that canadian girl

With many years of moonlighting and now nearly a year under my belt working full time for Pepsmedia, we felt lately that it was time to refresh our site to reflect the shift in what we’ve been doing for our clients.

Much of my time this year has been focused on strategic planning for blog & social media campaigns, in-house coaching and brand monitoring, interspersed with some gorgeous blog and website designs. So far, it’s been both the most enjoyable and the most challenging experience I’ve ever faced.

Many people ask me whether I regret choosing this economic climate to jump into self-employment, and I always answer that I don’t have an ounce of regret. Sure, I’ve had a few sleepless nights and my squeezy stressball is due for some therapy, but it’s been worth it every step of the way.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with great clients to date, and every new meeting excites me because it keeps getting better. Great projects, great experiences and best of all, I didn’t have to eat beans on toast for too long. (Phew, I hate beans on toast…)

So over the past few weeks, we spent some time brewing a new design for pepsmedia.com and finally launched it this week. Let me know what you think of it!

This year’s must-have accessory for any business or marketing team seems to be a community manager.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve had nearly a dozen emails – either direct or via LinkedIn – from companies who were calling upon my network to find Social Networks Managers, Community Relations Executives, etc. [If you're of the right breed, skip to the bottom for information] I couldn’t help but think about how much things have changed in the past few years.

What’s it like being a Community Gal?

I don’t care what fancy title a company makes up, I’ll always boil them down to being the Community Gal/Guy. I was once asked why I “lowered” my job title to Community Gal, when one of my previous employers had hired me with the title “Blog Goddess”. I mean, wow, Goddess? That’s a shiny title, isn’t it?

If you can’t see the issue with the Goddess title, then you’ve failed the first test to becoming a good Community Gal/Guy (CG).

In my opinion, being the community’s main link into an organisation requires a lot of humility. Maybe, just maybe, having a humble and simple title like “Community Gal” was a daily reminder that I wasn’t hired to stand in my ivory tower telling people how GREAT the company/product was. I was there to sit in on conversations and listen. Like a sunflower, I faithfully turned to where I should be every day, no matter what happened.

As Toby Moore said today at Amplified 09 East: “We have 2 ears and one mouth. Let’s use them at that ratio.” Listening actively means there’s a lot of feedback to filter, summarise and turn into actions for the rest of the company, whether from a technical, ethical or business relations management perspective.

Being a CG also requires thick skin. There are some real bastards out there who will absolutely not sugar-coat their views of your business. They’ve always been there, but social media now gives them an easy way to make themselves heard. While it’s important to listen to those users and act upon their feedback wherever possible, anyone taking those comments too personally will lose sleep over it and feel like crap.

I know, I’ve been there. Nearly failed the second test myself.

However, the thick skin can’t be accompanied by a thick skull. If you’re a stubborn mofo who assumes that anyone disagreeing with you is wrong, you’ve failed the third test.

So being a CG is both the best job and worst job in a company.

Why so in demand, suddenly?!

As I mentioned in my introduction above, the influx of CG roles has been unbelievable lately. It’s like everyone woke up two weeks ago and decided they should recruit their own.

For most of these companies, it’ll most likely be the first time they put any thought into how to interact with their community. From cursory glances at the many job descriptions thrown around, many companies seem to allocate very minimal budgets to their new-found passion for social media, hiring junior to mid-level people.

Nothing wrong with that, I’m all for the youff getting to experience great new roles. I got to where I am now because some people were mad smart enough to give me a chance to setup their first blog back in early 2004. It was a complete and utter failure because neither company or market were ready for it. Since then, I’ve setup community outposts everywhere I’ve been and rubbed a lot of people the wrong way in the process. But we’ve also achieved great things through spending time listening to the community’s feedback.

That’s the wonderful thing about young, creative people – they might be a bit green but believe me, they can be passionate!

So it’s a question of balance then; someone youthful* enough to understand what excites and engages your users. There is no maximum age to “getting it” when it comes to community, but younger people often have an affinity with technology – I don’t think anyone could deny that. However, experience can help avoid making a complete cock up of an outreach campaign through having a deeper understanding of the risks involved.

[Note: By youthful, I don't necessarily mean based on birth date, but rather in mentality. My grandpa was in his 70's and was still more young at heart than many 25 year olds I know!]

