Study: Social Media Pays
by Mark Walsh, MediaPost.com, Monday 20th July 2009.
One of the major hurdles to increased spending on social media has been lingering skepticism about what kind of payoff companies actually get from conversional marketing. In short, is it worth it? A study released Monday says "yes," drawing a link between brands' social media efforts and revenue growth.
The new research from social media platform Wetpaint and digital consulting firm Altimeter Group found that companies with the highest levels of social media activity on average increased revenues by 18% in the last 12 months, while the least active saw sales drop 6% over that period.
Among the top 100 brands reviewed, Starbucks came out on top with a score of 127, followed by Dell (123), eBay (115), Google (105), and Microsoft (103). Companies were scored based on the level of interaction across 10 social media channels including blogs, Facebook, Twitter and wikis.
The study found that social media efforts tend to build on themselves. "There is an exponential growth in the depth of engagement as the brand extends itself into more and more channels," according to the report, titled www.engagementdb.com.
Companies that scored well generally had dedicated -- if small -- teams focused on social media initiatives. The most successful of these evangelized across the entire organization to gain broad-based support and cooperation. And instead of taking a traditional communications approach based on messaging and talking points, they embrace a conversational mode.
The report sorted companies according to four categories, with "mavens" being the most aggressive brands in social media and "wallflowers" sitting on the sidelines. In between are "butterflies" -- companies that are spread to thin across social properties, and "selectives" -- those that excel by focusing on just a few channels.
Among industries, media and technology companies tend to be "mavens" while financial, food and beverage, consumer products and apparel brands were on the other end of the spectrum -- "which is expected given that companies in these industries are just beginning to experiment with social media," the report states.
Starbucks was the obvious exception in the food and beverage industry, beating out advanced media and tech brands. Among its most prominent social media efforts was last year's launch of MyStarbucksidea.com, a community site allowing users to submit, comment on, and vote on their favorite ideas for improving the company.
At the same time, Starbucks' financial performance over the last year does not seem to support the connection between a brand's social media activity and revenue. In its most recent fiscal quarter, the coffee chain's revenue dipped to $2.3 billion from $2.5 billion a year ago. It reports third-quarter earnings Tuesday, with analysts expecting revenue to range from $2. 3 billion to $2.5 billion.
A Wetpaint spokesperson said the revenue growth figure cited in the study is an aggregate of all the "mavens," and not a reflection of just one company.
Runner-up Dell gained wide attention for ramping up its social media programs to combat the "Dell Hell" label applied by critics to its customer service operation. The computer company now boasts a more than 40-person social media team that runs blogs, a video channel and other forums as well as tracking what people are saying about Dell.
In conjunction with the study, brands can also find out how their own social media efforts rate through the new engagementdb.com site. After taking a brief survey, companies will get an email evaluation telling them how they rank against the brands covered in the report.
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
Monetizing Real-Time Search
Is real-time search marketing the next big opportunity for digital marketing? This article by Scott Morrison looks at how to monetize real-time search and services such as Twitter.
Internet Giants Look For Edge In Real-Time Search
By Scott Morrison of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES. JUNE 15, 2009, 1:54 P.M. ET
SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)--Micro-blogging phenomenon Twitter Inc. hasn't figured out how to make money, but that hasn't stopped Web giants Google Inc. (GOOG), Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) from racing to establish real-time search capabilities.
Real-time search helps Internet users find Web posts, including those from San Francisco's Twitter Inc., seconds after publication. The field has grown in importance amid the exploding popularity of services like Twitter, which lets users blast short messages rapid fire from computers and mobile phones.
The growth of Twitter has fueled expectations that real-time search could drive Internet advertising to new heights by allowing marketers to target relevant ads at consumers interested in breaking events, hot topics or their favorite celebrities. Some proponents argue real-time data and search could develop into a billion-dollar market.
"Every conceivable advertiser will be interested," said Ron Conway of SV Angel LLC, an early investor in Google and Twitter. "It will create a huge monetization opportunity."
