Design Studies: I Propose To Look To The Future

Why

For the last leg, we had to combine our efforts throughout the year including the research itself, the methods learnt through the likes of service design tools, the science of ethnography and our investigation into semiotics as designers, and create a final research proposal; thus creating a miniature version of the journey taken when writing such papers as a dissertation. I have to say, it's not half as bad as I would of expected, and have actually enjoyed several aspects of it, particularly ethnography and semiotics. Both help develop your approach as a designer be it from any discipline, as the principle remains the same - thoughtful design makes good design, and these are the things that help you engage with the user. I have learnt so much from this perspective, and as silly as it sounds I had previously not considered the consumer and or user half as important as they are. This ironically lead me to understand that understanding in itself is absolute key when designing for anybody other than yourself.

So, throughout this academic year I have been looking at how to engage the user in terms of advertisement. As I have previously stated, I have been asked to derive a research proposal from this, with specific regards to our individual disciplines. Advertising however, is an across the board topic, so I shall take a more personal outlook on the following, rather than a generalised I&ED outlook. I have linked in my previous posting throughout, as well as at the end of each category (although renamed the postings to fit the context).

Related Posts:
Design Studies: Service Design Tools
Design Studies: Ethnography
Design Studies: Semiotics
Design Studies: Final on Viral Advertising

Who

I would seek to explore what exactly it is that gets a graduate into practise other than their qualification(s) - as due to our current economic climate, employment is becoming increasingly difficult for inexperienced designers to successfully pursue. It is common knowledge that it is extremely difficult to land an internship during their academic years, and post-graduation it is becoming exponentially difficult to achieve employment with little or indeed no experience what so ever. Practices and companies are cutting back budgets, making already employed people redundant, let alone creating new positions for inexperienced yet professional designers. So my question is, how can you combine viral advertisement and innovative marketing strategies with the lengthly task of seeking graduate employment?

During one of our lectures this year, Lauren Currie (known in the realms of the internet as @RedJotter) suggested something that has stuck in my mind. She suggested that those seeking internships should not call a practise they were interested in, but rather actively go in and ask. She proposed we ask one of the members of staff out for coffee, and be that person who goes and enthusiastically requests experience. Her outlook was to be forward about these things, and not to back down if you were shown the door.

Related Posts:

Design Studies: What is Viral Advertisement 

Design Studies: Lauren Currie

What

But what else can be done? Surely there is more to this than hopelessly doing the rounds of companies in a lottery type fashion, hoping one day your numbers might just come up. Starting off small with things such as a "blog flyer" is all very well, but I would like to investigate into what makes a person memorable, what you can do to create a stir, and how can you become your own viral advert "epidemic"? I recently did a post on innovative CV ideas, which could be an aspect incorporated into your very own guerrilla marketing technique. How do you sell yourself as a new brand that everyone needs? Similar to as described in Gladwell's The Tipping Point, how do you make yourself sticky?

The BBC reported that only 13% of creative arts graduates found employment within the first six months of graduation.  The Guardian also reports on employment statistics for 2010. How do you ensure you fall into the right category within those statistics? In order to tackle such a never ending issue for graduates around the world from multiple industries, but more specifically those within the design sector, how would I propose I investigate this?

This is a real issue and unfortunately has real consequences, with The BBC unfortunately also reporting that design has one of the lowest employment rates, showing graduate unemployment at a 17 year "high".

Related Posts:
Design Studies: Blog Flyer
Design Studies: What Makes A Person Memorable
Design Studies: Creating A Stir
Design Studies: Creating Your Own Viral Ads
Design Studies: Innovative CVs

How

How do you extract the reasons one graduate is employed, while a similarly qualified, aged, and experienced graduate may not quite cut it? What is it that propels yourself from run of the mill nobody, into sought after fresh meat on the market? I propose that in order to find this out, studies would have to be created to analyse successful candidates qualities versus all applicants qualities, along with sought after free lance designers that provoke employers to come to them. Further to my previous research that suggests irrelevant stunt like attention seeking marketing strategies may work well, I would like to examine wether or not this would be appropriate for self supported viral marketing strategies, or if a strong brand ethic is required prior to tackling the irrelevant viral advert market. I propose that a ethnographic based survey be taken, paying particular attention to the trends seen on the likes of such social networks as Twitter.

