Samsung has soiled the purity of the Overly Attached Girlfriend meme

It’s every marketing company’s dream to create a viral video for their clients. In the world of online and social media marketing, there’s really nothing more difficult than to expose a brand to millions of people who really aren’t wanting to see a marketing message.

Samsung and the agency they hired to promote their solid state drives, The Viral Factory, committed an atrocious and taboo act by making a “viral” video centered around Laina Walker, a.k.a. Overly Attached Girlfriend. Attempting to piggy-back off of a meme like this is bad form. First, it’s only known by the small (but growing) portion of the population that is aware of the meme, namely the Reddit and 4chan communities. As social media communities go, they are not the type to be swayed in technology purchasing decisions by an ad that says nothing about the actual technology.

Second, it’s a play with a singular hope – that Reddit will love it. They won’t. Without Reddit traffic, this will be a semi-popular video at best. It will get views as it will be featured by some of the top tech sites, but it’s not going to get the millions that I’m sure they promised Samsung (at least not without artificial help). They hit the wrong target audience with the wrong technique and it deserves to fail miserably.

With that said, good for Walker. She’s been a good sport with her popularity, willingly taking pictures with any Redditor she runs into. It’s rare that the subject of a meme gets to cash in. She can’t be blamed for an ad company’s poor judgment. I hope they paid her a nice sum.

Here’s the video. Overall, it’s not terrible. It’s the principle of the matter that is fundamentally at fault.