What do you do when a viral campaign fails miserably? Do you pretend everything is OK and carry on, or do you re-tool your strategy towards more focused targeting instead of the whimsy of madmen? I made a capricious and half-baked attempt at spreading some ill-formed tentacles across the World Wide Web and its all gone horribly wrong.
Those of you who are new to this blog may not understand what is going on here but you'll soon get caught up to speed. I've never done this before (fail). I'm usually good at this (I'm successful AND rich AND I drive a really nice car). Worse yet, I've let someone down in a way bordering on catastrophic.
A relatively unknown painter in the Philadelphia area named Matthew Green asked me to help him get his message out using the latest tricks of the cybersphere and create a vast network to spread the word about his project Five Miles From Times Square, a painting study and research project about the New Jersey Meadowlands, the very same place where Jimmy Hoffa was allegedly laid to rest, and the site of the infamous Miracle At The Meadowlands in the late 70's.
This fabulous project is being seen all over the world and what are people doing with this new found knowledge? Nothing. Nada. They're wasting my time.
I hate to admit when I'm wrong, but we went about this with no regard as to whether or not we were pushing the right buttons or stoking the most viable fires.
You're never 100% right on these things but the campaign's deficiencies can be traced back to inexperience and breakdowns in the following areas:
1) wrong audience/demographics of the worst kind
2) too many loose ends not sufficiently fleshed out
3) random networking connection threads with no logical endpoints
4) really shitty videos
5) indecent exposure
I have only myself to blame for dropping this Hot Potato. I was so upset over this that I almost wrecked my car on the Ben Franklin Bridge this morning. It didn't help that most of this was written via voice memo while driving, nothing but randomly strung together thoughts that make no sense and utilize very poor grammar. Fuck it. It is what it is. There will be time to sing and dance later. For now I gotta right this ship before it gets dashed to bits on the sharp rocks of failure.
On a side note, Green is submitting his latest painting from the project, Muddy Little Secrets #1 to a juried show in Dirty Franks Bar in December. Write a nasty letter to those creeps and tell them to include this wonderful new painting in the show.
–LM