Finding the right balance is key. Every company will experience a crisis at some point and a very junior team member may not have the experience to deal with it best. In the same way, someone with little knowledge of social media may not spot some great opportunities to build new relationships.

This is an area where I believe mentors – whether internal team members or external consultants – can make a world of difference to how successfully a business can be in their first year of active community interaction. A few hours a week with a skilled mentor can help your CG become far more confident and resourceful.

Would you want your PR Manager to be a £20k fresh graduate with no experience of dealing with customers or journalists? Then why opt for that in social media, when your CG probably touches 100 times more people in a day than your PR department does?

So here’s my advice

1. Build your team with a cool head

Find someone who has a passion for your industry, not the first girl who says she knows how to use Facebook.

2. Have someone dedicated to community relations

If the CG is torn between a number of roles, he/she is more likely to drop the ball at an important time. If it’s not possible to have someone doing just that, ensure that community management remains their top priority.

3. Give your CG a support network

If your product is technical, ensure the development team are aware that they’ll occasionally need to provide insight when the CG reports bugs or enquiries. There’s nothing more demotivating than feeling that no one in the company is willing to help.

4. Provide guidance

Whether it’s through the existing marketing team or an external consultant, your CG should have someone with experience to sanity-check ideas with. The book of social media remains largely unwritten so the best way to check something’s a good idea is through a good ol’ natter over coffee.

5. Set realistic (and useful) objectives

Getting 500 Twitter followers is pointless if the followers are spammers or people who’ll never become your users. Social media is much less about numbers than a traditional marketing team might be used to.

It’s more important to have reached out to 10 bloggers who’ll love you and talk about you, than ship your press release to hundreds of people to whom you’re only vaguely relevant.

6. Be open to your CG’s feedback

This is a tough nut to crack, but the feedback coming from the community might not always be rosy. Be open and welcoming of it, and accept that people will occasionally suggest things you think are stupid or useless. Don’t close up or start to ignore those reports – you might just miss some real gems.

Let’s Connect!

As you’ve gathered by now, I’m a strong believer that there’s a big future out there for people who are passionate and interested in being the main point of contact for an active community.

If you think you’re that person, please connect with me on LinkedIn. Use the intro box to tell me what makes you tick and what you’re passionate about. When companies next contacts me looking for a Community Gal/Guy, I’ll introduce you to each other.

I hope that, in doing this, I can help top notch companies find someone who’ll help them nurture the relationship with their community, whether budding or already fully-fledged.

[Image Source: "Yellow sunflower. Blue Sky." by wabberjocky on Flickr]

In April, That Canadian Girl celebrated 5 years of bloggy goodness and, yet again, I nearly missed its birthday. Oops!

In reality I’ve been blogging for nearly 10 years – a friend kindly hosted my first diary-style site back in 1999 or 2000. The Wayback Machine can see a site on thatcanadiangirl.co.uk from 2002, which is when the previous iteration of this blog was born.

This makes me feel really old. In Internet terms, that’s an eternity. I mean… ten years ago, Geocities was still popular, Google was moving into its first office, the Melissa worm was working its magic on mail servers across the world, and everyone was still starry-eyed about the Information Superhighway.

Oooff… sorry about that flashback, it was like being the old drunk guy from the Fast Show for a minute.

As my memory is absolutely hopeless, I usually consider my blog’s current archive – which goes back to April 2004 – to be the beginning of Time As We Know It.

Now for the giveaways: To celebrate this milestone birthday, I’m giving away goodies to my readership which match the topics I’ve written about over the years; geeky, funky, practical, food-related and artsy goodies.

To take part, all you need to do is leave a comment and tell me which ones interest you: On Sunday, 10th May, Jack & Rose will pick out winners for each of the prizes!

A ticket to FUEL conference FOWA Tour, an excellent Carsonified event about online marketing and social media, held in London on June 23rd. Ryan kindly offered me a ticket for one of my readers, so entrepreneurs, marketers, this one is for you.

Anyone can win this ticket, as long as you’re able to make your way to London for the event.

[Update: As there have been some changes to the Carsonified calendar and FUEL has been cancelled, you will win a ticket to the FOWA Tour in a city of your choice: Cambridge, Leeds, Bristol or Edinburgh.]

