#FromHarlemToKorea: The world has gone
viral!
By
Theodora Manyika, P11251409
Six months ago the words “Do
the Harlem Shake!” would have evoked nothing more than a raised brow. If you
hear that sentence nowadays, you better get your camera out! Of course, that is
the idea of trends in the first place, but in the past it took a lot more time
and effort for a trend to become internationally recognized. We live in the age of participatory culture
and people become global stars in the blink of an eye. Although now officially
dead, because of the surplus of attention they received, the best recent examples
of the power of viral culture are Gangnam Style and Harlem Shake.
“It’s a Gangnam
Style world and we are all living in it.”
– Josh Groban
What measures success of a PR
campaign? Is it the likes it has gotten on Facebook, the re-tweets, the Youtube
views or maybe the word of mouth? No. You know your campaign has succeeded when
an aloof, distanced place like North
Korea makes a parody of it. Because that’s
exactly what happened with Gangnam Style. It got so internationally recognized
that even North Korea,
in which the access to Internet is highly restricted, caught on with the trend.
Gangnam Style is probably one
of the most successful PR campaigns for the last couple of years. And yes,
don’t be fooled – Gangnam Style is a well thought campaign that took a lot of
planning and effort. Behind Gangnam Style and PSY is YG Entertainment - a
famous in its country South Korean P-Pop label. But instead of going on with the strategies
behind this campaign, which are, without any doubt, very well thought out, I
will outline this – PSY is perhaps the only Korean politically engaged activist
that you and I can name.
Surprised? Behind the catchy
tune and crazy dance there is actually a message- PSY ridicules Korea’s class
stratification and the impossibly rich lifestyle that the “Gangnam boys” lead.
So apart from creating an extremely successful campaign, making an enormous
amount of profit and making people all around the world ride invisible horses,
Gangnam has also risen the awareness about social problems from across the
globe and an interest in a radically different culture (and who knows, maybe
tourism levels have risen too!) “It’s a Gangnam world and we are all living in
it”, indeed.
Harlem Shake – “In the future everyone will be famous for
15 minutes”
As for Harlem Shake -
this is a trend that has more than 8 million re-tweets. To envision how many
re-tweets that is, imagine a small country, and every man, woman, baby,
granddad and grandmother with a phone in their hand, re-tweeting. Yes, you get
the idea.
Harlem Shake’s success,
unlike Gangnam Style is based entirely on luck, or rather, on participatory
culture. It became famous after a group of Australian students uploaded their
video doing the famous “shake” and the rest, as they say is history – 50, 000
different remakes of it, featuring people in their offices, the Norwegian army,
various fundraising organizations and British singer Ed Sheeran. Oh, and let’s
not forget the thousands of flashmobs, of course. The track was recorded nearly a year before it
went viral, not to mention that it was entirely sampled, so its popularity is
not due to originality. Hence, some might say its success is simply luck. Yet,
the key to viral culture is somewhere else.
Harlem Shake might not have a political
message to shout out. It also doesn’t have any powerful corporation behind it.
Nevertheless, Harlem Shake teaches an important core lesson about the essential
thing to make a trend viral – engagement with the audience. Let people engage with
your trend on a personal level and give them the ability to reshape it the way
they want to.
In conclusion, two very important lessons can
be learnt from Gangnam and Harlem
Shake about making something viral. First, it must be unusual and novel. And
second, everyone must be invited to the party.
A detailed PR report on Gangnam style is available from: http://www.10yetis.co.uk/how-gangnam-style-went-viral.html
A few more lessons on viral from Harlem
Shake by Social Media Today: http://socialmediatoday.com/cbm23/1300886/viral-video-how-to-harlem-shake-guide
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