Whilst working at Pod1, we created a viral campaign for Lastminute.com with the aim of promoting their adult range of gifts for Valentines. It was a competitive pitch and so we had to stand out.
... and stand out we did. The result was a spoof news story targeting a fixed demographic of women who might be interested in this product.
The site isn't up any more, but thanks to the Way Back Machine (which keeps a cache of over 85 billion websites and pages) you can still see the original campaign in all its glory at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050205021411/http://www.bradnjen.co.uk/
The campaign generated almost 40% click through rate on a seeded email list and a ton of traffic for the client.
So it's easy to do viral then?
Actually no, and one of the biggest problems with viral is the perception by the client of what is involved. Essentially a viral campaign is a cheaper solution to a problem, in most cases driving traffic or awareness to a site, and with any 'short-cut' the results often don't live up to the hype.
Every week brands, individuals and agencies design viral campaigns for their clients and most get lost in the ether after a short period of time. Often too they will be a new take on an existing theme or game, and examples like this often fail to capture the imagination of the audience.
How many great viral campaigns can you recall?
For a viral campaign to work you need your audience to do your marketing for you by passing it on to friends. There are sites like MySpace and YouTube which make this easier of course by providing a ready-made audience as well as the free infrastructure for hosting video files.
However, it is these exact same sites that also make it harder for the viral marketer. Consumers have vast amounts of choice, and these sites are packed with home-grown content that can be extremely funny, saucy and/or violent, three of the greatest motivators for a good campaign to go viral.
So is viral worth it?
This largely depends on who your audience in and most importantly on how you determine success. If you want to reach out to new members of your target group and engage them with your brand, but keep realistic expectations on the volume you might reach, then viral could be your answer.
Although costs can vary dramatically dependant on the type of execution (i.e. video, animation etc), the one cost that is often overlooked is the seeding cost. Do not presume that your incredible viral concept will be picked up and take off just because you have built it. You should seed it online using social media sites, use your email newsletter, advertise it and generally promote the heck out of it until you have a critical mass.
There is no hard and fast rule to judging if one viral will work over another, but originality certainly plays a large part.
One of the best examples is the Coca-Cola and Mentos campaign where some bright spark noticed that if you add the two together the reaction can be huge.
A quick search on YouTube today for Mentos offers up 14,200 results with the top 3 videos having viewing figures combined of over 7.6 million. This is just adding sweets to a bottle of drink!
What you should always consider though is refer-a-friend mechanisms, and use them on your site, in your email campaigns and anywhere else you can. They won't give you 7.6 million viewers overnight, but they will have a steady and positive effect on your CRM database size.
We will look at how to maximise their value in the next email tips posting.
:~Dax~:
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