If a selection of newly graduated design students were to be followed for the crucial first 6 months after graduation, would those who actively use their Twitter to make new connections be the first to be employed?

If all current fourth year I&ED students were to be followed for the initial period after graduation, who would be employed first and by what means?

I would also propose to contact design practises and actively seek the answers as to how they tackle the process of selecting a new employee, and the ways they instantly cut down applications from everything to the "select few". For example, Think Vitamin explains why they hired a new designer.

Design Studies: Asking the questions

First we had to create consent forms in order to publish the information we gathered from our interviews.

After gaining our participants permission, we continued on with the questions. I won't go into detail with regards to individual answers and information collected, but the following were our generalised finds, along with patterns we began to spot.

The first question, asking if the participant recognised how many, if any of a selection of adverts was an example of a viral ad, got mixed results. A third of participants however, recognised that the "Visit California" advert was in fact not viral. Others recognised the advert, although were unable to determine which were viral and which were not.

The second question was in regards to Cadburys recent and currently ongoing viral campaign. After asking how they felt after seeing a selection of them, we found that the general response was that they were confused. Often they were unsure as to how the content relates to selling a product, although all recognised the videos themselves.

Thirdly, we asked why they think companies would chose to use seemingly irrelevant content in adverts, to which the general response was to make their product more fun, memorable or enjoyable.

On asking what music was used during a selection of mobile phone service providers adverts, we were left with an interesting array of answers. Although it was a bit of a trick question due to the fact that only one contained music, it was interesting to find that sost could not remember much about the content for Orange or O2 at all (the two with no music at all), however nearly all knew that a) T-Mobile was based around music and b) could name songs used (albeit not necessarily the ones used for the specific advert we had muted). It was interesting to find that a connection was made between the audio and memory.

We then went on to ask which provider each participant used, to which half of our participants use T-Mobile. This may just be co-insidence, but speculation may be drawn on this as to why, in comparison to the other main providers (namely Orange, O2, Vodaphone and 3) had such dwindling numbers in comparison.

Next, we asked if any of the people involved in our interviews could remember what the series of adverts was, or indeed the tag line used throughout for the new Windows 7 operating system. Although a few had no idea, a few of the male participants knew selected bits of them. Some knew the tagline was "I'm a PC and.." and some other knew they were short snappy ads. Here are the actual ads we were referring to:



There are several others available on YouTube from the same series.

It was interesting to find that more males than females remembered this type of advertisement. It's hard to say wether it is because of the quick delivery of the adverts that entices males over females, or if it is the content relating to computers, as computers are commonly regarded as being more interesting to males than females.

Lastly, we played only the audio of an advert, and asked if they could tell us what it was for within the first few seconds - being careful not to reveal the product name that is mentioned towards the beginning. Nearly all of them instantly named it, with the remaining one who did not name it being unable to put their finger on the exact product, although said they did recognise it.

This was the advert we used:

The conclusion we drew from our answers was that the reasons viral advertisements are successful is because in most cases, people remember the content and as a connected result, remember the brand. When a continuous style of unrelated content is used, a style is created, thus becoming part of the brand itself. An example of this is the continuous use of purple throughout Cadbury's adverts, the bright colourful fun extraordinary things that happen throughout Sony's Bravia adverts, or Honda's intellectual use of sound. As this becomes the standard for a brand, the products themselves are less and less important as by now the viewer knows that Cadbury's make chocolate, and Sony makes technological products. It's far beyond that stage. 

Basically, the theory behind it is to make you remember them, and from our findings - most of these adverts do just that.

