Viral video disaster: what NOT to do
17 Comments
The last few days my twitter stream was filled with people commenting on a viral video campaign gone wrong. Hong Kong’s Langham Hotel tried to create a series of videos promoting their hotel, but they backfired pretty badly.
The videos featured “tourists” having bad experiences in Hong Kong, then retreating to the hotel to recover.
Langham quickly responded by removing the videos and stopping the campaign. (Above video was republished by a blogger.) In a statement, the hotel said they were disappointed the satirical nature of the campaign was misunderstood.
Actor/marketing consultant Kay Ross distanced herself from the campaign, and gave her side of the story.
What do you think: was this just good fun, or did Langham cross the line here?
In my opinion, this campaign flopped due to lack of respect. How did they expect to attract more travelers to Hong Kong this way?
Elmer is right: don’t promote yourself at the expense of the city you’re located in.
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Excuse me?! I wouldn’t say that I “distanced myself from the campaign”. I merely pointed out in my blog that I was just an actor hired for a few hours to play a role, and explained that even though I’m a marketing consultant, I was not hired in that capacity and had no involvement in devising the concept for the campaign. I wrote that blog posting in response to some people who accused me of being racist. I am not ashamed of the spot I appeared in (many people have told me they think it’s very funny); I won’t apologise for my part in it (as some people have demanded I do), and I’m grateful to the PR firm that offered me the acting role.
As is I’m left with the feeling “if it’s so horrible there why would I go to Hong Kong”
I think the concept could have worked, but the execution was very poor. For example taking the first video; imagine if you showed the guy taking tourist photos on the star ferry, up the peak, outside a temple, on a double decker tram …. with increasing rapidity so that a sense of urgency is created. Let him get a little lost/hot/bothered and then show him strolling into the calm hotel lobby and checking his photos while having a drink at the bar.
Create one with the nightmarket and all the excitment, show some street theatre at night, a disco, a party, show some seedy stuff as well. Then show the tourist releived to get back to his quiet room end with the tagline “we can be your oasis in a city that never sleeps”
You’d have a similar concept, but the viewer would have reasons to visit Hong Kong, and a reason to stay at the Langham.
(and in the second one – the end shot when she’s eating – it’d be a thousand times more effective if there were a pan shot of the delicious food rather than a perrier bottle in the way!)
I guess my point is that with more thought, and better execution these could have worked.
I kind of like it.
They should have left it online, it’s clearly having the desired effect and has gone viral. It probably will still get them a ton of incoming links even with the videos removed.
From a location point of view, people though the movie Trainspotting was a bad advert for Edinburgh but it worked out alright in the end. I think you can even do a Trainspotting tour in Edinburgh now!
Wow…those were scary and terrible. I don’t know how that was supposed to appeal to their target market: world travelers at all.
Why travel internationally if only to get stuck in a hotel that isn’t all that interesting or notable–except they don’t serve chicken feet. Its anti-trade, anti-trade, and anti-commerce. Brilliant!
Also…love the “Amazon Race” esque music in the background to make it sound more adventuresque.
I’m glad they decided to pull the plug on that poorly planned hotel marketing strategy.
@Kay – I understand you did not plan the campaign and were only hired as an actor. I don’t think you are racist, but I think the campaign was poorly designed and executed. I do appreciate you sharing your perspective in a blog post.
@Louise – I like your examples of how this could have been produced differently.
Yeah, I wouldn’t call these videos racist, but grossly insensitive and totally nonstrategic.
The humor would be there if these weren’t already glaringly negative stereotypes of Asians metros like Bangkok or Manila. Ever see an “American” documentary about Vietnam from the 70s explaining how the people are dirty and uneducated thieves?
Recalling that racism (even in “harmless” humor) for tourists isn’t good for tourism plain and simple.
You wouldn’t catch someone promoting a visit to Philadelphia with a joke video about gun violence, New Orleans with jokes about poverty, or LA with race problems.
@Louise McGregor
I saw the food next to the Perrier and it was just egg rolls. I doubt the egg rolls were significantly different from ones abroad and outside of Sino-Asian travel. The video’s strategy of going from a Chinese delicacy (chicken feet) to egg rolls to encourage tourism is like someone being discouraged from eating fresh pasta in Italy and encouraged to eat canned spaghetti.
I’m sorry, but I think Kay crossed the line with her blog post. I think it’s fine and acceptable to write a post sharing your side of this (heated) story, however to compare yourself to an Auschwitz guard? As a Jew I found that to be way inappropriate and insulting. You made a commercial. A bad commercial. And as much as we cling to social media (esp. as marketers), your commercial didn’t threaten or hurt anyone’s lives. You weren’t committing egregious crimes against humanity.
Your response was worse than the commercials themselves.
