Water Cooler Games served as the web's primary forum for "videogames with an agenda" — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.
The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org from 2003-2009, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca. It is now archived here in full.
I hate viral marketing. Hate it, capital-H Hate it. Here's why.
The advertising industry vaguely understands how word of mouth works. They understand memes, although they've probably never heard of Richard Dawkins. They believe they are in the business of creating cultural capital to be disseminated from brain to mindless little fat-walleted brain. They even understand the basics of scale-free networks, or at least enough to grok the underlying function of weak ties, those loose connections you have with other people that create the largest networks of potential interaction. All the mechanics are there, but something's missing. What is it?
Anything worth spreading via word of mouth.
Update: This article is also available in Italian, via CG Italia, thanks to Max.
Why does disease spread? Because people like to be or need to be in close proximity to one another. What about AIDS? Because people like to fuck each other. What about social networks, how do they work? People strive for power and social control, and they want to know people who can bring them more of it.
More and more, the advertising industry wants you to think that marketing spreads in the same way: because it adds something meaningful to your everyday life. And it just doesn't. Advertising is in the business of manufacturing needs -- silky smooth hair, fuzzy condoms, a jillion accessories for a billion iPods. And viral marketing is advertising's attempt to manufacture a need for the advertising itself. They hope that the advertising will prove so stylish, so nuanced, so "engaging" (that's a favorite word) that you will seek out those weak ties and tell them about it -- not the products, the ads.
As a part of this rancor, because I run one of the few websites about advergames, I get a lot of emails from advertising and promotional agencies, groups wanting me to tell you (weak ties!) about the crap they've produced that you can then tell your friends, often via some kind of "send to a friend" widget in the marketing itself (incidentally, the send to a friend is to marketing what the fucking is to AIDS). Here's an example, with the names obscured to protect the innocent:
Just in time for the start of the football season, Planters.com features this free online Football Game that your website visitors may be interested in. Below please find all of the details, including hyperlinks and approved text that you can use on your site. If you have any questions please feel free to email me.
Game Name: Planters Field Goal Challenge
Game URL: http://www.planters.com/games/gamepage.aspx?GameId=136
Game Description:
Split the uprights in Planters Field Goal Challenge. Visit Planters.com to play. Starting at the 30-yard line, attempt field goals at increasing distance.
Best Regards,
[name]
Trymark Consulting Group
on behalf of www.Planters.com
I have two of them in my inbox, both from Trymark. The other one is for a new Lacrosse game on the sadly indefatigable Candystand.com. The games themselves represent the worst kind of advergames around -- forgettable games with forgettable brand images stamped upon them, sold off like cattle to whomever would do the media buy. I've included the links here in the hopes that you will actually click them to see what I mean, and these companies will check their referrers and read my tirades. But they never do.
So, what would good viral marketing mean? How would meaningful viral advertising work? Well, what do meaningful viruses do: they spread based on legitimate contact between organisms. Fucking, talking, eating, shitting, all the ways we come into contact with one another. But unlike advertising, we don't want the viruses. They devour us as parasites. That's what viral marketing does too: even if we do spread it, all we're spreading is its filth, the dirty microbes of blind consumption.
Good viral marketing wouldn't be viral at all: it would be curative. It would help us understand or engage some aspect of human experience that we might otherwise not find. It would be more than a curiosity, more than a link on Boing Boing or Slashdot, more than a stupid game that we play for 2.3 minutes and then forget forever. Something that would build social capital, not just the strength to buy, but the strength to resist buying, to question needs, to challenge empty claims.
I know, it doesn't sound like advertising, does it. But does it have to be that way? What if advertising were meaningfully social, and constructive? I can think of some examples, can you?
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