The Curriculum Vitae & Semiotics

I was surfing the abyss that is the interwebs when I came across a few sites that listed interesting resume ideas. This got me thinking - what will I chose to do to attract attention when it comes to looking for a job that doesn't involve serving drinks to drunk students?

Here are a few of my favourites:

The Origami CV

I like this one because it is simple and unusual. Imagine receiving something like this via post - it would certainly make me smile, especially if it was in a more interesting shape that you have to unfold. Takes folding paper to fit envelopes to a whole new level!

The T-Shirt CV

This is a cool idea as again it makes for an interesting delivery, but the only problem I can see with this is if you have never met who would be reading it - you may insult them by sending a size far too small or vice versa.

That aside though - I like this idea of printing on something other than paper, which leads me to what else could you print on?

The Infographic CV

For those of you who have read some of my recent postings - this one excites me a lot!

It's simple, efficient, and interesting without being cluttered up with a lot of writing. The initial impact of seeing it makes it a very successful way to display your stats and traits.

 The Compact CV

This one is similar in a way to the origami one shown above, although is very compact. If you were to send this in a very very small box then it would be surprising to get in your in tray.

It's simple and clean, and a way of sprucing up a simple text based CV, but keeping a traditional format inside.

Probably good for those who are will to try a more ambitious CV style but not willing to risk a crazy graphic design style.

 The Whole Package CV

This one is good, although it is a lot of work.

Receiving a well thought out pack with miniature flyers, brochure of work, contact detail cards and a poster is a nice thought, and reminds me of a pull out in The Guardian or The National Geographic etc.

It's a nice idea, but as I say - it's a job in itself to make it all. I guess it depends how long you have been out of work, and how much time you have to make all of this!

The Comic Book CV

This one has a lot of impact. I like the simplicity, and the fact that you can get text on it without it being irritating - although how much text you need I guess is something I could tell you if I read more into semiotics.

The limited colours also mean it doesn't get cluttered as easily - something I'm sure employers like. Surely there is nothing worse than trawling through hundreds (and in this climate probably thousands) of applications for a single position, and being bombarded with busy sheets and a lot of pointless text. Although as these are all for creative positions and I myself hope to also be applying to something in the creative industry - you'd hope applicants would have a sense about this given their field. You never know though - they might just be the ones without a job.



I think I would write my website address on 50 bananas and send them in a basket to whoever I wanted a job with. Overwhelm them with fruity madness!

If that didn't work, I think I would perhaps make a box of teabags - but replace all the information on the box with my information - but fill it with some nice fruity tea bags and send them to an employer. Who doesn't like tea, right?

Design Studies: Polysemy, Trolling and Lolcats

I hate trollers.

For those of you who do not know what trolling is - it's the act of leaving online comments on blogs, forums, websites and articles that aim to take the wrong meaning and cause an argument. A good example of endless trolling is YouTube. They aim to antagonise readers, and provoke unrest, irritation and ultimately, an argument.

Polysemy is the study of meaning in signs - and the conclusions that may be derived from it. Text confirms a specific meaning, and on the flip side, a stand alone image may result in several possible meanings to be interpreted.

So, trollers aim to purposely derive a meaning from a post, but purposely take the wrong meaning from the topic in hand - thus causing the aforementioned friction. They ask stupid questions, hoping to lure people into an argument. They are basically petty people who have nothing better to do than sit online causing fights and continuing to be deficient in vitamin D.

I found a fantastic blog post on this from via Flowing Data by Courtney Stanton, an interactive media and video games producer from Boston, MA. She documents the troller comments left on her blog, and has some good examples of how the meanings get crossed - through the use of mind maps, generated using Many Eyes.

world map of trolling comments

An article in The New York Times explains exactly what trolls do, and how it all began. Take a look - but it's quite disturbing, and frankly, extremely sad.

