This talk was mainly about how a user generated idea from the internet can turn into a social media success overnight. It is only 3 minutes long and is definetely worth watching. It is very funny, a lot more funny than the long summary that I wrote.
The talk focuses on “GreenPeace” which is an organization to help save humpback whales from the Japanese government on their whaling campaign. In the effort to do this they came up with the idea of putting a tracking chip in one of the whales and also name the whale in order to help the public identify with it.
GreenPeace set up a poll for the public to come up with names and at the end everyone would vote for their favorite. There were some very thoughtful names and also one name that stood out: “Mister Splashy Pants”. The idea of Mister Splashy Pants went from a 5% following to a 70% following literally overnight, thanks to social networking sites that promoted it. GreenPeace was not behind the name, (they wanted a more serious and thoughtful name) so they decide to let the voting continue for another week. This action sparked a social media outrage and resulted in face book pages being created, face book applications being created, which in turn, took off into people in the real world creating signs to promote “Mister Splashy Pants”. After the final vote, “Mister Splashy Pants” ended up with 78% of the vote which was a total landslide in comparison to the next highest vote of 3%.
The clear message here is that anyone can come up with and idea, broadcast it on the internet at virtually no cost, and it can become not only an internet sensation but a world phenomenon overnight. The fact that the internet is free, anyone can access it, it’s easy to upload an idea, video, or other form of media, and it has the potential of billions of people viewing it everyday is what makes it so appealing.