Whenever campaigns I've been around have deliberately attempted to do something viral it has fallen flat.

That's because astroturf is usually boring. And classic advertising doubly so.

Social media are different from broadcast media. You have to allow a greater amount of individual customisation of the message, and thus inevitably some deviation from the party line. Advertisers schooled on broadcast media are used to working with a captive audience, where simple repetition suffices to turn even the dullest of slogans memorable.

Being a cynic, I think it's perfectly possible to make successful propaganda aimed at self-selecting, non-captive audiences. But the phenomenon is so new that the propaganda professionals mostly haven't discovered how to do it effectively yet.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.