Merlee Cruz-Jayme: When going viral suddenly has a new meaning for me in 2022

My youngest daughter just tested positive for Co-Vid this week. It looked like she got hit with the Omicron variant with a nasty cold and fever symptoms. The whole family was bewildered since she didn’t leave the house in the last two weeks. How the hell did she get it? From where? From whom? I needed to know more about it.

 

This January, the viral outbreak that greeted us was much faster, highly transmissible, with massive reach and target, moving touchpoints, and varying degrees of effects and experience.

I couldn’t help but observe how this virus affects the world today. It’s something we can’t see, yet it’s on everyone’s lips. Aside from massive awareness, there’s the feeling of fear, frustration, paranoia, panic, and stress. Most feel helpless and robbed of control and freedom in their lives after enjoying some normalcy during the holidays.

These facts made me think. It may sound absurd, but I couldn’t help but compare all these viral learnings to how we work. There are many similarities to pushing ourselves to create ideas to gain this significant, impactful effect. While caring for my daughter during her ten-day-ordeal, I started pondering how the pandemic accelerated some digital behaviors and technological trends. Thus, there was a surge for brands to demand more creative and innovative ideas to jump out of the digital clutter. We needed to be faster to get consumers’ attention, be the more prominent voice of influence, and be more transmissible and memorable on everyone’s lips.

Seniors to Gen Z have transformed lives, behaviors, and habits in consuming data, purchasing with e-commerce channels, engaging themselves in entertainment from streaming hundreds of never-ending episodes in streaming platforms and gaming. YouTube shorts, 7-minute Facebook films, to TikTok’s 3-minute videos have kept us awake all night. All kinds of virtual activations have infected work From Home.

So, as I researched the Omicron to help me understand my daughter’s indisposition, I discovered that I could learn a thing or two, or maybe five, from this Co-Vid-variant.

1. Undying persistence

This virus can only concentrate in the upper respiratory airways, unable to penetrate lung cells.

I could imagine its frustration. Unfazed by its failure, it tries to increase its power in its conquered space: the upper airways.

When blocked with so many barriers, a similar persistence pushes us to go beyond creativity and reality. Last October, Facebook has changed its name to Meta with a virtual reality kind of world. It continued to push forward in making its virtual reality suite and augmented reality services offer a seamless experience to its users. Meta has already hosted three virtual concerts on the Horizon Venues app. According to reports, these concerts have failed to draw in the crowds. Meta will not stop with a big flop until they get it right to penetrate this immersive world. It wants to be ahead of the competition. Failure is just the beginning.

While I can’t seem to fathom buying a virtual Gucci bag that’s more expensive than my real one, fashion brands have developed products and games to catch the fashionistas’ attention. Brands like Nike, Coca-Cola, Wendy’s have braved the metaverse as it persists in finding a way to connect with people who wants that immersive experience to escape. In collaboration with an Italian gamer Azalona, Dentsu Gaming created the Benetton Island. For better engagement with consumers, this island extended to Animal Crossing, where they could try on the virtual collection and even walk the runway.

The world of music, sports, fashion, gaming, and art will find endless ways to catch people’s attention and pockets with cryptocurrency buying intangible representations of anything they like, supported by NFTs (non-Fungible tokens) to help them escape harsh realities. I guess there’s no better timing for this than now.

2. “What you don’t see can hurt you”: Why Invisibility helps the Mission of Transmission.

This innovative virus built a career in infecting even the vaccinated population: The people who felt invincible to join the biggest parties of the year.

When someone infected talks, sings, laughs, or even breathes, aerosol particles invisible to the naked eye can move towards the area around him, up to 6 feet away. People around him with no mask protection will be hit by these, infected in a few seconds, and with symptoms in just a few days.
I can’t help but remember that scene in a Dustin Hoffman movie, “Contagion,” when they found a patient infected with a virus in another room. That look on his face after he looked at the air-conditioning saying, “it’s airborne,” was genuinely frightening to me.

When a brand’s mission in social media is 100% engagement 100% shareability, its campaign has to be hinged on cultural insight, honesty, and invisibility.

If there’s anything hugely successful online, it has to be genuine, organic, natural, and relevant campaigns. Nobody wants a brand to force its messaging on consumers. Remember that guy in a hoodie drinking Ocean’s Spray juice while lip-syncing Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 hit song “Dreams”? Nathan Apodaca shot his original selfie video skateboarding down an Idaho highway when his car died.

His Tiktok video went so viral that the famous band showed their appreciation by posting on their IG and Twitter accounts, mentioning both the guy’s name and the cranberry juice! Then, the CEO of Ocean Spray, Tom Hayes, mimicked the video. An “invisible” branding idea suddenly wins visible results. The viral video has made Apodaca earn donations and help, Fleetwood Mac’s song gains a spike in sales and streaming, and the brand Ocean Spray gets an increase in sales and demand.

