The Pink Glove Video: great marketing, but a cautionary note

Late last year, my cousin Mary Beth sent me a link to the Pink Glove Dance, an inspired bit of marketing from Medline.

For those who haven’t seen it, the video is supremely engaging, and shows folks from a Portland, Oregon hospital, doing some nifty choreography - all while wearing Medline pink surgical gloves (pink being tied, of course, to breast cancer awareness). I defy anyone to view this video without smiling. It’s just great.

 

Emily Macinnes Somers is the marketing person behind it, and a big old Opinionated Marketing shout out - however belatedly; this was widely blogged about in early December  - to Emily for coming up with something so engaging that it went ballistic-ly viral. I read that Emily did the choreography herself and, since it uses “real people,” the production costs were probably minimal. And, by now, a kazillion people have viewed it, giving Medline all sorts of almost free, highly positive publicity for their surgical glove product, in particular, and the company, in general. And this for a medical supplies company - not the sort of entity that would come to mind if you were thinking fun, fresh, and creative. It really shows to go you what imagination, verve, and thinking outside the glove box can do for you.

The cautionary note is that, once something goes viral, it’s out of your gloved or ungloved marketing hands.

When the video was making the rounds, it was often accompanied by an e-mail that said that Medline would be making a donation to breast cancer research when there were a million hits on the video.

Not so, according to Snopes.

But - unlike with a lot of the rumors that Snopes debunks - no harm, no foul. Medline does donate generously to breast cancer research and awareness, just not based on the number of folks who watched the video.

While there’s no harm, no foul for this one, the cautionary tale is that crazy and destructive rumors can go viral as easily as upbeat and positive ones do (probably more easily, given the tempora and mores).

Still, this is a really feel good, good marketing story.

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