Public relations professionals are very often looking for the most effective way to reach their audience's awareness. One way of doing this is to refer to events and trends that are familiar to them. This is much easier in the age of the Internet, because thanks to the viral spread of content, a given slogan or phenomenon is able to reach a huge number of people. For this reason, experts responsible for corporate communications are increasingly using online trends and current events, even in traditional media, to attract the attention of their audiences.
Weaving online trends into a PR message can be profitable, but is also fraught with risk. On the one hand, a catchy message can spread on a very wide scale, while on the other (if poorly constructed) it becomes a laughing stock. The advantage of using trends (most often internet memes) is that they themselves attract attention, entertain and at the entrance already have fans who will promote their interesting use. The most common mistake made by creators, however, is that there is often too much time between the popularity of a slogan or event and the broadcast of the message.
An example of a very apt application of online trends is Tesco, which in one of its advertising spots parodied a popular online sermon by Father Natanek, using the most famous sentence from the sermon - '...then know that something is happening'. Since the ad was published on YouTube, it has been viewed by more than 2 million people there. Virgin Mobile's use of the meme known as Success Kid in its billboard campaign also proved to be a good choice. The key to success in both cases was the skilful use of real-time marketing.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is, for example, T-mobile's campaign, which resonated with the industry in a broad, negative way. All because of a not entirely successful attempt to use the slogan promoted by Peter Blandford, which reads: "You are a winner!". Unluckily for the brand, T-mobile released its ad nearly 5 months after the slogan had become popular and was heavily touted. And 5 months, as far as online reality is concerned, is the time in which dozens of slogans, memes and slogans have had time to be promoted and forgotten.
Internet trends often give the creators of advertising and PR messages ideas about style and form, but it should be remembered that convention alone is not enough. It still needs to be properly orchestrated and above all - don't be late!
Text author: Christopher
Photo source: http://www.filevine.com/blog/to-meme-or-not-to-meme/
