A Case Study Into The Power Of Petition Marketing
A powerful yet very under-rated and perhaps also, less well-known marketing technique is petition marketing.
Petition involves a mass group of people coming together to champion a common cause.
Naturally, in such circumstances, feelings often run high. Emotions are stoked up. Passion are aroused.
And What Happens Then?
The show begins! The word spread. More people get into the act. A viral campaign vortex gets underway! The result – devastatingly effective.
One such campaign got started in the US to free Paris Hilton who was jailed recently. Talk about a cause. Free Paris Hilton? These people must have too much times on their hands!
Personally I can’t be bothered, yet many took the trouble to join the petition and word got out like wild fire. You know the great Australian bush fire? It is that fiery…
That Is The Side Dish. Here’s The Main Course…
This particular petition marketing campaign involves a good marketer friend of mine.
So what happened?
Alright, my marketer friend, lets call her CY, is a Malaysian Chinese.
She kick-started a campaign to urge the Malay-dominated Malaysian government not to prosecute another Malaysian Chinese, whose was accused of sedition.
What this Malaysian Chinese whose name is Namewee, did, was that he uploaded a rap video parodying the Malaysian Government, discussing race relations and a other few sensitive issues.
It’s a long story. One thing led to another and the whole episode got out of hand. Essentially the Chinese Malaysians felt that Namewee was just speaking the truth and they want to show their support for him. On the other hand, the Malays thought that Namewee was being disrespectful.
I don’t wish to go into details because of the sensitive racial nature of the whole affair. But what was clear, is that the petition was a success.
A success at least in terms of generating responses.
All she did was to leave some comments in Youtube with a link back to her petition site (http://freenamewee.blogspot.com/), and within a short period of time, got 79 comments. Mostly passionate ones defending the accused.
At the time of writing, the blog has garnered 179 comments. Surprisingly a lot of the comments, while pretty charged up, are pretty civil.
Okay, you may think 179 comments is not a big number. No big deal. However considering the fact that CY did virtually no promotional work other than the initial posting on Youtube, the whole result of the exercise is actually a rather mean feat.
The most powerful viral element is present here – word of mouth. That is the only way the petition could have reached 179 comments.
What Does This Demonstrate Again?
Highly charged affair. Emotional group of participants. One common cause.
An explosive combination. And that is the essence of petition marketing.
A powerful marketing weapon when utilized right.
Now, if you can imagine, some smart marketers could take advantage of an emotional issue, and lead people in. With the heavy influx of traffic into a site, do you think there are monetization opportunities?
The short answer – YES!
I’ll leave you to figure that out yourself. Alright, maybe I can start the ball rolling. Adsense. But that’s just one option. And you won’t earn a lot of money with that.
You have more ideas?
Let’s hear it….
[tags]Petition Marketing[/tags]
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