Moroccan brands are catching the wave of Viral Marketing and "Bad" Buzz Strategy

| ديرها غير زوينا خايبا، توصل توصل

Bad news will make it around the world and back, before good news even get their shoes on. It seems that marketers have long understood that, and wrapped their heads around the power of bad buzz.

A viral marketing strategy, is a winning strategy for all types of brands. An unprecedented video, an ad, or a banner is put out into the world and everyone is talking about it. This type of practice is not exactly new news in the world of marketing. Yet, it’s only recently that we’ve seen Moroccan companies catch the wave.

In order to really ensure the success of the viral marketing strategy, brands should be unconventional and original, and what better way to achieve that, other than doing things the “wrong” way.

Recently, two Moroccan brands have made headlines by launching a viral marketing strategy, and have consequently created lasting impact in minimal time. First one of which is Umnia Bank, the new and first Islamic bank to launch its services in Morocco. The subsidiary of CIH Bank first made news when it put out an outdoor advertising poster that hid the street-art drawing of Hendrik Beikirch in Marrakech.  The outrage prompted by Umnia Bank on Social Media resulted in them removing the poster and apologizing.

A month later, the language learning center British Workshop joined “The Bad Buzz Club” with their recent controversial billboard, portraying a figure holding a gun to its head with the message “If you still don’t speak English, go kill yourself.” Given the controversy it struck, the billboard has, of course, been taken down.

The principle of the bad buzz formula is as simple as it gets: Three strategic steps that ensure real impact at as little cost as possible.

1. Putting out a distasteful social message. These types of social messages vary from offensive billboards to misplaced posters, but the goal remains the same: launching an information, an image or a video that aims at generating a strong and negative reaction among the cybernauts.
2. Get the distasteful social message buzzing. The information is relayed, shared, criticized. The “shameful” post has gone viral.
3. Removing the distasteful social message and apologizing to show that the company listens to its customers. The brand finally decides to speak up to give an explanation, apologize or even deny. The brand’s response is again picked up by social networks either to exonerate the brand or to criticize it even more. This opportunity is in turn used to start another spiral of social posts, resulting in more engagement and increasing the brand notoriety.

Let’s face it: Marketers are ready to do anything in order to boost their brand presence. It appears today that simply hearing the name Umnia Bank or The British Workshop, or seeing their logo is enough to remind us of what their businesses are about. The bad buzz strategy is remarkably effective to get your brand name out there, especially for the launch of a new product. Nevertheless, one may wonder about the limitations entailed by such strategies. Evidently, putting in place a Bad Buzz Strategy is accepting to smear the brand image and jeopardize it. A bad buzz strategy comes with its own set of risks, and should therefore be handled with care and precaution.

We have yet to see the ROI of such campaigns on both Umnia Bank and The British Workshop’s Sales growth, but one thing is for sure though: we, marketers, love doing things out of the box.