Just how that opportunity will unfold remains unclear. There is no shortage of real-time search startups - such as OneRiot LLC and Scoopler Inc., not to mention Twitter itself - that are attempting to make sense of the growing universe of real-time user-generated data. It is telling, however, that even Twitter still hasn't said how it hopes to turn user updates, known as "tweets," into revenue.
Still, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are pouring time and resources into the real-time Web. All three have had discussions with Twitter seeking some sort of search or advertising deal, according to people familiar with the situation. They also are looking beyond the micro-blogging leader.
The search giants note other sources of user-generated real-time data, such as Web recommendation engine Digg Inc. or micro-blogging services like Tumblr Inc. They also point to their own properties. Microsoft, for example, notes its Messenger and Spaces services are real-time data sources, while Yahoo highlights its Answers service and its experimental Brazilian micro-blogging property Meme. In January, Google pulled back from its Jaiku service, but recent blog rumors suggest it is poised to launch a service that indexes and ranks content from microblogging services, like Twitter.
Making sense of real-time data poses technological challenges for the big search companies. Their current algorithms return results heavily weighed towards older Web pages that have established credibility and attracted large audiences, an approach at odds with real-time search.
Twitter is like a fire hose spewing out a flood of tweets, many of which are seconds old and from obscure users with little track record. Tweets many times contain acronyms, Web site address abbreviations and emoticons, all of which make it difficult for traditional search engines to evaluate their relevance - and filter out "tweet spam."
"Whoever figures out how to filter out spam best will win the real-time search battle," said Kevin Lee, chief executive of search engine marketer Didit.com LLC.
Prabhakar Raghavan, who runs Yahoo's search strategy, says the company is looking at how it might data mine tweets and other real-time feeds, a process that will help it evaluate and summarize content more efficiently. Yahoo is also looking at whether it might map tweets, allowing advertisers to target geographies where interest in a product or service is growing.
Microsoft senior program manager Andy Oakley says his company is also determining how to filter, summarize and present real-time tweets. He suggests up-to-the minute micro-posts and links could be displayed in an "updates" section within a traditional search results page.
Google last month introduced a "recent results" option to its search engine, and co-founder Larry Page has spoken publicly about the need to continually quicken the pace at which the company's spiders index Web pages. A company spokesman said Google was looking at ways to make real-time data more useful to its users.
Tobias Peggs, general manager at OneRiot, says real-time searchers tend to search the Web many times a day because they expect results will be updated more quickly than on established engines like Google or Yahoo. He believes that gives companies like OneRiot more opportunities to serve up relevant ads based on the changing situations.
"If the latest update on Britney Spears says she wore green Gucci dress last night, that would be an opportunity for Gucci to advertise that green dress," Peggs said.
Internet Giants Look For Edge In Real-Time Search
By Scott Morrison of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES. JUNE 15, 2009, 1:54 P.M. ET
SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)--Micro-blogging phenomenon Twitter Inc. hasn't figured out how to make money, but that hasn't stopped Web giants Google Inc. (GOOG), Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) from racing to establish real-time search capabilities.
Real-time search helps Internet users find Web posts, including those from San Francisco's Twitter Inc., seconds after publication. The field has grown in importance amid the exploding popularity of services like Twitter, which lets users blast short messages rapid fire from computers and mobile phones.
The growth of Twitter has fueled expectations that real-time search could drive Internet advertising to new heights by allowing marketers to target relevant ads at consumers interested in breaking events, hot topics or their favorite celebrities. Some proponents argue real-time data and search could develop into a billion-dollar market.
"Every conceivable advertiser will be interested," said Ron Conway of SV Angel LLC, an early investor in Google and Twitter. "It will create a huge monetization opportunity."
Just how that opportunity will unfold remains unclear. There is no shortage of real-time search startups - such as OneRiot LLC and Scoopler Inc., not to mention Twitter itself - that are attempting to make sense of the growing universe of real-time user-generated data. It is telling, however, that even Twitter still hasn't said how it hopes to turn user updates, known as "tweets," into revenue.
Still, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are pouring time and resources into the real-time Web. All three have had discussions with Twitter seeking some sort of search or advertising deal, according to people familiar with the situation. They also are looking beyond the micro-blogging leader.