This then leads us to the internet meme. A good explanation of this can be found on thedailymeme.com. As it states, a meme can evolve - thus meaning it is an example of polysemy, where an image has over time developed a new meaning. The popular site icanhazcheeseburger.com is the home to the popular internet phenomenon the "Lolcat", where images of cats doing things are interpreted by overlaying text. Without the text - it is merely an image, with quite probably a reasonable explanation as to why the scenario has occurred. With the added text however - a new aspect is brought to the image, giving the viewer a different context to perceive the situation. This is an example of predicate transfer, by which assumptions are made due to a sentence, that may not in fact be true.

Of course this cat is not actually editing Wikipedia - however if you imagine this photo without any text, it is merely a photo of a cat near a laptop, however with the text - you instantly have a sense of a "personality" and get the general scenario that is insinuated by the text. 

Design Studies: Blog Flyer

For our current assignment - we had a few things to do, but one of them was to make a flyer to give to the people we asked our questions to (all will be revealed in a later post).

I decided not to explain what the experiment was on the flyer, because if the entire of last semester taught me anything - it should be about viral advertising.

Coupled with Lauren's talk yesterday about using a consistent theme to promote yourself - I have created the following as my flyer.

Who says advertising has to cost more than 26p?

Design Studies: Purple Cow And Other Stories

Throughout the Semester, I have been posting about my journey through research, amongst a multitude of other topics - ranging from academia to puerile nonsense. What appears to be nonsensical postings about research and references about viral adverts and how to kick start these have finally come to a point. A tipping point you could say!

At the beginning of the Semester we read Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point - a book in which trends were discussed. Who starts them? How do they spread? Why do we bow down to them?

From there, I selected my own particular area of interest, which I derived from one of the case studies towards the end, regarding Airwalk's phenomenal advertising campaign that sent their sales skyrocketing. This lead to me to the more general term of viral advertising, from which I honed in on what particular people it takes to make an advert such as that work - how it spreads, and ultimately consumes the public. Below are my findings.  

Godin's Purple Cow is written in a similar narrative style to Gladwell's The Tipping Point, interlaced with supported research as well as personal opinion. An issue with regards to it's accred-ability is that some of the personal opinion could be read and interoperated as fact; however there is little evidence to support sweeping statements. This is also true for the fact that Godin also uses his own previous works as examples, which, as it is not an external source, provides nothing in terms of genuine credit, other than that he has previously published work. The Tipping Point has more accred-ability from this aspect, as the supporting evidence was stronger. Furthermore to the structure of the book; Godin has laced the chapters with summaries that helps consolidate a section, along with short statistical images. These may on a first read appear to be of use, however there is no reference to document the source of these, and therefore is rendered academically void.

Aside from the academic value, or lack thereof, there are some interesting points that Godin debates. The bulk of Purple Cow is based around creating advertising, or even a product itself that is "remarkable". Purple Cow features several tips and reasons as to why in the current industry of advertising old fashioned marketing strategies just do not pull in the crowd they used to. It makes for an interesting read, although as previously stated - it lacks the strength of evidence, even although valid points are made. It appears that it is a fantastic source to begin with, although in order to gain anything from it, the reader would be required to research further into the points made. It is, if you will, the tip of the ice berg.

One of the useful aspects however, is that there are a large amount of short case studies, giving examples of particular aspects of marketing strategies that have taken off, and caused exponential business. These read like an encyclopaedia of example business plans, however again, the reader would be required to pursue any one of these further to gain any sort of substantial information.

an example of "guerrilla advertising"  

Godin claims that "The obvious answer, [to be successful in advertising a new variety of a household product] if you've got the money and you believe in your product, is to spend all you've got to buy tons of national TV and printing advertising", however this is personal opinion. It is understandable and does appear logically correct, but Godin supplies no statistical evidence to draw on. Without substantial external surveys, statistics and figures, it may be, and I suspect is, far from reality - as good marketing strategies do not necessarily equal spiralling costs; see Guerrilla Advertising: Unconventional Brand Communication.

