The power of viral marketing

Tom Lehrer was big when I was in college.  He was kinda a Mort Saul and Smothers Brothers type..goofy yet droll and very very clever.  Poisoning Pigeons in the Park was one of his more "infamous" creations.

I listen to Lehrer on YouTube sometimes when I wax nostalgic for WFMT out of Chicago on Saturday Nights (yes indeed 2nd City and the precursor to Saturday Night Live) and Lehrer was frequently played. We gathered in our dorm room because one of my roommates had an FM tuner and could pick up Chicago. We told others and pretty soon about 11p on Saturday Night, with the underclass women tucked safely in their dorms by curfew, we would assemble..others became more "others" and pretty soon we all chipped in $5 each  (a huge amount to part with back then) and we bought a tuner for the dorm and retired to the common area for popcorn, smuggled in beer or cherry vodka and coke, and the RA (resident advisers) quietly told us to make sure it was cleaned up...this was before I pledged the frat where we could get away with this somewhat legally - and knowing that Sunday morning brought church and repentance....well.

Anyway, now viral marketing - like word of mouth - is electronic.  It is a clever combination of meta tags, key words, and placements here and there that grow visitors to the site/subject/page/file without spending a dime.  Poisoning Pigeons is an example.  Check out the number of reads...then open the drop boxes and you'll get the idea.

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