I want one

There has been a lot of successful viral campaigns that get a lot of press within the blogosphere and while many of them are extremely cool and do much to gain eyes for a product there is one that that is probably more viral than any others for the simple reason that it could very well change a corporation from the ground up.

Robert Scoble is well known for his time spent at Microsoft as their blogging voice to the world at large and in no small way could be attributed with changing many peoples opinion of the company. Whether that change will be long lasting now that he has moved onto other ventures remains to be seen.

And while no credit should be taken away from Robert for his efforts I don’t think his work will have the same long lasting and possible real corporate shifting of attitude as a simple cartoon that was drawn one afternoon on the back of a business card by Hugh Macleod. With a few simple lines and a short to the point smartass saying Hugh created what has become what will probably be his most memorable cartoon.

Now that might have been as far as it got – just a simple but incredibly brilliant cartoon as part of his collection on his blog. But then it was spotted by Steve Clayton – one of Microsoft’s talented folks in England and at that moment I would surmise he had one of those great A-HA flashes of understanding and thus was born one of the best viral campaigns.

I am sure that there was probably more than enough hemming and hawing in the offices of the legal vultures at the Redmond Monolith but even by then it was too late the Blue Monster was loose. While the Blue Monster may not be officially sanctioned by Microsoft it is being spread far and wide – conference by conference – handshake by handshake. It is appearing as stickers on laptops – it is being copied by other adventurous souls to use on their own business cards and now even has its own page on Facebook.

The lasting effects of the Blue Monster is still to be seen but the brilliance of it; accidental or not, is in my opinion unequalled and both Hugh and Steve may have contributed many things to their respective professions but if the Blue Monster does effect the changes to a monolith that it has the potential to do then this could be a crowning achievement that benefits all of us.

My only bitch about the whole thing is that as much as I would love to have a poster of the Blue Monster hanging  on the wall of the spare bedroom I jokingly call my office the chances of it happening are about as the same as hell freezing over. This is due only to the nature of how the Blue Monster moves through the world of conferences and face to face meetings and being a cranky old fart who doesn’t travel in those rarified circle I will only be able to see what I think is one of the best viral campaigns from afar.

In the meantime my hat goes off to Hugh and Steve for giving us the Blue Monster.