On a separate note; a strong supported point made in Purple Cow was the findings of Geoff Moore, in his book "Crossing the Chasm". His graph outlines the quantity of people that come under the early adopter sector, against those who are early and late majority. The early and late majority are mostly the general public, once a product has taken off in the mainstream. Godin makes the valid point that although Moore's curved graph is specifically designed to relate to technological products, it does in fact also mirror almost all products and services to almost all audiences.

As for Hill, Provost & Volinsky, they provide an academically approved study on how early adoption aids the marketing industry in their article on Network-Based Marketing; Identifying Likely Adopters Via Consumer Networks. There is immediately sourced evidence to support their explanations from the field, quoting the likes of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, and how it's success began. Each subcategory of ways in which people adopt a strategy is individually corroborated by outsourced papers and statistics. At no point is personal experience drawn on, nor any opinion from the authors. Texts such as this are highly useful in gaining authentication, as every topic is subject to scrutinised evidence.

The three main subcategories of early adopters are grouped into "explicit advocacy", "implicit advocacy" and "network targeting". Examples are given for each; to explicitly advocate a product you must publicly spread recommendation for a product or service through a word of mouth fashion. Implicitly advocating is to promote a product through action; such as using a product themselves, and lastly network targeting is to target past consumers social neighbours, in a bid to gain business from past happy customers' surrounding acquaintances. By understanding these sectors that naturally occur within society, marketers can build on creating the ultimate marketing strategy.

An extremely relative example of using multiples of the above is cited to be Hotmail's viral marketing ploy. It was based around a tag line at the bottom of every email that was sent from a free hotmail account - thus using network targeting, and implicit advocacy. This is a well documented example source of these aspects of marketing. The figures regarding the exponential growth due to this simple strategy shows that within a year, users had increased 10 fold, all because people contact like minded people. If the early adopter uses a product, and the product targets the surrounding audience, things are sure to spread. This is an example of a forced word of mouth epidemic. Not only this, but it means that the original user is an example of an early adopter; the epicentre who radiates adverts.

I first read about the term "early adopters" through Gladwell's The Tipping Point, and since then while reading in more depth into viral marketing; I have come to the conclusion that it is crucial to market towards this sector of buyers. Without this select group of consumers, word of mouth epidemics do not arise. With no word of mouth buzz, the message is not spread to the same degree of possible consumers, and therefore the viral advert slips into the abyss of advertising - never to be successful. This is of course, every marketers nightmare. Both Godin and Hill, Provost & Volinsky discuss the "early adopter" category of people; and how to advance your strategies aiming your advertising at this crucial group.

I have come to conclude that since Hill, Provost and Volinsky use varying types of evidence in their analysis, which cross corroborates all claims in their outcome - their evidence of early adoption is more beneficial to somebody who wishes to understand it with the intent of applying it their own business. As they drawn on several fields, including economics, computer science, sociology, psychology, marketing and statistics - with statistical evidence being deduced from six fields within, a would be viral marketer could rely more heavily upon this source. 

As for Purple Cow, it is more of a general interest and casual read. Undoubtably strong points are raised, however there needs to be further support for personal claims. 

If I were to read further into this, I would draw upon the information found in Connected Marketing: The Viral, Buzz and Word of Mouth Revolution. I would also possibly do a short survey with regards to a new product on the market that is still within Moore's early adopter stage - that also has a viral marketing strategy, and personally find out what level of interest there is. This would help indicate how regular in a given city, consumers look past the household products they blindly buy, and take heed of viral advertising. 

- Bibliography -

Dorrian, M. & Lucas, G. (2006). Guerrilla Advertising: Unconventional Brand Communication. London, UK: Laurence King Publishing.

Godin, S. (2005). Purple Cow. London, UK: Penguin Books. p.7, 31-32, 79-80

Hill, S., Provost, F. & Volinsky, C. (2006). Network-Based Marketing: Identifying Likely Adopters Via Consumer Networks. Institute of Mathematical Statistics: Statistical Science. Vol. 21. (No. 2.). p. 256-260.

