Jonah Sachs is co-founder and creative director of Free Range Studios, based in Washington, D.C. and Berkeley, Calif. Free Range Studios created the highly successful viral marketing campaign behind the Web-documentary “The Story of Stuff.” The 20-minute film takes a look at our wasteful production and consumption patterns, and examines the social and environmental impact it has on our lives. The documentary was written by Annie Leonard, who narrates the story in the foreground while stick-figure animation further illustrates the story-telling in the background. Since the Web documentary’s release in December 2007, it has been viewed more than 5 million times.
On March 9, 2010, The Story of Stuff book will be released. Sachs, who is also the creative force behind the critically-acclaimed Flash advocacy movie “The Meatrix,” gives mediabistro.com the inside scoop on how “The Story of Stuff’s” message spread like wildfire throughout the Internet.
How did Free Range Studios earn its designation from Wired as a viral marketing leader?
Wired wrote an article in 2002 called “Watch our movie, join our cause,” and at the time we had produced a really successful string of movies for nonprofits. This was at a very early stage of social media where most people were just forwarding chain emails around. We used some simple flash animation techniques (that’s all people could download at the time on their 56k modems) to tell actual stories, instead of just sending out text. At the time that article was written, we had just developed a clean diamonds video ad for Amnesty International that got more than 750,00 views and made a real impact on Capitol Hill.
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| “Most of our stuff starts out unsexy. That’s why people hire us: to figure out the hook when it isn’t obviously there.” |
For something to be viral or lend itself well to viral marketing, the content has to be compelling. As producers of “The Story of Stuff,” how did you build a viral strategy about something as potentially unsexy and complex as the subject of a “materials economy system”?
Most of our stuff starts out unsexy. That’s why people hire us: to figure out the hook when it isn’t obviously there. What’s more unsexy than gross factory farming? But we made a campaign against it totally fun with “The Meatrix.”
The idea is to bring things to a human scale: All systems ultimately impact people, one at a time. When you take big abstract concepts and turn them into stories about characters, people begin to listen with a different part of their brain.
Joseph Campbell says all cultures share a common myth or story, populated by characters that live in our subconscious from ancient times. For instance, people evolved to run from woolly mammoths, not carbon dioxide. So if you tell them about CO2 in the atmosphere, they freeze up. Create a character out of it or those who emit it, and they will start to engage. Then there’s humor, of course, which helps us not take ourselves too seriously and pushes our pleasure buttons. These are all gimmicks in a way, but they really work.
| “The Web unlocks tremendous opportunity for people to share things they love, to become evangelists for messages they resonate with.” |
Why was did your team choose to use stick-figure animation in the film?
[Writer] Annie [Leonard] came to us with a long whiteboard lecture that people were really digging. We wanted to keep that feeling but activate it. The idea was almost as if Annie was illustrating what she was saying [in] real-time.
Do you think “The Story of Stuff” message is best served by the Web-based video distribution model, rather than making a true documentary film out of it and taking it out on the festival circuit or pitching it to television?
The Web unlocks tremendous opportunity for people to share things they love, to become evangelists for messages they resonate with. Love it? Just push forward and tell the world. This piece was originally designed to “arm the choir” so to speak, to help harmonize the message for activists. The Web has this ability to let limitless spread happen. If we had just shown it live to our “target audience” we might have reached thousands. By unleashing the power of Web sharing, we reached millions.
It’s also interactive. There are so many links from the movie to activist groups, and we really wanted to drive traffic to those groups. You can’t do that offline as easily.
Lots of people try to make viral videos, how did this one take off? What was the strategy to promote it?
I think “Story of Stuff” took off because it was a message that people intuitively understood. It’s like someone was showing them the water we’ve been swimming in. It was supported by a large-scale analysis that they couldn’t have done themselves, but we’ve all suspected that something is terribly wrong with our consumer culture. We just don’t know how to talk about it.
So the content was ripe to be picked up and run with, but it took the Free Range touch of making it more of a gift than a burden to see this heavy, potentially depressing information. We turned it into eye and ear candy with wacky illustrations and lots of subtle storytelling devices. Once we had what we thought was a great finished product, we reached out to all of our fans (about 125,000) and our friends in the blogosphere. That gave us the momentum we needed as a start, but viral hits are not really about promotion; it’s more like a natural blossoming that happens when the content is worthy of it.
How did you make the video easy to share, which is also key to viral marketing?
We did the usual tell-a-friend tools, created a non-interactive YouTube version for easy embedding and gave it a Creative Commons license so anyone could run with it. Everything on the Web is easy to share.