I don’t know of too many people who choose a hotel and then decide on the destination. It’s usually the other way around – destination first.
A hotel or a PR firm that thinks they’ll get ahead by denigrating their destination, or thinks of themselves as bigger than the destination are clearly out of touch with marketing reality.
Poor concept. Poor execution. Bad result!
WOw, those were 2 very horribly made “viral” promotional videos, or in this case, de-promotional. It felt almost as though it were made from some fresh graduates from a local college, and wasn’t checked by a supervisor before being released (Yes, i’ve had similar experiences seeing other students producing this S*** from studying at Vocational Training College here in Hong Kong).
I completely agree with Ms McGregor, it is a nice concept but with horrible execution.
As marketers, irrelevant to whether on traditional, digital, or social mediums, a key component to a campaigns success is by really knowing our audience.
They obviously didn’t know their form of satirical humor was not really funny to many.
This is truly a viral campaign gone wrong that makes me wonder if they are monitoring their online reputation image. It does seem as though they are responding rather quickly as they have already removed the videos from their site and issued a statement. There are numerous free tools available that allow people and companies to track what Internet users are saying about them in the blogosphere, or otherwise there are other more robust tools such as ours at Synthesio where we continously monitor various sources worldwide.
Hotel managers and executives need to be alerted immediately when something like this happens; it truly is a shame the way this campaign played out.
I gotta chime in, somewhat as a hypocrite. That’s because I really don’t think this deserves any attention at all, but I will post two seconds worth of thoughts here in light of that….
The videos were horribly done – so amatuerish that I almost believe that was a component of their inception and execution…. if not they struck gold with making something horribly good… like a b-movie, or mystery science theatre type stuff. It isn’t even that “bad good”, though . They weren’t offensive in any way. I cannot imagine how far of a stretch someone’s insecurities would take them to get to that point…
Dissect the specimens:
1) The guy’s stressed in a shopping area. That is a worldwide experience. Has zero to do with culture. He got stressed. Why he would run to an H&M is beyond me, but hell – who cares. Dude gets flustered, and runs home. That happens in all countries. How could that be racist?
2) She wasn’t hip on the cultural idiosyncrasies & differences of the cuisine. WHO CARES?!?!? Seriously. Just because she isn’t into culinary adventure doesn’t mean anything. She could be there for a conference from the midwest and just want a Hamburger.
If they really used the “dirty locals” wording, well.. bad choice of words, but it was obviously a joke. Hotels *DO* need to ingratiate themselves to the community and surroundings because that is what bolsters it locally…. but it isn’t like the locals would be totallly offended. I am sure they were just fine with it, or unlike us… ignored it completely.
Just my two cents. Hi everyone!
Michael
@hhotelconsult
That being said it was gold in the end because people like me, who don’t even want to talk about it, are. I didn’t know the property prior to this, but now I do.
What’s interesting to me are not the videos themselves, but the pile on effect once a blogger or two expresses a negative opinion. If we were to all be honest, we would admit that however much we enjoy travel there are times when unfamiliar circumstances can be trying. In those times a refuge can be most welcome.
Another thing to keep in mind is that not everyone travels to a destination because they want to. Think business travel. Remember “The Accidental Tourist”? With that in mind, the concept is spot on.
My impression is that this “backlash” is an insider phenom.- a bunch of marketers. OK, so you didn’t like it. Maybe it didn’t work. But the hotel was trying to be just a bit edgy, and you can’t do that while simultaneously making everyone happy. Imagine the next time you try to get a client to push the envelope just a bit. Why would they bother if it’s going to be a big risk with only a limited upside?
I am not convinced though that this didn’t work for the hotel. It got attention. It’s now the only hotel I have specific knowledge of in Hong Kong. I can only imagine that I would be more likely to stay there as a result.
Keith West
http://www.HotelMarketingSeminars.com
Michael and Keith,
Thanks for bringing objective viewpoints to this. You are both right: marketers can tend to be an introspective bunch, and maybe we over-reacted here. To my knowledge, there hasn’t been a significant protest outside the blogging or marketing circles.
When I posted this, I honestly had no idea people would respond as they did…I just thought it would be a good thing to point out.
As you say, the irony is that the hotel has achieved name recognition to some degree. Is no publicity is bad publicity?
Cheers
Josiah
I know… that always floors me, and I am contributing on that other post. I love memes, and find them intriguing. Viral = negative connotation of meme, I think… or at least a less academic viewpoint. I can’t wait until serious data is exposed about how much thought vs. luck goes into viral. I know some ad campaign people have said they built viral campaings… nothing happened. They threw it away online, and then that same campaign… sitting in the dark unnoticed… goes viral 6 months later. It is always interesting… your stuff always makes me think. That is VERY good… thanks!
@hhotelconsult