Auravox

Viral marketing and Human Resource Management. They’re both hyped. That being said, they are actually tied closer together than I thought. Or should be. Both can have a significant impact on the public opinion of your brand. Viral marketing tends tries to effect in a positive manner, as intended, whereas HR Management can effect in a negative manner, as unintended. This switches on my own personal Lomborgisme - if the end result of an investment in viral marketing is to effect public opinion towards your brand, shouldn’t that investment be countered to the negative effects of poor HR management? In other words, if the negative effect of poor HR management outweighs the positive effect of viral marketing - then perhaps you should drop the viral costs and use them in your HR department instead.

I know. Viral marketing is easier to control. Easier to load with a specific message. It’s proactive or reactive, depending on the purpose. HR is something completely else. It’s defensive in regards to the aimed effect on public opinion. You can’t control when things go horribly wrong, you can only try your hardest. At this point, someone who accidently dropped by this blog will think: “Hey dude, good HR management can also surround a company with a positive buzz”. And he would be right. Except from the fact that it’s the negative stories that stick!

Now, if someone out there are about to write their business school thesis, consider this for a subject: “ROI considerations on viral marketing versus HR spend” - I would read it.

So. Anyway. This guy below got fired for his poetry at an Apple employee talent show:

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 25th, 2007 at 11:14 pm and is filed under English. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.