I love unusual art and beautifully decorate home offices. Stuart from Spin Collective is giving away three sets (up to a value of £30 each) of the superb wall stickers. They’re jaw-droppingly cool and I’m having to resist very hard the urge to keep them all for myself!

Spin Collective will ship anywhere, so everyone is welcome to take part. If you win, you’ll get to choose from the website and they’ll be shipped to you directly.

To satisfy the productivity nerd in me, I had to include a tool I’ve been using for a couple of years that changed the way I use my phone. James from SpinVox is giving away two SpinVox voicemail-to-text accounts.

SV is available in the UK, US, Canada, France, Germany & Spain, so if you live in any of those countries and uhh have a mobile phone, go for it!

I’m a total foodie, so I thought it was only fair to include something food-related to the list. Of course, I’m not going to ship you a bowl of my awesome homemade chilli as it’d get messy and Royal Mail would give me funny looks (…yet again)

Niall Harbison from Look & Taste (previously ifoods.tv, and yes he’s the guy who braved Dragons’ Den) is offering a few things:

First, if you’re an iPhone user, there are 10 licenses for Twecipe (£2.39) and another 10 for Look & Taste’s own video recipes app.

Secondly, Niall has agreed to create a pro video of a recipe of my readers’ choosing. Want to immortalise your nan’s best pudding or that wild recipe you made up the other day? You’ll get a mention, and Niall will let his viewers know where the recipe comes from.

The apps are (obviously) for iPhone & iPod Touch owners, and the recipe video is open to everyone.

I love beautiful things, making cards & handmade gifts. I’m pretty much rubbish at it and my projects look like something out of a preschool classroom, but I still love it.

Blurb.com have offered a £35 voucher for a Blurb book, so it’s a chance to create your own full-colour, beautifully professional-looking bound book. Whether it’s to remember your kids’ summer holiday or a special event, it’ll be unique!

Blurb ships to lots of countries, have a look at the list if in doubt. Promise you’ll show me your finished product

So what are you waiting for? All these awesome goodies are just one comment away!

New mothers apparently say that after they hold their newborn in their arms, they forget almost all the pain of the laborious process (literally!) that preceded. I think this week, I can see what they mean.

On Saturday, April 25th, the second SocialMediaCamp London was held at Wallacespace St Pancras after a long gestation period. The event itself is fairly simple; BarCamps are “unconferences” and therefore there are no speakers to book and manage. The venue is fabulous and the team there make my life incredibly easy by being such a well-oiled machine. The only pain was the sponsorship issues I encountered, which was resolved by making the event a single day instead of the original intended two days.

In general, the event was fantastic; there were some stellar presentations, on topics ranging from “What to do with a corporate Twitter account?” to “Porn & social media: A practical guide to working with ‘adult’ content” and a discussion on LARP to one on how to help PR agencies collaborate better with bloggers (”PR agencies want your soul”). The weirdness of presentations can pretty much be summed up in a single photo by Neil Crosby.

The day was topped off by what I hear was a comedy Scavenger Photo Hunt, organised by Kat Neville. “I hear” because by that point, my knees had turned to Jell-O and so had my brain, so I had to skip on the photohunt, as brilliant as it seemed.

A few days from the event now, and I’m still basking in the glow of a great day, filled with new and known faces, creative ideas & suggestions. I’ve pretty much forgotten about the faff of the weeks leading up to the event and am already thinking about doing it again.

As  far as the homepage of my blog is concerned, this is where the post ends. If you’re interested in a few contentious aspects of the event, then read on.

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, I published a post on the Taptu blog looking at the challenges of creating and selling mobile applications outside of the iPhone bubble, in particular at how developer Jan Ole Suhr released a Twitter client for S60, causing a stir around the pricing.

You know me, I love nothing more than a good ol’ rumble around the web, so when I came across some more tasty stats that didn’t agree with each other, I had to bite. Bango and AdMob both released recent figures for their top 20 handsets and there’s a Grand Canyon of difference in the top 3.

Granted there is a fairly straightforward explanation for this variation; AdMob, as an ad network, has been one of the chosen ad providers for many iPhone app developers, who choose to monetise their apps through advertising.