The search giants note other sources of user-generated real-time data, such as Web recommendation engine Digg Inc. or micro-blogging services like Tumblr Inc. They also point to their own properties. Microsoft, for example, notes its Messenger and Spaces services are real-time data sources, while Yahoo highlights its Answers service and its experimental Brazilian micro-blogging property Meme. In January, Google pulled back from its Jaiku service, but recent blog rumors suggest it is poised to launch a service that indexes and ranks content from microblogging services, like Twitter.
Making sense of real-time data poses technological challenges for the big search companies. Their current algorithms return results heavily weighed towards older Web pages that have established credibility and attracted large audiences, an approach at odds with real-time search.
Twitter is like a fire hose spewing out a flood of tweets, many of which are seconds old and from obscure users with little track record. Tweets many times contain acronyms, Web site address abbreviations and emoticons, all of which make it difficult for traditional search engines to evaluate their relevance - and filter out "tweet spam."
"Whoever figures out how to filter out spam best will win the real-time search battle," said Kevin Lee, chief executive of search engine marketer Didit.com LLC.
Prabhakar Raghavan, who runs Yahoo's search strategy, says the company is looking at how it might data mine tweets and other real-time feeds, a process that will help it evaluate and summarize content more efficiently. Yahoo is also looking at whether it might map tweets, allowing advertisers to target geographies where interest in a product or service is growing.
Microsoft senior program manager Andy Oakley says his company is also determining how to filter, summarize and present real-time tweets. He suggests up-to-the minute micro-posts and links could be displayed in an "updates" section within a traditional search results page.
Google last month introduced a "recent results" option to its search engine, and co-founder Larry Page has spoken publicly about the need to continually quicken the pace at which the company's spiders index Web pages. A company spokesman said Google was looking at ways to make real-time data more useful to its users.
Tobias Peggs, general manager at OneRiot, says real-time searchers tend to search the Web many times a day because they expect results will be updated more quickly than on established engines like Google or Yahoo. He believes that gives companies like OneRiot more opportunities to serve up relevant ads based on the changing situations.
"If the latest update on Britney Spears says she wore green Gucci dress last night, that would be an opportunity for Gucci to advertise that green dress," Peggs said.
Thursday, 4 June 2009
Very Unfortunate Digital Media Planning
Digital media planning and buying can be a difficult vocation. No matter how good you are though, sometimes no matter how hard you try, you still get it very wrong. Here's an unfortunate example of an online ad appearing in exactly the wrong place.
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
Wednesday, 27 May 2009
5 Tips for Optimising Facebook Marketing
One of the great things about the Facebook platform is that it provides you access to a large audience of more than 200 million people worldwide at a low cost. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't have a strategy in place for what you are trying to achieve. Whether you are a small local business, or even a well-known product or service, you will need to give some thought to your audience, like: who are they; how do they want to be spoken to; what messages would you want them to receive; and what are the tactics for having them interact with your message. So let's go through some of your options when it comes to social networking marketing.
HAVE A STRONG PRESENCE
A Facebook presence, like a Web site, is a fundamental tactic and should be on everyone's list of must-haves for social network marketing. Similar to the dot-com land grab that happened in the late 90's, you should secure your company name on as many social sites as you can.
Once you have your presence, you will need a strategy for posting updates with interesting content as frequently as you can. Be sure to get your employees involved. Encourage them to become fans, and drive the conversations to create a thriving community. The reason being, you will want Facebook users to be able to discover your Facebook page through their friends' profiles and with Facebook searches. This is the key to growing your fan base “virally.” Also keep in mind Facebook pages are indexable, so be sure to write your content with good SEO in mind.
DO SOME ADVERTISING
You will find that advertising on Facebook is unlike any other advertising experience you have ever had. This is mainly because of the unique ways in which you can precisely target a specific ad down to the person's profile. For example, if you want to target M.B.A. graduates who are 3-to-5 years out of school, working in Southern Connecticut, like classic rock and whose favorite food is sushi—you can do that!
There are two basic types of ads—display ads and social ads—and they can be purchased like banner ads with cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-thousand (CPM). While they work similarly to online banner ads, do try not to use them in the same way. Most Facebook users feel more comfortable staying within the Facebook environment. So try to direct them to somewhere on your Facebook Fan page. With the new Facebook Fan page design, you can send them directly to a tab of your Fan page since each tab has a unique URL.
