Pullman's Muse

Published: 04-26 2006
Title: Burke and PR
Topic: PR

Still fumbling through stuff about viral marketing, which is how i came across the last post, and found something with the typical title of "The Nine Rules of Buzz" (was Letterman responsible for the ubiquity of this method of arrangement or is it just that people won't read anything but bullet lists from a computer screen?).

Item 5 of the 9 is "5. Connect the unconnected. Take two items that are seemingly unrelated and put them together to create something new."

Burke: Perspective by incongruity, Permanence and Change, 1935.

Same idea, totally non-viralent. Too abstract. Doesn't lend itself to a bullet list.

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Published: 04-26 2006
Title: Bernays is alive and living in Japan
Topic: PR

Interesting piece at something called "AlphaMale" that reports on how KitKat became the number one selling chocolate bar in Japan.

Says Wikipedia: In recent years, Kit Kats have also become very popular in Japan, a phenomenon attributed to the coincidental similarity between the bar's name and the Japanese phrase kitto katsu, roughly translating as "I hope you succeed!" This has reportedly led to parents and children buying them for school examination days as a sort of good luck charm.

All true. But it didn't happen by coincidence. It happened by a brilliant, subtle, incredibly patient advertising and public relations campaign.

Year 1: Hotels in Tokyo began giving complementary KitKat bars to students who came to the city by the thousands to take the fiercely competitive university entrance exams. The KitKat was presented as a little "lucky charm". Students were surprised and touched. They didn't know the candy giveaway was sponsored by the manufacturer.

Year 2: The advertising agency behind this stealth campaign wangled some news stories (not ads) about the hotels' candy giveaway. The reason for the stealth: Japanese young people are suspicious and scornful of advertising.

Year 3: Some ads began to appear. They didn't look like ads. They were cute little stories about teachers, mothers, students and the lucky charm. The ads were fiction, but real Japanese moms began packing KitKats for their kids when they left home to take the exams.

Year 4: Real people began to appear in the ads that didn't look like ads. No product was ever shown. Just a subtle little KitKat logo.

Even more interesting is the virulent vituperations in the comments section:

Ugh. This is an example of everything that is wrong with the infotainment industry today. News is manufactured and sponsored by corporations hoping to influence personal gains. Unless it is manufactured and sponsored by governments hoping to influence popular opinion (see embedded pro-US news stories in Iraq).

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