Kirkby, J. & Marsden, P. (2006). Connected Marketing: The Viral, Buzz and Word Of Mouth Revolution. Oxford, Great Britain and MA, USA: Butterworth-Heinmann of Elsevier.

____________________________________________________________________________________

On a lighter note - I will finish with some memorable advertising techniques, that I personally think should be exploited more:

Design Studies: Word Of Mouth Has It..

Over the past week I have been extremely busy to say the least, with ongoing class projects and the associated difficulties. Needless to say, I have not posted for a while as a result. Aside from that, I have also been delayed as there have been conflicting stories on what is actually required for the last of this semesters Design Studies assignments. Below is what I started, but I have decided to in fact use difference sources, for two reasons - one, originally I was lead to believe that we were required to write 1000 words in total for our source (500 on summarising the source, and a further 500 detailing it's link to our chosen topic which was derived from The Tipping Point). This was then to be repeated for a second source. It was then discovered that we were in fact to write 500 per source in terms of summarising, and then a further 500 words pitting each source against each other and exposing any conflicting evidence - thus totalling 1500 words. However, the two original sources I had selected do not work so well for cross analysing so I have decided to alter my selection.

Secondly, CrossSearch - Dundee Universities online journal search, with online reading facility - has decided to crash due to high volumes trying to access it. I guess it's acceptable, given it's the week before the end of semester. Alas, I do not fear as my previous in depth research into my topic has left me with various other alternatives.

Below is the beginning of my original write up, however as stated above it is no longer what I will be continuing with, but I thought I would post it anyway, as a more in depth annotation if you will.

Dellarocas, C. & Narayan, R. (2006). A Statistical Measure of a Population's Propensity to Engage in Post-Purchase Online Word-of-Mouth. Institute of Mathematical Statistics: Statistical Science. Vol 21. (No. 2.). p. 280.

Dellarocas and Narayan provide statistical evidence to support the word of mouth theory by which information regarding an object, service or the like is passed along with added opinions of their success. From this, a reputation occurs, usually either in the form of a recommendation or the opposite - advice to avoid such a item. This can be generated solely from personal opinion; if enough people recommend a product, the general consensus would be that the product is good, and someone with no prior knowledge of it would then consider buying or using such an item as a result.

Viral marketing aims to generate commotion and uproar around a selected object - with the ultimate outcome being that an explosive word of mouth epidemic radiates out from their epicentre of advertising. It relies upon not only an outlandish memorable advert and or performance to kick start such a process, but it long term relies upon the public reacting to the original incident and then passing their experience along, with an accelerating effect. This is where word of mouth statistics are highly crucial, as these must be taken into account when tailoring the perfect viral marketing campaign. It must also appear effortless; as if it was a mishap or accidental broadcast. An example of such forced accidental viral campaign is that of Threshers Christmas discount voucher. They "accidentally" released a "suppliers only" voucher which entitled the user to 40% off. The online leak caused unprecedented circulation for such a small campaign, thus being highly successful.

My "new and improved" summary of:

Hill, S., Provost, F. & Volinsky, C. (2006). Network-Based Marketing: Identifying Likely Adopters Via Consumer Networks. Institute of Mathematical Statistics: Statistical Science. Vol. 21. (No. 2.). p. 256-260.

Godin, S. (2005). Purple Cow. London, UK: Penguin Books. p.7, 31-32, 79-80.

Dorrian, M. & Lucas, G. (2006). Guerrilla Advertising: Unconventional Brand Communication. London, UK: Laurence King Publishing. p.54-101.

Kirkby, J. & Marsden, P. (2006). Connected Marketing: The Viral, Buzz and Word Of Mouth Revolution. Oxford, Great Britain and MA, USA: Butterworth-Heinmann of Elsevier.

will follow shortly.