No Monopoly, Apple

What is enlightening however, is that the iPhone and iPod Touch don’t feature at all in Bango’s top 20. As a more representative sample of the mobile web than AdMob’s figures, it’s fascinating to see that a phone as basic as the Nokia 3110 Classic tops the chart. This is 2009. Weren’t we supposed to have hover cars, food in pill form and travel to the moon by now!? Yet a phone with less features than my microwave tops the chart with over 12% of the traffic to cross Bango’s service.

[Tangent alert] Before anyone crucifies me, I believe older phones have some wonderful benefits. My favourite phone of all times is probably still the Nokia 6100, which was small enough for me to mistake it for some futuristic pill form food and had about a century of battery life. (Ok, only slightly exaggerating) I’m a big fan of the iPhone, not so much of second-rate touch devices like Nokia’s 5800, but I try to be fair and give each and every new phone a chance first. [Tangent over]

Part of the appeal of the mobile web as opposed to apps is that, generally speaking, it’s much more accessible from a wide range of devices, without device, geographic or network limitations. But speaking to a number of smaller mobile website owners, it seems everyone’s missing a trick.

Stats Geeks Wanted

On desktop, most of us have caught on to Google Analytics and use it regularly to keep an eye on the ups and downs of our website. On mobile? Tumbleweed in most cases! Sure, Google Analytics and others aren’t suitable for mobile, but there are options. In fact, Bango’s mobile analytics service is not only simple to use, but has an admin area that rivals desktop packages.

Weirdly, these analytics could just as well be used on a desktop site. What, do you really think you don’t have a single mobile visitor to your desktop site? iPhone and other higher end phones will cope with Javascript (necessary to make a mark on Google Analytics, for example), but the majority of the devices listed on both AdMob and Bango’s top 20 won’t even register on your stats.

Personally, as a marketing gal and stats geek, I can’t imagine why a marketing manager wouldn’t want to improve reported numbers just by adding a new set of analytics. It ain’t cheating, it’s just usefully flagging up users you wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.

Fly Me To the Moon

So while there are heinously bad phones out there *cough* motorolaimlookingatyou *cough* and site developers who forget that not everyone’s interested in a big Flash animation welcoming you to the site, we just can’t deny that it’s slowly becoming more or less enjoyable to browse the web on a phone, so it’s worth supporting that through good mobile design and smart tracking of what users coming from phones rather than 24″ screens get up to.

As far as I’m concerned, you’ll only find me browsing on an iPhone, since I’m not yet quiiite satisfied with touchscreen alternatives out there. Of course, I’m a willing guinea pig… at least while I wait for my brain implant, jetpack and weekend ticket to the moon.

[Disclaimer: Taptu and Bango are both clients with whom I work on community development. As for Apple and AdMob, I'm merely watching them evolve with great interest.]

I had to resist the urge to use the first post name that came to mind for this one, or it simply would have been “What the f*ck is the government thinking?” But then that would have been too vague, and probably applies to at least two baker’s dozens of its recent policies.

The reason for my gobsmackedness on this sunny Friday is the Department for Children, Schools and Families’ latest campaign to promote condom use amongst the youth.

I’ve seen my fair share of poor decisions in choosing agencies – whether it be PR, web development, online marketing or otherwise – but how on Dog’s green Earth they are managing to spend a budget of £4.6 million of our hard-earned near-valueless-now pounds on this campaign yet fail so miserably?

Some KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) for the data nerds in the house:

• The campaign is composed of 22 episodes, of which 8 plus a trailer have been released at this point, so we’re roughly a third through the series
• Their MySpace page has 555 friends at the time of writing, many of which appear to be the usual spammers & none of which appear to have left genuine comments
• Their Facebook fan page has 38 fans, which ain’t an awful lot (Prior to The Register’s coverage, it had 15 friends which, as someone rightly pointed out, is less than Hitler has on FB)
• Prior to The Register’s article, “Thmbnls had been mentioned on Twitter, but only 14 times and half of those were notifications about the launch”
• The Reg asked for some download stats on the video, but was told “that they would look into it, but that it was unlikely such figures would be available” so let’s not mention the fact that there’s Google Analytics on every part of the site, mmkay?
• I wonder if they even do enough tracking to see this pop into their reporting on Monday morning… If so, sorry to be pissing in your cornflakes but the hard truth needs to be heard sometimes.

On first glance, the quality of the video is reasonably professional – maybe too polished for its purpose? The characters are a bit tacky, but not half as cringing as I’d expected. So I suppose they get a B+ for effort on video production.

