As a Marketer, “going Viral” in many ways is the Holy Grail. What is the ROI on 2 million views? Or the massive exposure that YOUR company/agency receives from creating/producing it? But what happens when it backfires, as in the case of Kittywood Studios and Catvertising.
Anyone who has ever spent 5 minutes on YouTube knows that Cats Reign Supreme (sorry dogs, the fact that you like to do tricks and be cute works against you here). Four-legged feline superstars include Maru (over 10 MILLION views on just one video, plus a dedicated channel), and Keyboard Cat (over 19 MILLION views and counting plus a channel) who has made his way into pop culture and TV advertising. Both have spawned a flurry of copycat videos and they are all pretty enjoyable, but the originals are just that – original.
In August of this year, PixelsPerSecond launched Kittywood Studios. On November 10th, John St. launched Catvertising and an online onslaught of irate comments and bashing against them began… from VIEWERS! First, let’s examine the video before we go any further…
Kittywood Studios: Cat Videos Incorporated (569,000+ views and counting)
Catvertising (463,000+ views and counting)
Ok, same idea we get that. As Marketers, we know that sometimes happens. I even tried to use my cat Cletus Jefferson Corn in a video for PMC, but I cant get him to do anything and putting him in front of my computer camera resulted in a file deletion incident, so I used myself instead (1800 views and counting). But when it happens, and two or more concepts are out there similar to yours, that is just poor research and an poor estimation of the audience’s tolerance for such things.
In this case, John St. is under attack. They had ample time to do a search and see if the concept was already out there, make an informed decision about whether or not to proceed with their project, and if they did, position it correctly as to not insult the audience or disregard the original. Im not implying John St. didnt come up with the idea themselves, but a great idea already out there can go bad in less than a 2 minute video and the comments on their YouTube Channel are harsh. PixelsPerSecond has asked people to STOP emailing them and commenting that John St. has ripped them off and is directing them to make their comments directly to John St., and they are. It doesnt help that John St. is basically saying oh, yeah, we didnt know that was out there when we made this. It might be true, but if it is it’s probably worse as far as clients flocking to hire them to produce such things.
The controversy is causing all sorts of hits and comments and interactions and in that sense John St. is probably happy they are trending, but PixelsPerSecond will be the clear winner when the cat fur settles in my opinion because the AUDIENCE is on their side. So yeah, cats are a sure fire way to gain exposure, even when looking up links for this post I watched a few others and cracked up, but if you are going to use a gimmick to attract customers, you had better make sure it hasnt been done, and done well, before you launch yours.
PS.. YES, I know Mashable did a post on this 20 hrs ago. If I had finished my post last night, I would have been first! Thanks Neil Stout for sending me the link to Catvertising yesterday morning!
