Monty the Penguin and Newton's Third Law

Isaac Newton's Third Law of Motion (1687), crudely paraphrased, says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  In the virtual world of social media we can often see the same thing playing out.  We described this in an earlier post about Russell Brand and #parklife: the publicity surrounding Brand's new book Revolution sparked a popular counter reaction.

Picture: The Independent

Monty the Penguin is an advertising campaign for the retail group John Lewis.  Reputed to be costing £7 million, the eagerly awaited ad was launched yesterday (6 November) and instantly went viral on social media.  Monty has his own Twitter account, @montythepenguin, and within 24 hours had gained 14,000 followers.  The Facebook page was a little slower starting, but the Twitter hashtag #montythepenguin was already 'trending' by the next morning.  The video was available from various sites including John Lewis itself, but the YouTube version gained an astonishing 4 million viewings in a day.  More importantly, perhaps, there were nearly 500 comments posted during the same period.

The supporting website at John Lewis develops the narrative, encouraging audiences to buy the music via iTunes.  There is a range of interactive games to engage with, plus the all-important Monty merchandise,  42 items including clothing, toys and soft furnishings.

The mainstream media obligingly covered the campaign's launch in glowing terms.  One dissenting voice was bt.com which talked of "outrage" at the £95 price tag for the cuddly toy version of Monty.  This did nothing to stop the item selling out in the first day, making it already this year's must-have Christmas toy.  Anticipating this, eBay listings started to fill with "official" Monty merchandise as well as knock-offs.

So, where does Newton's Third Law come in?

Amazingly, within just a few hours of the launch of the official Monty advert, a parody appeared.  Redshirt Films, an independent production company in York, launched their take, titled #penguinmadness.  Meme and countermeme. Those of us who had failed to share in the euphoria of the original John Lewis launch could now join in the counter-attack.

From https://twitter.com/ConnieMTC

But whereas in the case of #parklife, the video mashups featuring Russell Brand started being produced when the meme was already well established (these films didn't exist but they should have), in the case of Monty the Penguin Redshirt Films kicked the whole thing off.  The countermeme spread through social media, of course, but was also picked up by the new mass media such as Huffington Post.  At the time of writing #penguinmadness is not yet trending, but the video has had 40,000 viewings and the idea has some traction.

Other reactions are starting to appear.  Take this example for Twitter's Connie Chamerlayne
(@ConnieMTC), for example.

The 'reaction' has started.  However it is not yet equal and opposite.