Category: viral marketing

Recently Demi’s husband took a shot of her behind, while bending over in panties. He later posted the photo in Twitter and challenged the CNN news chain to reach 1,000,000 Twitter followers before him.

Of course she still is very attractive at 46, but the picture is not enough for normal viewers to permanently subscribe to Ashton Kutcher’s pointless ramblings in Twitter.

However, more than a million non-normal viewers subscribed to his Twitt and he won the challenge.

This is exactly what drives me to the issue of how difficult it is for a non-celebrity to spread ideas �no matter how good� across the Web.

Publishing an idea by itself is usually pointless. Most news publishing sites receive 100 postings per minute, and the good ones are quickly covered by the immense amount of bad ones. I only obtained a limited success by resorting to very specialized and expensive techniques, like SEO or gray hat Google ranking methods.

Websites, ideas, photos, articles, press releases and ebooks share similar difficulties for getting known and reaching their intended audience. We website promoters use different techniques, some routine and some creative to get the message across.

Being creative is very important. We’ve always heard that if a dog bites a person it is no big news. But if a person bites a dog, it is. In other words, improbable facts are more newsworthy than regular ones.

Back to Demi�s back, it is improbable for a loving husband to take advantage of his wife celebrity status to show her intimate parts to the world. And Demi is not only cute but gentle, because she took it lightly. If I dared to show my skinny wife’s parts to the world I would sleep in the doghouse for a month. Or worse.

I cannot stop thinking about why this particular picture became so widely famous among men everywhere. What would have happened if the sneaky Ashton would have pictured another part of Demi�s anatomy? This is an important philosophical issue for me. A view of her groin would have been too daring and easily attributed to anyone else. Her boobs are not so distinctive after surgery. I vote for the butt, the ultimate male intrusion.

What if Demi were posing for the photo? It would not have been the same. She posed for a million photos so far, some available on the web if you search for an image under �Demi Moore (before breast implants)�.

Following this line of thinking I appointed a model to pose naked as illustrations for my ebook on Naked Business Proposals, and it was not enough to bring the huge amount of audience I expected. Of course this made me extremely angry. Why is it that the ignorant, superficial, celebrity suckers, lusty guys of this world would rather watch Demi’s butt than read the insightful book (my opinion) that took me such pains to write?

Maybe Ashton succeeded because he did not need to. He probably will never have to work again in his life, even if he divorces Demi and hires very bad lawyers.

Maybe the photo got famous because it was pointless, while most of my marketing actions try to sell something, and the readers immediately sense it and turn away.

Maybe the idea of a competition between a pointless photo and the CNN giant motivated the public to support David against Goliath.

Maybe stupid things are more prone to become news than smart ones.

Maybe her butt is just too good.