VIRAL MARKETING STARTS WITH ME

VIRAL MARKETING STARTS WITH ME.

For years now I have been trying to reinvent the wheel or come up with that million dollar idea that every body's got to have so that I can, at least for a moment, sit on top of the wave of public support and ride it for as long as possible, and hopefully off into the sunset.

I have coined phrases (Plan B -yes, that was me....) and tried to rejigger old ones (I Am Living Vicariously Through My Credit Cards...) and mixed them together on canvas and in drawings. This process has, I admit, only small returns on my investment as I have not become rich or mythologized as I had originally thought. It occurred to me recently that maybe part of my problem was shooting at the wrong audience, as I tended to point my attention towards the rarefied  art market. Hey, it worked for Andy Warhol, I thought why not me. But now I set my sites on the mob. Anyone owning a computer who looked at blogs, this would be my domain and I would one day rule the cyber universe, even though I barely know how to download a photograph. I am a new man now, living my clean life existence with all of the extra money and time from not buying alcohol or cigarettes  or even coffee, what possibly could stop me from generating some brilliant new material that would take off like a rocket ship and cause all the planets to Aline? What could possibly get in my way of Global Viral Marketing my way to the center of the universe, I ask, rhetorically.. . Well, the answer is chemical depression. Recently I have been feeling really shitty and full of gloom. I don't know if it was from the chemicals, the ones that I have been depriving myself of, or if it from having to look at the world in its unvarnished form (if you will allow the metaphor of drugs as varnish). So I have come to the realization that I am not going to go back and find out if what is missing is what I am missing. I have been down that road many times and recognize that all my vices were lots of fun, but alas, not a means to the ends that I was looking for. No. What this global viral marketing campaign needs is a very simple central premise. A simple smiley face to remind me that I can do it. A cheerful and catchy positive phase, that keeps on coming (I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...).

What I need is just some positive juice. In these grim economic times, I have decided to become a ray of sunshine. Oh- sure, maybe a cynical or satirical ray of sunshine, but I am only going to "go positive" from here on out. I am going to think "big" and not let the realities get in my ways. I have decided to fore go my drugs and replace them with delusion.

Yes, viral marketing begins with me. If I am going to get what I originally set out for, I am going to have to lie and cheat that smile onto my face and make it stick. Because everyone knows that a smile can be an infectious thing, and everybody loves a winner...And the Toothless Alcoholic is going to be the biggest winner of them all! You'll see.

David Kramer