CREATE AN APPLICATION
If you are going to send your ads to a specific tab, why not send them to an application you built to engage them with your brand. Facebook applications are similar to widgets, or snippets of code, which can be embedded in any Facebook Fan page to make it more distinguished. You can think of them like interactive spaces that can allow the user to take a poll, play a short game or anything you can dream up.
Creating a Facebook application has become widely popular because custom applications are not that hard or expensive to build. Some Facebook applications have seen tremendous growth because they were built to take advantage of the viral nature of Facebook.
SYNDICATE YOUR CONTENT
Another tactic to consider if you already have a steady stream of rich content is to use Facebook as an outpost for your content. If you already have a blog, podcast or video series, you can effectively use Facebook to attract another audience to interact with those assets.
There are a variety of ways to syndicate content on your Fan page. You can use the Notes page to import blog posts to your Fan page. You can use the My Del.icio.us application to import any bookmarks you may have made in your Del.icio.us account. You can use the Simply RSS application to bring in all the RSS feeds you may have on your company Web site. You can edit your Links section and have a variety of blogs or Web sites you may want to highlight—perhaps by employees or partners of your company. And don't forget to edit your Feed settings to include the complete versions of all your blog posts so they appear not only on your Fan page but on the Feeds of all your fans.
THROW AN EVENT
Facebook events are a great way of getting people together virtually or in person in support of your local business, brand or product. They are also a very economical way of getting the word out beyond your normal in-house marketing list by inviting the Fans of your page. Fans can also help you promote your Facebook event to their friends by sharing the event if it seems of value to a group of their friends.
Don't forget to follow-up after your event; it's just good protocol to do so. If you had a very healthy debate with lots of questions, consider sending a transcript out to everyone who attended or even those that didn't. If some questions didn't get answered because of time constraints, try writing up the answers and sending them to the all attendees, too.
The key point is try not to take a “set it and forget it” mentality to any social presence. While the costs of social marketing are low, don't let that fool you. The true cost is found in the creation of content. And your key to success will be the consistent participation and willingness to engage your customers you can create by using great content.
HAVE A STRONG PRESENCE
A Facebook presence, like a Web site, is a fundamental tactic and should be on everyone's list of must-haves for social network marketing. Similar to the dot-com land grab that happened in the late 90's, you should secure your company name on as many social sites as you can.
Once you have your presence, you will need a strategy for posting updates with interesting content as frequently as you can. Be sure to get your employees involved. Encourage them to become fans, and drive the conversations to create a thriving community. The reason being, you will want Facebook users to be able to discover your Facebook page through their friends' profiles and with Facebook searches. This is the key to growing your fan base “virally.” Also keep in mind Facebook pages are indexable, so be sure to write your content with good SEO in mind.
DO SOME ADVERTISING
You will find that advertising on Facebook is unlike any other advertising experience you have ever had. This is mainly because of the unique ways in which you can precisely target a specific ad down to the person's profile. For example, if you want to target M.B.A. graduates who are 3-to-5 years out of school, working in Southern Connecticut, like classic rock and whose favorite food is sushi—you can do that!
There are two basic types of ads—display ads and social ads—and they can be purchased like banner ads with cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-thousand (CPM). While they work similarly to online banner ads, do try not to use them in the same way. Most Facebook users feel more comfortable staying within the Facebook environment. So try to direct them to somewhere on your Facebook Fan page. With the new Facebook Fan page design, you can send them directly to a tab of your Fan page since each tab has a unique URL.
CREATE AN APPLICATION
If you are going to send your ads to a specific tab, why not send them to an application you built to engage them with your brand. Facebook applications are similar to widgets, or snippets of code, which can be embedded in any Facebook Fan page to make it more distinguished. You can think of them like interactive spaces that can allow the user to take a poll, play a short game or anything you can dream up.
Creating a Facebook application has become widely popular because custom applications are not that hard or expensive to build. Some Facebook applications have seen tremendous growth because they were built to take advantage of the viral nature of Facebook.