Design Studies: Misunderstanding

Tweet

I am lead to believe during the latest of our seminars that I have misinterpreted the previous assignment slightly.

The tutorial based website task of Assignment 3 was supposed to get us to build a list of reliable website sources - 5 from our area and 5 that we generally like to keep tabs on. Unfortunately nobody could get it to work properly - as every time we added one of the reliable sources to "basket", it removed the previous one. This meant we could select no more than a total of 1 site. Argh! I continued with the assignment non the less, although had to use my intuition when it came to a sources reliability or level of authority - wether my intuition was right or not, is yet to be determined.

I, however, had taken the above to mean that we must collect 5 online sources from our research area that we have focussed on recently with regards to Design Studies (as in Viral Ads), and 5 we generally like to keep tabs on (this being 5 general design sites. I didn't think that they would want to hear what we keep track of online out-with University related disciplines - there's a lot of rubbish out there don't you know!)

So, anyway, the above mix up and broken tutorial aside - I have taken it upon myself to amend my previous post. I have left that post live on my blog as they are still relevant, but I will add in the 5 generalised sites I keep my eye on below.

They include:

BBC News (Scotland) / New York Times / The Guardian

National Geographic

YouTube

WSPA

Twitter

Vimeo

There are several other sites I regularly like to keep up to date with, as I read a lot of current affairs. After all, it's important to know what's going on in the world. Dundee's only a pin prick in terms of global affairs, so I think it's good to know whats going on outside the box, so to speak!

Design Studies: My Tip Top Viral Sites

Tweet

I have a Top 10 Pages section to the left of this post already but I thought I should add my list with regards to our Top 5 Related Sites, and Top 5 Non Related Sites, so here they are:

For viral related sites that I like to keep tabs on, I have listed the following:

Computer Arts

Lambesis

New Media Age's Viral Brand Chart

The Guardian's Advertising Section

Rubber Republic 

For general links that are not so related to my chosen topic, (and I know there are 7 here rather than 5, but I couldn't decide):

Ottagono Magazine

Dezeen Magazine

Mark Magazine

Grand Designs

Architectural Digest

Inhabitat

Frame

Design Studies: Written Research & Annotations

Images like this make me (prior to recently) dislike marketing.
I will never dress like this.

As the third part of this research related saga, we were instructed to research into our chosen subject - by now you should of gathered that I selected Viral Advertising. We were then to provide Harvard referencing and annotations. I'm assuming that this is leading to some sort of essay - that or this is just an extremely long punishment exercise. 

I'm only joking - Jonathan. I actually secretly enjoy it. I was up last night quite late reading through marketing journals - which to my surprise are really interesting. Who knew!

Below I have listed some of my references and related annotations with regards to Viral Advertising, and ways in which to draw attention to your work, similar to the Tipping Point Bibliography page:

Baldwin, J. & Roberts, L. (2006). Visual Communication: From Theory To Practice. London, UK: AVA Publishing (UK). p. 28-29.
Audience research. Aiming to a specific genre or social area is likely to be more effective than designing/advertising to mass amounts of people. Few things are appealing to all. Social class charting the differences within the social ladder.

Baldwin, J. & Roberts, L. (2006). Visual Communication: From Theory To Practice. London, UK: AVA Publishing (UK). p. 152-153.
Arguing that design is successful if the consumer understands it - designing something that only design academics have the capacity to de-construct and understand is not suitable for the masses - which only renders said design useless. In terms of marketing and advertising, although we must strive for innovative advertising tactics - it must also be at a level to which the public can interpret. 

Collins, N. (2010). "I am Spartacus" Goes Viral on Twitter. Available: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/8130376/I-am-Spartacus-goes-viral-on-Twitter.html. Last accessed 18 Nov 2010.
Example of Social Networks (Twitter) being used to spread a word of mouth epidemic. 