Where they fail with an F- is on the targetting, the distribution methods, the themes, the social media approach and well… just about everything else. I get the impression that the agency brought on board writes a great proposal document, thorough and detailed, the kind government suits really like to read. But they can’t tell their elbow from their ass when it comes to actually interacting with young people. Looking at the fake MySpace page, it’s just highly condescending to think that teenagers won’t mind being friends with a fake identity that’s trying to sneak a condom in their backpocket.

Oh and don’t get me started on the targetting & distribution channels. I work with two clients in mobile, I look at mobile stats on a daily basis, and I’m afraid the majority of phones used to browse the mobile web aren’t most suited for video distribution just yet. Sure it’s free to download the clips thanks to downloads being sender-paid rather than recipient-paid, but I’m not sure a large number of teens even have the appropriate phones to watch the 1-minute clips. And I really do hope they’ve got something better to do at 7pm on a Friday night.

There is also seemingly no effort to interact with the young people; Facebook & MySpace were used to dump video files on and left there. The MySpace account, for example, has not been logged in to for a week now. They seem to have forgotten that at the centre of any social media strategy, it’s critical to socialise with the community & be genuine, transparent and human.

When looking for a social media agency, it’s better to look for someone who WAS that tall when they started using social media, not someone who condescendingly says YOU were that tall when they started. The fact that an agency distributed educational CD-roms to career advisers in schools back in the 80’s does not make them the right person to run a campaign today. I certainly don’t want to downplay experience, but there’s a fine balance between being connected to the right social groups and having professional experience.

I simply wonder at what point the agencies involved in the PR, production & distribution of the campaign will look back and say “You know what, Nancy? I think we may have misjudged our audience!” After SXSW last year, one of my key takeaways after attending one of the teen panels was “that these kids are clever and pretty discerning, we need to give them a whole lot more credit than we (or I) currently do!” That penny hasn’t yet dropped for the Department for Children, Schools and Families, clearly!

What does this leave us with? Average content, a mediocre campaign and a Dog-awful hole in our pocket.

I get the impression that a very large British contingent is heading to Austin, Texas for SXSW this year, based on the few conversations I’ve seen floating around Twitter. I’ll be amongst the masses, heading to my favourite event of the year.

South by Southwest Interactive is “Spring Break for Geeks”, with around 7,500 attendees; developers, designers, marketing people, social media folks like me, hippy dippy creatives… All there to learn, exchange ideas and have a lot of fun in the meantime. Not sure it’s much of a break, considering how much there is to do in only a few days.

I’ll be blogging whenever I can and twittering as usual, so if you’re attending, drop me a line to say hi. Hopefully we’ll have the opportunity to meet face to face at the conference center, or over a drink at one of the many evening events.

Texas, this time don’t disappoint me, I don’t want any snow. I want 25 degrees Celcius, sunny weather, a light breeze, oh and a cocktail umbrella on my drink too please!

As more businesses start peppering their marketing plans with social media projects, activities that previously were reserved for the geeky early adopters are now coming under scrutiny when used for commercial endeavours.

With all this new media growth, there’s no clear rule book yet. We’re writing it as we go, and just like the Bible, there are an awful lot of different interpretations of the same guidelines.

Certain aspects of blogging and online brand identity are seeing their limits pushed by certain brands lately…

Belkin, the computer peripherals manufacturer, was caught red-handed recently when The Daily Background Blog uncovered that a Belkin employee used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and similar services to solicit paid reviews. An anonymous tip-off from a Belkin staff member seemed to confirm this wasn’t a one-off either.

Belkin apologised publicly for the actions of its employee, but “Is that enough?” asks The Responsible Marketing Blog.

The above is a clear case of astroturfing, but rarely is the line quite so clearly drawn into the fake plastic grass.

Before I go any further, let me pause and let Wikipedia explain the concept of Astroturfing:

Astroturfing is a word in American English describing formal political, advertising, or public relations campaigns seeking to create the impression of being spontaneous “grassroots” behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass, AstroTurf.

