Raising Funds for Japan

Taking advantage of our extensive UK network, Youth Media got on board with current efforts around the world to assist in raising funds for tsunami-stricken Japan. Designers gave up their time at no cost to produce poignant messages encouraging students to help the Red Cross and these are currently being run across our university network thanks to participation by all our partner institutions.

A big thank you to our University Partners and designers for reinforcing the spirit of goodwill so reminiscent of the UK.

The Power of Interaction

Several ideas have been put forward for the success of Viral Marketing through New Media streams. The latest of these ideas highlights user engagement as the key point to a campaign’s success. A recent article on reelseo.com discusses the idea and truly raises questions and thoughts about human interaction with the marketing around us.

At some point in our lives, we have all been taken in by a simple sports related question game or have shot a duck or two in the hope that we would magically acquire acceptance by a major brand. This just goes to show how intrigue and interest bring about the sharing of data. This is no truer than on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Our quest for more ‘followers’ means we link ourselves to campaigns and opinions which relate to the social group we wish to be a part of. We continue to reproduce links on our accounts on behalf of big organisations. Why do we do this? Is it due purely to our wanting to be associated with the product in question or by people we don’t know? Or is it because we are interacting in the process and becoming part of the marketing team?

Our interaction with the campaign is what drives it. The feeling of being associated with others to a product or service of high reputation is merely the outcome of a well designed marketing strategy. We cannot escape from the fact that our interaction is key to the success of the product we choose to market ourselves. A viral campaign rests on audience interaction and campaigns are designed with this very much in mind.

The chart below shows how marketers view their social media usage, with the majority wanting to build a campaign on audience engagement:

Perhaps the biggest question that arises is how engagement will be used in the future. Will campaigns continue to become more interactive? Will Viral Marketing become a greater part of the world’s leading companies’ marketing plans? How will Apps and games help to drive this in the future? It remains to be seen, but what is clear is that the power of interaction and audience engagement is too great a tool to be ignored. It will be fascinating to see the evolution of marketing and how Viral will combine with Video to create interactive platforms for engagement. We are effectively becoming part of the greater cycle within marketing and it turns out we are pretty convincing sales people, particularly when it comes to convincing our own social network.