Coughlan, S. (2007). Viral E-mails Taught In College. Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6291857.stm. Last accessed 18 Nov 2010.
Example of viral related business going too far - being taught at college, is this really necessary? Viral specific teaching removes from the fundamental aspects of good marketing.

Dellarocas, C. & Narayan, R. (2006). A Statistical Measure of a Population's Propensity to Engage in Post-Purchase Online Word-of-Mouth. Institute of Mathematical Statistics: Statistical Science. Vol 21. (No. 2.). p. 280.
Science behind word of mouth epidemics - shows statistical information regarding movie goers density population, and how their feedback after movies increased or decreased sales. Evidence of how feedback can start a word of mouth ripple.

Dorrian, M. & Lucas, G. (2006). Guerrilla Advertising: Unconventional Brand Communication. London, UK: Laurence King Publishing. p.22-46.
Examples of companies who have used the "street propaganda" approach to advertising. Includes the use of graffiti, one off installations and large scale image drops on buildings - with the intention to help generate word of mouth epidemics. 

Dorrian, M. & Lucas, G. (2006). Guerrilla Advertising: Unconventional Brand Communication. London, UK: Laurence King Publishing. p.54-101.
Example research and imagery of successful site-specific advertising. Helps to show how adverts such as these are executed, and how the public and consumers interact with them. 

Godin, S. (2005). Purple Cow. London, UK: Penguin Books. p.7, 31-32, 79-80.
Pros: Further reading into opinions within viral marketing. Questions information given in The Tipping Point and references the aforementioned. Specifically explains why viral marketing in particular aids businesses in advertising. Cons: Not enough evidence to support opinions, and lacks references, however does reference other similar books to which the author writes in a narrative, making understanding easier. 

Grannell, C. (2007). Catch On To Viral Design. Computer Arts. No. 136. p. 74-79.
Article in Computer Arts magazine, describing how to start your own viral advertisement and how to utilise common techniques within viral marketing. Also provides comments and advice from industry insiders who have worked on several such campaigns. 

Hill, S., Provost, F. & Volinsky, C. (2006). Network-Based Marketing: Identifying Likely Adopters Via Consumer Networks. Institute of Mathematical Statistics: Statistical Science. Vol. 21. (No. 2.). p. 256-260.
Journal investigating word-of-mouth marketing techniques, along with buzz marketing, and viral marketing though the use of social networks. Also describes filter systems that may be used in order to determine a consumer network. Gives examples such as how "The Da Vinci Code" first took off.

Hudson, A. (2009). How Does A Viral Advert Go Viral? Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7946000/7946459.stm. Last accessed 18 Nov 2010.
Supporting evidence to previous research of how to kick start a viral ad campaign.

Kirkby, J. & Marsden, P. (2006). Connected Marketing: The Viral, Buzz and Word Of Mouth Revolution. Oxford, Great Britain and MA, USA: Butterworth-Heinmann of Elsevier.
In depth research into the word-of-mouth aspect of viral advertising - as first found in The Tipping Point. 

Milligan, A. & Smith, S. (2002). Uncommon Practice: People Who Deliver a Great Brand Experience. Edinburgh, UK: Pearson Education Limited. p. 138.
Branding research relating to John Lewis. Discusses what brands mean to consumers, and summarises what it is about a company that gains a customer's respect. With enough stand alone respect, an off the wall ad campaign designed to gain customers attention is not required to the same extent. Brand vs. Adverts.

Simmons, D. (2006). Marketing's Viral Goldmine. Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/5179166.stm. Last accessed 18 Nov 2010.
Contains word of mouth examples of viral YouTube videos, and supports the previous evidence suggesting virals may soon go too far, as it is becoming increasingly easy to create your own. 

Webster, G. Viral Infection. Available: http://www.computerarts.co.uk/in_depth/features/viral_infection. Last accessed 19 Nov 2010.
Interview with industry insiders, with explanations of seeding and how to do so online and offline. It also provides links to several campaigns which depict this type of strategy. Mentions "stickiness" of adverts, and the use of social networks.