SYNDICATE YOUR CONTENT
Another tactic to consider if you already have a steady stream of rich content is to use Facebook as an outpost for your content. If you already have a blog, podcast or video series, you can effectively use Facebook to attract another audience to interact with those assets.
There are a variety of ways to syndicate content on your Fan page. You can use the Notes page to import blog posts to your Fan page. You can use the My Del.icio.us application to import any bookmarks you may have made in your Del.icio.us account. You can use the Simply RSS application to bring in all the RSS feeds you may have on your company Web site. You can edit your Links section and have a variety of blogs or Web sites you may want to highlight—perhaps by employees or partners of your company. And don't forget to edit your Feed settings to include the complete versions of all your blog posts so they appear not only on your Fan page but on the Feeds of all your fans.
THROW AN EVENT
Facebook events are a great way of getting people together virtually or in person in support of your local business, brand or product. They are also a very economical way of getting the word out beyond your normal in-house marketing list by inviting the Fans of your page. Fans can also help you promote your Facebook event to their friends by sharing the event if it seems of value to a group of their friends.
Don't forget to follow-up after your event; it's just good protocol to do so. If you had a very healthy debate with lots of questions, consider sending a transcript out to everyone who attended or even those that didn't. If some questions didn't get answered because of time constraints, try writing up the answers and sending them to the all attendees, too.
The key point is try not to take a “set it and forget it” mentality to any social presence. While the costs of social marketing are low, don't let that fool you. The true cost is found in the creation of content. And your key to success will be the consistent participation and willingness to engage your customers you can create by using great content.
In-Game Advertising Spend to Reach $1bn
Spending on in-game advertising will reach $1bn by 2014.
Media & Marketing 26th May 2009.
In its latest report, In-Game Advertising: Market Assessment and Forecasts to 2014, media analyst Screen Digest predicts that in the future it will become impossible for brands to ignore the audience share that video games attracts.
For the report Screen Digest explored the in-games advertising industry and surveyed digital planners from GroupM’s global agency network. It was revealed that the combination of audience media habits and the unique advertising opportunities it provides will turn in-game advertising into a major growth medium. Screen Digest estimates that dynamic in-game ads will account for around 1.5% of annual spending in 2014.
According to the report, areas of in-game advertising that made it attractive to brand owners and digital planners included: scalability, accountability, high levels of audience engagement and positive brand associations.
“Games are proven recession-beaters with an ad-funded online model that actually works,” said Adam Smith, futures director at GroupM. “There are many ways in which advertising can help evolve business models for video games and we have only just begun to explore that potential. Given gaming is now a mainstream leisure interest, in-game deserves the same consideration as mobile and social media.”
Media & Marketing 26th May 2009.
In its latest report, In-Game Advertising: Market Assessment and Forecasts to 2014, media analyst Screen Digest predicts that in the future it will become impossible for brands to ignore the audience share that video games attracts.
For the report Screen Digest explored the in-games advertising industry and surveyed digital planners from GroupM’s global agency network. It was revealed that the combination of audience media habits and the unique advertising opportunities it provides will turn in-game advertising into a major growth medium. Screen Digest estimates that dynamic in-game ads will account for around 1.5% of annual spending in 2014.
According to the report, areas of in-game advertising that made it attractive to brand owners and digital planners included: scalability, accountability, high levels of audience engagement and positive brand associations.
“Games are proven recession-beaters with an ad-funded online model that actually works,” said Adam Smith, futures director at GroupM. “There are many ways in which advertising can help evolve business models for video games and we have only just begun to explore that potential. Given gaming is now a mainstream leisure interest, in-game deserves the same consideration as mobile and social media.”
Tuesday, 26 May 2009
Three Wolves Release The Power of Internet Culture
Here is a great and "out of the box" viral concept. It really shows the power of Internet culture affects even the most mundane of things. However, the 3 Wolves howling at the Moon is pretty awesome. I'm definitely getting one!
Think a T-Shirt Can’t Change Your Life? A Skeptic Thinks Again
The New York Times, Published: May 24, 2009
As the kind of guy who doesn’t need any particular item of apparel to get in touch with my inner animal spirit, I was skeptical when my friend Steve and his daughter Dorothy started enthusing about the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt and attendant Internet culture phenomenon. Yeah, right, I thought.
