Kleening up

I guess this is negative word of mouth week here at Murketing. While I was away recently, somebody from Not An Alternative sent along this Youtube link, of some activists prankishly inserting themselves in a Kleenex marketing stunt.

The marketing stunt was the Kleenex “Let It Out Tour.” This involves the brand showing up in various cities, and inviting regular old folks like YOU to sit in front of a camera, tell a story that makes you want to cry, climaxing with you actually weeping into your Kleenex. Or something like that. The site says: “Here’s your chance to participate. You might even be featured on letitout.com or included in future let it out™ commercials from the KLEENEX® Brand!”

It’s not clear to me how much this is a ripoff of Jet Blue’s ripoff of David Isay’s work, but that’s another story. Either way, it’s a complete mystery to me why anyone would want to participate in something so transparently phony. But I guess plenty of people do.

Anyway, when the tour arrived in Times Square late last month, activists associated with the Greenpeace project Kleercut were among those to get in front of the camera. After telling a standard tear-jerker, they would then say another thing that makes them sad is the forests being wiped out to make Kleenex. Obviously these confessionals won’t make it into an actual Kleenex ad, but videos made by the pranksters have gone up on YouTube, and have gotten some circulation on the Net.

Could this spark a massive consumer backlash against Kleenex? I doubt it.

But that’s not exactly what the activists have in mind, or at least it’s not the whole picture. As one of the activists in the video explains: “A lot of their money that they spend on PR is put into campaigns like this. If we can show the shareholders that the money they’re using for this PR isn’t effective, and they’re wasting a lot of money, it’s gonna cause shareholders to hopefully back out and demand cleaner, more forest-friendly products.”

Persuading shareholders? Why bother with that! If it’s true that one determined detractor can do as much damage as 100 positive mentions do good, then shouldn’t they simply ignore the shareholders and fight directly in the marketplace?

I know that everyone says consumers are more tuned in to green issues these days, but I think it would still be pretty tough to win this fight in the marketplace. However, it’s plausible that these activists can amass data (how many hits, how many views, etc.) that could be packaged as evidence that there’s a potential backlash. Convincing shareholders to believe in that backlash might be a challenge, but it more likely than trying to convince the public at large.

Coming tomorrow: One last post about word of mouth, backlashing, and murketing.