The #Quirk: Doing It Right [#geekgirl]
For a while now I’ve been lazily developing a theory about a marketing trend I term ‘the quirk’. The quirk = the occasionally annoying [but mostly endearing] use of the whackjob absurd and/or novel in attempts to peddle product or sell services [alliteration #ftw].
[To be fair, the use of the quirk is much older than the Internet: it’s been prevalent in promotional bursts since (at least) the advent of broadcast media, though here I’m reffing its deliberate pairing with social networking rather than use in a one-directional platform like cinema, radio, tv etc. Also, the quirk doesn’t necessarily equate to viral, though most marketing boffins who attempt to leapfrog off organically formed viral media pray to their unspecified deities that it will].
We’ve witnessed the quirk in great gouts of captioned cat pics/videos, and watched it flourish in social media advertising packages like “The Old Spice Guy” campaign. When used successfully, it captures a target population’s attention through the offbeat presentation of lateral material designed to elicit an off-kilter emotional reaction [that bypasses logic or reason] resulting in high conversion rates. The quirk taps into emotional pockets designed with the novel in mind, a type of side-swiping of the traditional “pander to a consumer’s desires” type deal with an added bonus of immediacy through user-crafted feedback [think: a Facebook “Like” or a Twitter “RT”].
So what’s my theory regarding the quirk for all you impatient types out there yelling loudly in the background to get the feck on with it? It’s simply this: that alongside the bloated, privacy-killing blight that’s being increasingly perpetuated by popular social networking platforms [you know who you are], we’d better make sure we [as users] are aware of this type of co-optive manipulation bundled in cutez0r form. A hyper-awareness of this method of quirk advertising probably won’t save you from subconsciously falling for the product -or-service-wrapped-in-“lolwut?!”-or-“awww!!”-bait, but at least it might encourage you to selectively support those companies [or individual campaigns] you think are worthy of your time/investment/money.