Jinkela; Purposefully idiotic China ad creates massive viral success.

I found this on LRB’s forum; it’s an ad for Jinkela, some sort of fertilizer. What’s crazy is the clownish way they went to advertise it; and the surprising reaction from millions of Chinese viewers.

Here’s an interesting question; let’s say you are an unrecognized brand, and you want to go “viral” to spread the word as quickly as possible for the lowest amount of budget. What should you do? I get this question a lot, but mostly from established brands. The problem however is always balancing “viral” against “brand image”; ie: clients want content to spread, but they also want to keep to the same corporate guideline approved messages.

Now to those of us “in the know” this will never happen; people simply aren’t interested in traditional corporate messages, so no matter how hard you push them to view the ad, if it doesn’t strike the heart, it’ll never be spread.

Case in point, Jinkela; this campaign is so freakin’ idiotic and off traditional corporate guidelines that it’s spread across China’s internet like wildfire; even spawning parodies created by giggling fans. The problem with this technique is immediately apparent once watching the video: while the name is out there, the brand “emotion” is one of idiocy.

But is this really a problem, or a genius solution?

When looking at some other universally hated but very successful China campaigns like HengYuanXiang, you could make the argument that these clowns are geniuses and they’ve hit upon the holy grail (brand emotion notwithstanding).

But to understand this, you need to take a quick glance at the mind of the average consumer. I remember reading in some psychology book somewhere (maybe it was Ciladini’s “Influence”) that consumers are pretty busy; their minds running across many things at one time; so when they hear something bad about your Brand, it’ll register for a little while; but the most important thing is that at point of purchase, when looking at one brand vs. another; all messages of positive and negative fade away, and the consumer just looks to what they remember; or which brand name sounds most familiar.

This is the reasoning behind “any PR is good PR”, because at the end of the day, consumers are simply too busy to pay attention, and rely on subconscious echos to direct them at POS.

Considering this ad constantly repeats the brand “JinKeLa” over and over again and is spread and parodied by so many; when at POS, looking at JinKeLa vs. some other unknown brand, which are you likely to buy?

JinKeLa parody created by China netizens.

Most will go for what they are most familiar with; regardless of the way the message was delivered. This is how HengYuanXiang increases its sales year after year; and I would bet JinKeLa is also seeing a huge boost in short term sales.

Long term? I think there would be definite issues when going against established Brands on a worldwide scale. But if the goal is simply to ride a short term catapult into the collective consciousness, then this ad hits the mark, in an albeit idiotic sort of way.

Related articles from around the web.

• 5 Ways to Make Culture a Marketing Strategy (myventurepad.com)
• Lunacy Sales Kit (slideshare.net)
• Companies Realizing That Content Is Advertising Via Web Series (techdirt.com)
• Unique Selling Point or Positioning Strategy (smallbusinessbranding.com)
• Multiple types of stories drive maximum benefits (myventurepad.com)
• Half of Social Media Users Connect With Brands (mashable.com)
• “Grounded insights on how to engage consumers and how to make communications pay in changing times” (marketing.blogtanker.com)
• Relationships Aren’t Universal (altitudebranding.com)
• The Chinese crack down on Chinglish (brandstrategy.wordpress.com)
• China Marketing And Branding. Reading The Tea Leaves. (chinalawblog.com)

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Tagged as: Advertising, Brand, Business, China, Marketing and Advertising, Point of sale, Psychology, Public relations