Viral Marketing in the Fabric Industry?

Pandemic Labs Co-Founder Quoted in Industrial Fabric Trade Magazine.

Pandemic Labs co-founder, Matthew Peters, was quoted extensively in an article in the January Issue of the Industrial Fabrics Association Review magazine (page 42, titled “Catch the Fever”). The article, offering a high-level view of Viral Marketing, is filled with helpful quotes from social media thought leader Beth Kanter and Blendtec Director of Marketing, George Wright. The piece provides a brief history of viral marketing along with some valuable commentary and is a great read for anyone looking to catch up with the past few years of viral marketing news.

It’s interesting to see how each industry individually takes to Viral Marketing. It’s particularly interesting that, if this article is anything to go by, the industrial fabric industry seems to be very open to this new form of advertising. In fact, this article makes obvious to me a ridiculous assumption I was secretly harboring about “older” industries. Having worked in tech companies throughout my career, I had unconsciously assumed that non-tech industries were colder to these new technologies. Specifically, I had assumed that the earlier adopters of these types of marketing would come from the tech sector. Clearly this is faulty logic once I actually spend two braincells on it, and this article serves me a slice of humble pie.

The article embraces not only the history of viral marketing success (all the way back to the original BMWFilms), it embraces that history without the usual push-back from more traditional marketing thinkers that demand traditional marketing ideas and metrics. This excites me personally as, something I view as, an “old industry” is embracing a new technology better than most tech companies I’m working with!

In a similar, ‘tech isn’t as forward thinking as you’d assume’, vein Matt and I attended a tech industry panel event the other night that had a relatively high-profile group of panelists. In the Q&A, someone from the crowd asked a question that caused, in my mind, a very telling and depressing series of events. The question was, “What is the future of pre-roll video advertising?”. The panel took turns attempting to answer this question and it was painful! The comments ranged from, how ‘a study’ showed that pre-roll ads longer than 15 seconds actually “did better” than shorter pre-roll ads, to, how companies are now able to target pre-roll ads “better”. The small knot of social media folks I was sitting with started muttering unhappily. Did NO one see that pre-roll ads are demanding something that can no longer be demanded online? Do any of the CEOs of these extremely successful tech companies see that consumers will NOT put up with pre-roll ads since the exact video they hoping to watch is probably available in 10 other places online with no ads at all? Finally, after much floundering from the rest of the panel, Mike from Polaris Venture Partners saved the day with his dead-on, one-sentence answer “Pre-roll is dead!”. To me, the success of online, interruption-based advertising isn’t even a question. Its days are already numbered.

To sit and watch powerful tech people, who theoretically have some power over the future of my technological experience, not grasp the engagement marketing/interruption marketing difference, is unsettling. Couple that experience with the full-on embracing of viral marketing by an industrial fabric industry trade publication and companies like ours suddenly feel like they might be barking up the wrong industry tree when offering our services heavily to the tech industry.

Whatever the implications to the industry as a whole, the Industrial Fabric Association’s viral marketing article is a great read for someone looking to catch up with some of high level points on viral marketing.

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