Sometimes, brands need to be invisible to thrive.

3. SPEED like no other

Researchers found that Omicron multiplied about 70 times faster than delta. I studied the timeline when my daughter was exposed to her symptoms. It was fast. Thankfully, recovery was just as speedy.

I thought If brands want to be a real-time fascination and be in everyone’s interest, they need to be fast, engaging, witty, and continue to be interesting to catch on.

Oreo is an example of a fast and responsive brand that’s no stranger to real-time content marketing. Their highly successful Superbowl witty tweets and “The Daily Twist,” which posted responses to actual world events for 100 days, engaged hundreds of followers, dominating the social media scene. This brand continued to evolve from creating one of the best stunts in 2020, The Doomsday Vault to protect their recipe, to partnering with Pokémon last year and Batman this year.

Brands that are doing well during the pandemic are the ones that delivered experiences and services with speed and agility. Consumers appreciated their products quickly, pivoting in understanding their needs.

4. Mutation is the new ideation

Omicron’s most significant advantage is evading our vaccination immunity. It doesn’t want to slow down or stop. It constantly finds ways to create.

By definition, a mutation is “a change in a DNA sequence” and can come from DNA copying mistakes from dividing cells or exposure to chemicals or infection from viruses.

Similarly, when we think of ideas, we sometimes change existing facts, learn from past mistakes, get exposed to new technology or channels, combine and accidentally discover something worthwhile and life-changing.

The mix of emotions and innovations have paved the way to great solutions to world problems or health and wellness. Blending virtual and real-life gave birth to a unique form of identity. Many younger people found their true identity in the digital world – finding it difficult to identify where their ‘real’ selves start and where their ‘digital’ versions end.

As the power of specific communities flourishes, made stronger by the pandemic, creativity should push new ways to connect and engage. There is an emergence of communities instead of simply targeting consumers. Suddenly brands need to truly understand these communities by diving deeper into their world, the language they speak, their behaviors every day, the influencers or whom they believe in, and the ongoing discussions that mean so much to them.

Nike, for instance, has been creating content for crucial sub-communities to engage a more diverse audience. A U.S. fashion brand called Seek Collective makes its clothes with the dedication to transparency, authenticity, craft, and sustainability. All made in India; their products were in partnership with purpose-conscious communities and people. Twitter’s “2021 Year in Review” revealed 2.4 billion tweets about gaming on the micro-blogging platform in the world. That’s how big this world is. I was surprised to see my own country’s gaming community ranking sixth globally.

It’s time we genuinely engage, integrate, and grow with all kinds of communities. If there’s something that people hated during this pandemic, it’s being alone.

5. Quality above Quantity

Some scientists suggested that Omicron needed a small amount of its virus to infect others, even in a separate area compared to the previous variants. However, more data and studies were required to support this finding.

This made me compare this finding to our work, where most of the time, quality trumped quantity.

Every year, The Superbowl comes up with all brands spending their biggest bucks and ideas on getting attention and engagement like no other. It’s usually every creative and agency’s dream to get a brief for this event. Last year’s spot showcased big celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis for Cheetos, Will Ferrell and Awkwafina for GM, a CG version of Matthew McConaughey for Doritos and the Voice cast Adam Levine, Gwen Stefani, and Blake Shelton for 5 T-Mobile.

Unfazed with the stars and the glitter, limited production, and a small budget didn’t stop Reddit from coming up with a simple 5-second ad for the Superbowl. It was an unapologetic message to viewers that they could not afford a spot in the game. The last line hit me hard, “Powerful things happen when people rally around something they care about.” This low-budget TV ad was one of the most effective Superbowl ads with unmatched attention and memorability and even won a Cannes Lions Grand Prix for the Social and Influencer category.

Relevancy and honesty played a big part in this annual battle of big-budgeted ads. Embrace the truth and be transparent to your viewers. People love the underdog.

One client asked me before, “Merlee, can you create a viral ad for my brand?” I stared at him, trying to think of the best way to answer his question. I said, “No, you can’t just request that.” Many things make an ad viral. With all the tests, formulas, kinds of measurement our industry has, nothing beats authenticity, relevancy, and realness to touch people’s hearts and minds.
One thing’s for sure; you learn a lot from things around you. We have to keep on ‘obsessively observing’ to come up with fresh thinking, original solutions, and groundbreaking ideas.

2022’s first few weeks have given me tough challenges, but seeing my daughter recovering fast by the day, makes me feel thankful beyond words. I’m no scientist, but learning from this experience has jumpstarted my creativity like no other.

Merlee Jayme (pictured left, with her daughter Sabine) is Chief Creative Officer, dentsu Creative APAC.