But ... after I put on the T-shirt, immediately grew back all the hair I’d lost decades ago and got a seven-figure contract to star in a kung fu romantic comedy along with Maria Sharapova and Scarlett Johansson, I had to admit I was wrong.
Brian Govern, a 32-year-old law student in Glassboro, N.J., had no idea what he had started when he wrote a similarly over-the-top review on Amazon.com of the T-shirt, which shows three wolves howling at the moon. Employing the snarky spirit of online humor, the review began:
“This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened.”
The magic, it turned out, was not so much the undeniably totemic power of the shirt, now endorsed by about 700 other similarly rapturous, if not entirely serious, reviewers, but the lesson in the inscrutable power of online culture that it provided. Like the butterfly wings creating the tornado, Mr. Govern inadvertently helped set off an almost impossible marketing bonanza and pop-culture craze: The shirt has been Amazon’s top-selling item of apparel every day since May 19, and it has morphed into one of those instant icons of Internet culture.
“This is something a lot of companies spend $100 million trying to do and for us it just happened, and we embraced it early on,” said Michael McGloin, an art school dropout and creative director of the Mountain, the New Hampshire-based company that made the shirt. The Mountain has gone from selling 2 or 3 of the shirts a day to 100 an hour on Amazon. “You could not dream of getting this worldwide notoriety for a T-shirt, but it became a viral visual,” Mr. McGloin said.
Mr. Govern, a student at the Rutgers School of Law in Camden, N.J., who hopes to go into intellectual property law, picked up on the shirt’s somewhat unfashionable, blue-collar appeal when he came across it on Amazon. (Note to commentators on patrol for liberal elitists — his politics are mostly conservative.) He reported that once he put the shirt on, women, apparently sensing some irresistible, brooding lone-wolf power, began flocking to him in droves. Just for wearing the shirt!
He concluded: “Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women.
“Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the ‘guns’), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark.”
A few others chimed in over the coming months until the shirt and Mr. Govern’s comment were picked up first by a site called CollegeHumor.com in early May, then by Digg.com and others. Suddenly, everyone and his dog had a similar experience to share.
“When I opened the package, the focused radiance of the shirt actually burned my shadow onto the wall.”
“When I put this shirt on each morning I swear it vibrates like those fancy tooth brushes.”
“As soon as I put this shirt on the Bank called to apologize about trying to foreclose on my home.”
“I have been wearing this shirt for about 15 weeks and I have not needed to wash it! You don’t put this shirt on your torso you put it on your soul.”
Etc.
Some had caveats — they attracted no supermodels, experienced major increases in body hair, thought the shirt would be better with one wolf and three moons. Wolves might seem like a guy thing but the T-shirt artist, Antonia Neshev, is a woman, as are some of the enthusiasts. One wrote that buying the shirt “was the best decision I’ve ever made, including the decisions I made to go to college, to marry my husband and to continue taking A.D.H.D. medication.”
Even if some of it is pretty un-P.C. toward the stereotypical wolf-shirt wearer (way too many references to meth labs, Chuck Norris and trailer parks), the communal commentary is like a new shared literary art form.
Mr. Govern, whose review has been rated as helpful by more than 7,000 Amazon readers, said he was not even aware of the online frenzy until an Amazon representative contacted him on Friday to see if he would talk about it. “I tell my parents and friends that it’s sad, but this is probably the most impact I’ll have on the world in my life,” he said.
Mr. McGloin says wolves are perennial best sellers, ahead of horses, tigers, dolphins, dragons, Celtic crosses and the rest, so the wolf spirit had the potential to go viral. Still, to move from parody to icon at such warp speed is stunning. A competing T-shirt seller, Zazzle.com, has already jumped in, promising a classy wolf shirt for refined tastes: “Have your wolf and eat it too with this modern take on a classic garment.”
On an understated black background, it reads:
Three Wolves
Howling At
The Moon.
