Chatroulette for Marketing? Not Unless You Want to See…

A few months back, Chatroulette was all the rage in the news. Every reporter from every national outlet was talking about the hot new social media tool, Chatroulette. (For a good laugh about all the news reports, watch the Daily Show’s take on the whole thing below… tee hee…)

But if you somehow missed every one of those reports, let me fill you in. Chatroulette is a site developed by a Russian teenager still living at home with Mom and Dad that randomly pairs you for a video chat with people across the world. If the person who comes up isn’t of interest, you click “next,” which has created the term “nexting.” Fun, right?

Well, it pretty quickly went downhill, turning into a site that is “71% male, 15% female and 14% pervert.” Um, with the demographic being highly male, just use your imagination as to what you might see a lot of . Southpark also did a great episode (warning: adult content) making fun of Chatroulette.

But on to its marketing potential: is there any? Eh…

Pretty much not, unless you’re marketing to perverts, but I thought I’d show you a few pretty creative ways some different folks are using it anyway.

1) Improv Piano Guy

This is so funny! A guy did a video of himself on Chatroulette playing the piano and improvisationally singing a song about however who ended up with on the video chat. Even better, the musician Ben Folds did something similar live during a concert. Pretty fun!

2) The Travelocity Gnome

If you’re Chatrouletting, you just might come across the Travelocity gnome! He sits there, doing nothing obscene, with a little sign encouraging you to stop video chatting and start vacationing!

Courtesy of ChatrouletteVideos.com

3) What’s Your Reaction?

Lots of people get on Chatroulette dressed up in a costume or doing a silly dance, etc. just to get people’s reactions. Might make for a funny marketing video if you can cut through all the unsavoriness.

4) Come Find Me!

We also heard tell of a comedian putting out the word on social media that he was headed over to Chatroulette and to come find him. We think that’s a pretty fun idea too, as it creates a bit of  a “hunt” to see if you can find him.

In Closing

Overall, I think that Chatroulette is best left to the 14% mentioned above, but if you feel compelled to do something really creative, I’d stick to coming up with a silly idea, hopping onto Chatroulette and getting people’s reactions. Get it on video and use a clean version of it later on your own site or YouTube channel.

Here are a few more good posts and websites on Chatroulette:

Chatroulette Being Used for Marketing? Say It Ain’t So!

4 Fun and Crazy Chatroulette Videos

ChatrouletteVideos.com

Got any ideas for marketing with Chatroulette? Share them!