Internet Marker

How do you make a viral web hit that scores more than 7 million views in 24 hours? Film a two-minute clip in 45 minutes, keep to one location and rely on friends and family for cast and crew. Of course, it doesn’t hurt if you’re friends with comedian Will Ferrell, that your foul-mouthed 2-year-old daughter is hilarious or that venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road think you’re funny.

The rocket success of The Landlord, a video short made by former Saturday Night Live writer Adam McKay and his long-time friend Ferrell isn’t too surprising. What is, though, is that VCs from Sequoia Capital, known for backing the likes of Apple, Google, YouTube and Yahoo, had the foresight to set the whole thing up.

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I like watching the Lakers play at home. On TV, the arena is cast in black, or the stands for the most part are dark, and the floor, the court, glows. The way the game is recorded on video, the focus is on the court and the players. It gives it a movie like feeling appropriately in the land of movies. This makes me think of a photographer who re-enacts scenes and takes pictures of them, making photos like paintings or nearly movies sets. But what I like about this is how the focus is on what’s on display. In the Laker game it’s the court and the players.

Not long before, the artist devoted a full year to ‘’In front of a nightclub'’ — a picture of young people standing outside a Vancouver club at night. The shoot took so long because the club Wall found, on a heavily trafficked thoroughfare, could not be photographed as he wished. There was no place for him to stand with his tripod and large-format camera. So he had the club exterior — the columns and grille-work of the facade, the gum-spotted sidewalk, the concrete curb — reconstructed in a studio. One assistant worked for six months dressing the set. Read more at the NY Times…

Once you’ve created a site centered around something you’re passionate about or think is unique and not being done as well by another site, it’s time to promote the site. Try to syndicate content, submit pages that might be popular or unique to Digg, buy ad space on StumbleUpon or Adbrite, send out a newsletter, test some PPC traffic, post messages on blogs about your site, and so on. Experiment with your site and content that is unique, funny, strange, and or could become viral. Do some testing with relatively cheap traffic sources and see if you’re getting some viral traffic from these sources. Have your tried answering a question at Yahoo Answers and leaving your site’s URL? Have your joined a forum and responded and answered questions, left your site URL when appropriate? Don’t spend a bunch of money but do some small tests and then go from there.

I once got an email from a friend five or six years ago after I’d just come back from Europe and had broken up with a girl I was seeing. But, what was interesting, or an epiphany for me that I sometimes forget is for whatever reason that email, which was just a simple message to a bulk list of friends, described where the email was coming from and what it was like. They were playing in the snow in Sweden and just planning a party. But, somehow, the idea of a kind simple email or any kind of phone call, letter, email, or reaching out just to let someone else in on a slice of their world and happiness caught me as special in that case.  Perhaps because I had just come back from a trip and a breakup. That’s what I want to try to do more regularly, send messages that are glimpses into the world I’m living in at that point in time. In some ways it’s a service, it’s a reason for getting applause and well deserved.

Right now, as I write this, I’m listening to Modest Mouse. I love these types of examples, a band creating music to give others pleasure. Sure, they need to make money, but these guys would be making music and songs anyway. Bands like this and Built to Spill. Sometimes we don’t realize how easy this is to do, get applause that is.  Bands like this give it all out.

My Article Meant for the Onion:

If you’re homeless and live in the downtown area of San Francisco, or in a high traffic area, say you stand on or near the freeway, please contact us.  Are the homeless online yet though?  Will they see this article?  We’ll need to do some flyer campaign—maybe drop pamphlets down on areas where they sleep.

For the homeless, rates will vary upon your sleeping pattern, alcohol intake (could be a positive depending upon if you’re a mean or jolly drinker), mental state, and energy (wave sign versus no movement—the right movement catches a person’s eye).

Also, if you have a creative way to promote your ‘work for food ad’ which will become say a Crest White Teeth Ad, dancing or playing music, rates will increase—we’ll work out a fair revenue share.  We may have a way for you to become a home living person, but then you’d still have to spend a lot of time outside if you wanted to keep your job in advertising.

We can calculate CPM rates by doing an analysis of the traffic levels in major ad placement (homeless placement) positions.  For instance, downtown, at Powell and Market, a heavy traffic zone, so rates and earnings for the homeless will be high.  Strategic placements along the freeway are also well paying spots and receive tons of eyeballs, the look and try to quickly look away look, seeing something you’d rather not see but can’t ignore—still bodes well for ads.

There’s also a very persistent man who walks up and down the financial district, now and again, during an election campaign, he’ll hold up a sign for a candidate rather than the one related to Star Wars and an Alien Nation, don’t know if he’s been recruited or not, but hopefully he can be brought on board as an ad publisher.  He works hard.

It’s simple, rather than holding up a sign saying, ‘work for food’, you can hold up a sign for a particular company, whether it’s a dentist or hamburger ad.  Since you’re homeless, your attire will often play into the advertiser’s message.  Those who see you won’t want to look like you (no disrespect) or become you, so they’ll be more apt to buy the advertised product or catch up on debts they owe, if you’re promoting a credit card for example.  A few products or niches that might work well could be banks or healthcare or insurance, don’t lose your shirt or home–make sure you’re protected.

Plus, views and passersby might not realize you’re actually homeless, maybe think it’s a joke or a game, all the better, their attention is what we want.  Have you seen the caveman Geico ads, instead of a caveman we’re enlisting the homeless man, something that you’d think would be obsolete by now but isn’t yet extinct.  But this is no joke.  This is no Seinfeld episode having the homeless push the rickshaw.

Have you seen people on the corners holding up signs for companies that are tucked back behind a main road or a man standing near a company which is going out of business?  They are often homeless looking individuals holding a sign that at first thought you don’t quite equate with a business but rather a message more individual, like help or need food, money–not representative of a company.

But as this becomes more common, homeless people wearing logos or holding up buy this or that signs, people will grow accustomed and normalized to the new form of promoting. I think the dissonance of seeing someone holding a sign or ad or dressed in a bear costume, will be accepted and people will be happy that the homeless have a job and not dressed so stylishly hip.  Doesn’t it seem like there are a lot of homeless people with good taste?  I often see a homeless person with a leather jacket or sweater that I want or would wear.  I’m wondering where he got it.  Could I pay him for it?

The homeless often work much harder than most.  Have you stood outside all day, while hunger holding a sign.  It’s like the employees at those busy fast food restaurants, where for minimum wage they punch in numbers and politely deal with impatient customers.  I think they too work much harder than most, why don’t they supplement their income by wearing an ad, since they encounter so many people and eyes all day—like an ad to raise the minimum wage and erratic homelessness.

Can the immigrants who pick up cans and bottles be persuaded to where an ad on their backs?  They too work too hard I think for what they must earn from recycling bottles and cans.  Let’s lump them in with the homeless and we’ve nearly got an advertising network of publishers that can be categorized and segmented.