Think a T-Shirt Can’t Change Your Life? A Skeptic Thinks Again
The New York Times, Published: May 24, 2009
As the kind of guy who doesn’t need any particular item of apparel to get in touch with my inner animal spirit, I was skeptical when my friend Steve and his daughter Dorothy started enthusing about the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt and attendant Internet culture phenomenon. Yeah, right, I thought.
But ... after I put on the T-shirt, immediately grew back all the hair I’d lost decades ago and got a seven-figure contract to star in a kung fu romantic comedy along with Maria Sharapova and Scarlett Johansson, I had to admit I was wrong.
Brian Govern, a 32-year-old law student in Glassboro, N.J., had no idea what he had started when he wrote a similarly over-the-top review on Amazon.com of the T-shirt, which shows three wolves howling at the moon. Employing the snarky spirit of online humor, the review began:
“This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened.”
The magic, it turned out, was not so much the undeniably totemic power of the shirt, now endorsed by about 700 other similarly rapturous, if not entirely serious, reviewers, but the lesson in the inscrutable power of online culture that it provided. Like the butterfly wings creating the tornado, Mr. Govern inadvertently helped set off an almost impossible marketing bonanza and pop-culture craze: The shirt has been Amazon’s top-selling item of apparel every day since May 19, and it has morphed into one of those instant icons of Internet culture.
“This is something a lot of companies spend $100 million trying to do and for us it just happened, and we embraced it early on,” said Michael McGloin, an art school dropout and creative director of the Mountain, the New Hampshire-based company that made the shirt. The Mountain has gone from selling 2 or 3 of the shirts a day to 100 an hour on Amazon. “You could not dream of getting this worldwide notoriety for a T-shirt, but it became a viral visual,” Mr. McGloin said.
Mr. Govern, a student at the Rutgers School of Law in Camden, N.J., who hopes to go into intellectual property law, picked up on the shirt’s somewhat unfashionable, blue-collar appeal when he came across it on Amazon. (Note to commentators on patrol for liberal elitists — his politics are mostly conservative.) He reported that once he put the shirt on, women, apparently sensing some irresistible, brooding lone-wolf power, began flocking to him in droves. Just for wearing the shirt!
He concluded: “Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women.
“Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the ‘guns’), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark.”
A few others chimed in over the coming months until the shirt and Mr. Govern’s comment were picked up first by a site called CollegeHumor.com in early May, then by Digg.com and others. Suddenly, everyone and his dog had a similar experience to share.
“When I opened the package, the focused radiance of the shirt actually burned my shadow onto the wall.”
“When I put this shirt on each morning I swear it vibrates like those fancy tooth brushes.”
“As soon as I put this shirt on the Bank called to apologize about trying to foreclose on my home.”
“I have been wearing this shirt for about 15 weeks and I have not needed to wash it! You don’t put this shirt on your torso you put it on your soul.”
Etc.
Some had caveats — they attracted no supermodels, experienced major increases in body hair, thought the shirt would be better with one wolf and three moons. Wolves might seem like a guy thing but the T-shirt artist, Antonia Neshev, is a woman, as are some of the enthusiasts. One wrote that buying the shirt “was the best decision I’ve ever made, including the decisions I made to go to college, to marry my husband and to continue taking A.D.H.D. medication.”
Even if some of it is pretty un-P.C. toward the stereotypical wolf-shirt wearer (way too many references to meth labs, Chuck Norris and trailer parks), the communal commentary is like a new shared literary art form.
Mr. Govern, whose review has been rated as helpful by more than 7,000 Amazon readers, said he was not even aware of the online frenzy until an Amazon representative contacted him on Friday to see if he would talk about it. “I tell my parents and friends that it’s sad, but this is probably the most impact I’ll have on the world in my life,” he said.
Mr. McGloin says wolves are perennial best sellers, ahead of horses, tigers, dolphins, dragons, Celtic crosses and the rest, so the wolf spirit had the potential to go viral. Still, to move from parody to icon at such warp speed is stunning. A competing T-shirt seller, Zazzle.com, has already jumped in, promising a classy wolf shirt for refined tastes: “Have your wolf and eat it too with this modern take on a classic garment.”
On an understated black background, it reads:
Three Wolves
Howling At
The Moon.
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