Birth of a Meme: Vuvuzelas Go Viral, Everyone Wins
For anyone following the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the vuvuzela is an impossible-to-ignore aspect of the tournament’s location. A traditional South African musical instrument, soccer fans have turned the now-plastic noise makers into the Jar-Jar Binks of the sporting world – loved by few, hated by most, ridiculed by all. The buzzing noise has gotten so bad that FIFA briefly considered a ban in response to players, commentators and broadcasters complaining about it’s impact on the game. Now, if they’d just stayed in the soccer stadiums where they belong, I’d have nothing to blog about. But the vuvuzela has become an internet sensation as well; that’s right: its trademark buzz has gone viral.
The first to take advantage of all the vuvuzela buzz was the British website Vuvuzelatime, which allows users to “Browse the web as if you were at the 2010 World Cup” by providing an overlay of a man blowing the hated instrument and, of course, blaring the equally hated buzz. To see it in action on the new Manning site, click here. Of course, others quickly jumped on the buzz bandwagon: There’s at least two Twitterers out there dedicated to making posts which imitate the horn’s sound, and a hash tag (#vuvuzela) to boot; Youtube has added an option to add the monotone hum to any video; and the techblog Mashable has even dedicated an article to their favorite Vuvuzela-themed tributes. This is, of course, ignoring Facebook groups, mobile apps and flash games which are too numerous to count.
Youtube's new Vuvuzela-izer. Also, a kitten in a hat.
All this attention means vuvuzela vendors are enjoying a huge windfall. One grocery store — in England no less! — has already sold over 40,000 at £2 a piece; their briskest sales measured one horn sold every two seconds so far. Vuvuzela producers are struggling to keep up with overwhelming demand, churning out an amazing 20,000 a day. These sorts of numbers show what happens when a product, idea or brand go viral – immediate, global exposure which translate into amazing opportunities for growth.
What is especially important to notice is the vital role the internet, and it’s social media features, have played in building up the vuvuzela hype. Emerging communication tools (Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Mobile web and apps) have been particularly well leveraged to spread vuvuzela fever and build it into something more than just a traditional African horn. It has become THE symbol of the World Cup. This is every brand builder’s dream and shows, once and for all, that if we want to grow and communicate online, it is no longer possible to ignore these marketing tools. We have to develop an overall online strategy that takes these traffic sources into account or risk losing out on being the next Big Thing.