With viral videos, both amateur and professional, hitting the Web every day, what advice would you give media professionals so their Web-based videos are more than a hit-for-one-day wonder?
First of all, viral is not a strategy. If you set out with the hopes of something “going viral,” and do a million tricks to make it so, you’re likely to be disappointed. Create something that you think a smaller target audience will love. Focus on these people who you think are ready to hear your message and provide them something they wish they could have said themselves. Make it funny. Make a story out of it, with characters, plots and tension. Be respectful of their time. They are not your captive audience and can click off at any moment, so you have to delight them, not lecture them. If you can do this for a small core, they will begin to evangelize for you, opening their networks to the message. Now, if their friends and friends of their friends feel the same way, you get a viral hit.
The best projects are hits even if they don’t go viral. They ‘arm the choir’ with new ways to think about old issues and push the conversation forward by leaps and bounds.
| “Creating an intentional, message-based viral video is like trying to make lightning strike. It strikes naturally on its own all of the time, but you can’t harness that. Making it strike where and when you want it to takes strategy and expertise.” |
Do viral video-makers have to be controversial to be successful online?
No. That’s the mentality of old school media. Create a controversy and get on TV. Viral video makers just need to create something worthy of someone’s time and worthy of their address book. You can be more respectful of your audiences. You don’t need to be sensationalistic to get attention. I think fun, inspirational messages do better than controversy for the sake of controversy.
Do you need a large budget to create a viral video?
Let’s say “large” is tens of thousands of dollars, just to define terms. The answer, I think, is yes and no. Much of the most viral content out there is totally homegrown — moments captured on dad’s camcorder that catch fire or an unexpected mishap in everyday life. People actually are starting to prefer this kind of low-production value, honest-looking stuff. But these home video pieces don’t carry a message. Encoding a social message into a viral video takes a lot of thinking and the expertise of a great writing team. It also takes a great director and even for less fancy-looking stuff, a talented production team. Creating an intentional, message-based viral video is like trying to make lightning strike. It strikes naturally on its own all of the time, but you can’t harness that. Making it strike where and when you want it to takes strategy and expertise, and this often means spending more money.
“The Story of Stuff” is more than 20 minutes long, but most viral videos are shorter. How did you overcome that “length” hurdle?
We knew this message couldn’t be meaningfully delivered in five minutes, and because this was not meant to be a viral hit, we weren’t worried about making it longer. We figured that 10 years of peeling back the curtain that Annie had been doing was easily worth 20 minutes of someone’s attention, but not everybody’s. Well, it turned out lots of people felt the educational component was so strong that it was worth 20 minutes of their time. I get antsy watching anything on the computer after three minutes, but I think a lot of people sensed that there was something critical in the message and stayed tuned in. “The Meatrix” was designed to compete with things like “monkey sniffs own butt” on YouTube. But “Story of Stuff” wasn’t designed that way. It’s more of An Inconvenient Truth approach and, like All Gore’s PowerPoint presentation, it unexpectedly caught fire.
“The Story of Stuff” Web site obviously plays a strategic role in getting the film’s message across. How did you go about deciding how to design it so people could easily access the information they need to take action?
Full interactivity between Flash and video was emerging when we launched “The Story of Stuff.” So we did some fun experiments with putting the interactive components into the video itself. At any time you can click to stop the movie and find out which NGOs are working on the issues Annie is talking about. This innovative video approach got the attention of some of the tech geeks out there and that helped us expand into yet more circles.
What are the latest technologies or innovations available to viral video marketers these days?
I think you’ll see many more customized videos in which the viewer’s interests and personal information will be incorporated into the video itself. Look for something like this from Free Range this fall.
Interest in viral online marketing has yet to wane — will it ever? What comes after viral marketing?
Internet viral marketing is only beginning its run. It will no doubt evolve, but it will never lose its significance. Think of how blunt an instrument billboard advertising or a television ad is. Those are messages shouted out to everyone and their mother from sources that hold almost no trust in the mind of the receiver. The only virtue is that it reaches so many people that someone is bound to listen. Now look at an online viral message: It can be adapted, tweaked, commented on, mashed up and customized to suit any individual. It’s not shouted — it’s tactfully passed from friend to friend. And as long as people have been able to communicate, the most trusted source of information has been our own social networks. Online viral marketing doesn’t only have the potential to change advertising; I honestly believe it could be the technique we use to transform our society and create a sustainable future.
Jennifer Pullinger is a Richmond, Va.-based writer and communications professional with more than 10 years of experience in marketing, media relations, and journalism.
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