Unleashing the Ideavirus

Unleashing the Ideavirus
179
 www.ideavirus.com
Case Study: Why Digimarc Is Going To Fail
Looking at the world through the ideavirus lens makes it easier to prognosticate about a
company’s success or failure. Consider the case of Digimarc.
Digimarc is a fascinating idea. Create a tiny series of dots that can easily be hidden in
magazine ad. Then, if a consumer wants to go to the advertiser’s website, all they have to do
is hold the magazine up to the camera connected to their PC, and Digimarc’s software will
read the dots and automatically take the user to the company’s site.
Charge the advertisers a tiny fee per ad and everyone wins! The magazines win because it
makes their publications more useful. The advertisers win because it creates a direct and
impactful link between the consumer and the ad. And the user wins because she finds special
promotions or discounts on the site… without having to type in a pesky URL.
So why is it going to be an utter failure?
Because there isn’t enough money in the world to turn this into a success, and the shortcut
path of creating an ideavirus isn’t going to happen any time soon either. I know that I’m
going out on a limb here, as this technology has just been featured in 
Wired
and other
magazines and has gotten a lot of press. Still, bear with me….
First, there are few sneezers. The participating magazines have agreed to run full-page ads
promoting the service (if it helps their advertisers, it’s well worth it) but other than that,
who’s going to talk about it?
There are no promiscuous sneezers. No individual is compensated in any way for spreading
the word. There are no powerful sneezers. It’s not such a great, awe-inspiring or even totally
neat thing to do with your computer. There aren’t overwhelming discounts or secret bits of
information, because, after all, if the advertiser was willing to give a discount to a Digimarc
user, he’d probably be willing to give it to everyone, right?

---