Back when I worked for Active Hotels, we prided ourselves in having a hotel review system that was much more fool proof than average; only guests that had stayed at the hotel, paid for their stay & been confirmed by the hotel would be able to leave a review. The site was engineered to discourage astroturfing on the part of overzealous hotel managers – while it didn’t stop them, each attempt would cost them a commission, which in most cases was enough of a deterrent. Trip Advisor couldn’t exactly say the same of their reviews. Ethically, again the line is fairly clear; you haven’t stayed, you shouldn’t make up a review about a hotel. Still with me?

Via Simon Collister, I then I found a blurry line, one written by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (who often strike me as not “getting” the online world at all):

“[CIPR] Members’ use of social media must be transparent, and they must make extra effort to disclose any potential conflicts of interest. … In this regard, members should be aware that ‘ghosting’ a blog is illegal”

Woah, hold your horses there, Georgie! Surely, their definition of a ghost blog is different to mine then? A ghost blogger, in my experience, writes on behalf of the CEO, politician or other high-profile person, who may have called the PR team from across the country to give an outline of what they wants to say, letting them find the exact words.

Marketing teams are used to committee-written press releases, so blog entries often get the same treatment. Circulating between the marketing team, the CEO and the legal time a few times in a three-way table tennis match, the watered-down, reviewed entry gets posted. It may not be the most genuine method of writing, but it certainly isn’t something I’d consider illegal.

I suspect that what they refer to as ghost blogging is in fact the above-described astroturfing, which deserves a long stay on the naughty step and a spank to the bottom (not in a good way!)

How does this scenario (not the bottom spanking, the ghost writing for the CEO one), and every other one in between, fit in alongside all other transparency issues encountered online?

It’s not the first time I bring up my issues with non-disclosure & dodgy marketing practices, but as social media becomes a more mainstream interest for marketing bods of all walks of life, I truly hope that we’ll all take a few moments to think about the opportunities available to us. If organisations spent as much on building positive branding and community relations with their audiences as they do on being snake oil salesmen equipped with smoke and mirrors, the relationships could have a far longer shelf life.

Around lunchtime today, Stephen Fry, national treasure and Twitter celeb, announced that to celebrate having 50,000 followers, he would hold a challenge:

He adds “There’s the competition in a nutshell below. Star it for reference. The prize will be good and sent anywhere in the world.”

Now I’m not quite sure what makes Stephen’s challenge more viral than any other Twitter-led idea but it’s been spreading like wildfire. It could be:

• Wanting to be recognised as clever by such a high profile personality
• The lure of the prize (as of yet unknown)
• The sheer madness of the challenge (Have YOU tried fitting 50 L’s in 140 characters?!)

It’s fair to say that many man-hours were lost today whilst tweeters attempted to make up their own sentences. See for yourself on Twitter Search for the volume of inbound tweets to Stephen today.

This challenge is particularly sweet because there are no strings attached, just a bit of fun with the potential for a fun prize picked by a discerning geek. However, if a brand were to use this format for a campaign, you know what… I probably wouldn’t be too adverse to it! What about you?

And my attempt? I’m still failing because it’s far too long, but here’s what I’ve got so far: “Llewellyn’s llama lulled lamentably ill Lola’s lily & Lloyd lol’ed @ little Lola’s silly ballet flailing. Filling Lilly’s yellow lilo, he spells llastically: Billy tells & yells loyally”

Blurgh!

It’s Friday, you’ve been giving it the beans all week, working that little brain of yours to the bone (figuratively, let’s hope). You need a boost for that last mile before this evening’s G&T while watching mindless TV (or maybe your evening is more exciting than mine…)

Don’t tell everyone, but I’ve found one of the best sources of creative juices out there…

Alright, fine, it’s a campaign for the South West Regional Development Agency, created by Rubber Republic. It arrived in my inbox last week, with a subject line containing “Viral Campaign”*, so it was within an inch of getting deleted without a second look. Being the end of the day, I was looking for distraction, so I had a look at the video, to find myself delighted by how silly it turned out to be. I love organisations with a sense of humour, and this one’s just wonderfully twisted.

I wonder what would happen if you squeezed Silicon Fen/Cambridge creatives? You’d probably get a CAMRA-approved fermented beverage that knocks your socks off.

[* On the "Viral Campaign" note, I hope agencies will realise that, while it's fine to call it a viral campaign on your marketing strategy plan internally, a video doesn't go viral until the viewers make it so. Create something fantastic, give people the tools to share it easily, but don't tell us it's a viral. That's for us to decide.]