Big Warnie - a well executed and integrated campaign when 'social media and viral' were still the latest buzz words. First of the five part series here;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ-7MsY54j8
Stats on the campaign here;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGTCtd0ZSLU
http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/2006/cricket-australias-big-warnie/
Who can forget Carlton Draught? 162,000 downloads in the first 24hrs which climbed to over 500,000 before the week had finished;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH3GH7Pn_eA
Reading RoniJ latest blog; http://ronij-openroad.blogspot.com/2011/09/dark-knight-risesand-goes-viral.html had me dig deeper into what I think was one of the defining moments in 'viral marketing' - The Blair Witch Project.... I think anyone with an interest in marketing has read the story of how the horror movie, The Blair Witch Project was made for $22,000 and grossed $248 million at the box office, by generating massive pre-opening "buzz" online long before the public even knew they were reading about a movie.
The chat sites started picking up rumors of three college kids who were lost in the woods while on a film school project investigating stories about a witch. The kids were never heard from again but their camera was found. The film inside was restored, revealing horrifying sounds in the night woods....
It was a hoax, but for a time many on the chat sites were believers. But what is truly remarkable was how the hoax took on a life of its own, even before anyone heard that the supposed film found in the woods was coming to theaters. By the time the film was released, it had built up fever-level anticipation.
This brings me back to my original point of brands wanting viral campaigns - as these three guys who brought you The Blair Witch have formed a marketing company called Campfire http://campfirenyc.com/. They specialize in creating viral marketing campaigns which they refer to 'story telling', which I would call generating content...
That said, their work includes the Audi campaign called "The Art of The Heist," which lit up web sites, blogs, cell phones, message boards and even had real-world stunts. The results were better than Audi could ever have hoped for, with 2 million hits on their web site, 4000 test drives and 75% more dealership leads.
Viral marketing is not a disease, but it is "buzz" (the 'old school' water cooler conversation) that spreads from one person to another by becoming a topic of conversation - its WOM for the digital age...
I love the Carlton ad! I agree that viral marketing, if properly executed, could be worth a hell of a lot for any organisation. The trick is, in my view, to get it right though. You must offer something. You must be entertaining, humorous, clever or surprising to actually allow the campaign to further than the upload. If you achieve some of these things, the rest will come for free, people will start talking about it, sharing it and ultimately get to the point where they may even take action (such as test driving the Audi). The thing with the Carlton ad that I think made it quite successful is that they made it funny and great to look at! It offered the people that watched it something to talk about and a reason to share. Beer companies are usually very good with their marketing and this is just another example of a beer company that used some form of marketing to their advantage. I shared that vid quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteGreat post!
Ross
Hi Mike, interesting post. I had forgotten about The Blair Witch Project, I remember all the talk about real? or fake? Great use of viral marketing. I've been doing some reading about viral campaigns and found in a few articles the reference first being used for the Microsoft Hotmail service - based on the definition of 'network-enhanced word-of-mouth' back in 1997, your examples show how far things have come since then!
ReplyDeleteI remember the Carlton ad as well, so well executed. Didn't it start just by the employees sending it to their friends without any incentives?
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing to think that The Blair Witch Project premiered 1999 and still created such a huge online buzz...
Yep WOM on global steroids!
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