about (like how some pop singers don’t know anything about music), for them it is only business, they just have to do what they can to grab the cash, so they just have to tell the clients whatever they want to hear.

PR/ Social Media Agencies that produce Cuban Music:

There’s another type of agencies, these agencies have great understanding of what social media is, and they know what’s best for their clients. However, not many clients would take the offer, because the process doesn’t sound as exciting as viral campaigns.

What should clients do?

I’m not saying Lady Gaga is bad, and I’m not saying short-term viral campaigns never work for business. I think clients should get the balance and start to think from both perspective when deciding to engage on social media.

Great Ad Parody: Specsavers ‘The Specs Effect’

Tim Ho — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 15:51:41 +0000

Parody in advertising can gain more attention than the original piece if it’s done well. This piece definitely went viral. Specsavers, an online glasses shop created this great viral piece that mocks an older advertisement by AXE. AXE has always been selling sex appeal in their ads, Specsavers’ ad is clever enough to take advantage of all the buzz AXE has.

The original Ad by AXE

And here’s the Specsavers’ ad

New Toy: Codeorgan – Generate music with your website

Tim Ho — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:41:14 +0000

This a a creative online app I discovered that generates music from any URL. All you have to do is to type in a URL, the program will then analyze the html script in the content and generate a unique piece of music for this URL. User can share this piece of music through Twitter or Facebook.

It is a thought leadership project by a UK digital creative agency DLKW

Check out Codeorgan now.

If Steve Jobs is coming for lunch, what would you make?

Tim Ho — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:13:09 +0000

This is a viral piece was posted on the same day as the iPad released. Jakob Hammarback and Jon Wingard created the iSandwhitch 4G as an experiment to see if it can go viral. It is a video showing how they use different ingredients all put together on a piece of bread to create the same shape of the iPhone.

On their blog, they said the video got them 4403 visits on the first day they uploaded. It has more than 18,000 views on youtube now and growing. Creative idea and smart timing!

Viral Campaign: A movie about YOU

Tim Ho — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:44:12 +0000

There have been many viral websites lately that requires users to upload images of themselves, most of these websites have face detection script on it which allows them to add funny and special effect to the faces.

This one is a little bit different, instead of adding effects to images, this creates a movie about you. It is campaign by Sweden’s TV licensing body Radiotjänst.

You can choose to upload an image of using the Webcam, I picked to use the webcam.

Start with people waiting to know who the "Hero" is

Still waiting...

The hero is... Tim Ho! Trying to look serious in the office.

Everyone loves me

I'm everywhere

Artists make paintings of me

At the end of the movie, it requests Swedish ID #

The film quality is very well done.

You can try creating your own movie here.

Funny Viral Video: The Social Media Guru

Tim Ho — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 10:17:35 +0000

The real “Social Media Gurus” don’t really speak like this, but very similar. Reconsider when someone just come up and tell you how they can create you or your company a social media strategy just because they have so many followers on Twitter and how great and popular they are on social media.

This video is going viral now, thanks @thomascrampton for sending it!

Viral Video: The fxck you iPhone by Google

Tim Ho — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 03:02:05 +0000

I actually laughed out loud on this one. Very funny concept and the actors are great! It is a spoof viral video created by Lineline TV and posted on January 5 (Day of Google announcing Nexus One, it’s trending on Youtube right now with about 200 thousand views and 1077 good ratings.

Below are some of the features of the “Fxck you iPhone”:
- Texts Asses to iPhone users
- Audio Neutralization
- Optimized urination interface
- Send tools to dangerous alleys

We should be careful at iPhanatics meetups from now on!

Why paying bloggers is like paying prostitutes?

Tim Ho — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 13:54:09 +0000

As I see more and more “social media agencies” out there, I started to look into what they are offering their clients with their so-called “social media marketing” campaigns and I realized what they do are basically the same as prostitution.

It’s wrong, but many agencies do it
Many of these agencies do only tactical plans in order to show tangibility, but would they work without a strategy behind it? That’s another story. Bloggers Engagement is a common tactic that agencies offer, but what they really do for their clients are actually paying bloggers (pay per post) to make them write about a brand/ product, but it is not right! It is not going to work and also oppose WOMMA code of ethics.

It’s not going to last!
Paying bloggers is like paying prostitutes for sex, it’s very tempting because articles can be publicized in no time, just pick and go, but there’s no true value behind it. It might create some buzz but it’s not going to last if there’s no foundation, therefore it’s not a long term solution.

The Right Approach
The graph above shows a Buzz Spike (grey) gone up at one point, and quick die out, on the other hand, Social Media Strategy (red) shows impact way slower but it has a stable growth over time. we should always treat bloggers as true lovers, engage with them through time and build long-term relationships with them.

Spoof from Oren Lavie’s Her Morning Elegance

Tim Ho — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:33:01 +0000

Oren Lavie’s stop motion music video “Her Morning Elegance” has always been one of my faviourite videos. If you haven’t seen it yet, here it is.

And here’s an ad of Comcast, which is a remake of “Her Morning Elegance”

Although Comcast’s ad is just a spoof, I think they actually did a good job on adding digital animations to the sequence. What do you think?

Extremely Viral: Michael Jackson Dance Tribute

Tim Ho — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 07:33:17 +0000

I know there have already been enough content online about Michael Jackson after he passed away on 25th June 2009.
Although I am a fan of the King of Pop, I’m sharing this video because of it’s viral aspects which have got more than a million views on Youtube in 10 days. More than 300 dancers performed in this dance tribute, fantastic job!