Successful Viral Marketing Campaigns
Levi’s Big Flip
Levi's Big Flip
When Levi’s first assumed an alter ego (“Unbuttoned Films”) and uploaded a YouTube video titled “Guys backflip into jeans,” it wasn’t expecting sky-high exposure. But since its May 2008 debut, the two-minute must-share video — and its subsequent press coverage — has helped the denim giant reach an estimated 100 million people.
Hershey’s Sweet Parties
Hershey's Sweet Party Viral Marketing Ad
Hershey’s partnered with word-of-mouth marketing firm House Party to let 10,000 people dole out Hershey’s new premium Bliss chocolates at sponsored house parties. The soirees lured nearly 150,000 guests, and House Party estimates that they have shared their bliss — and their Bliss — 10 million times.
HBO’s Winning Cocktail
To promote last fall’s edgy vampire series True Blood, HBO created fake “Tru:Blood” beverage ads, vampire tolerance PSAs on YouTube, and a seemingly functional vampire-human dating site called LoveBitten.net. The stunts helped True Blood’s Sunday night viewership grow 66% over the course of its first season — faster than The Sopranos did.
Coca-Cola Zero
In the spring of 2007 posters proclaiming that “Zero is More” and that “Zero will give you life as it should be” started to appear all over Northern Europe. These posters also contained a date, April 1st, and a link to a cryptic website hosted at zeroismore.xx (xx being the corresponding TLD of the countries the posters appeared in).
People began to wonder, and more importantly talk about what revolution it was that would be taking place, and all over the Internet you would find discussions pertaining to the meaning of “Zero“. Of course when people realized that it was simply a new flavor from Coca-Cola, they might have been a little disappointed. The guys behind the campaign however were most certainly pleased with the amount of buzz that was generated. As an example of how successful the campaign was, I can mention that at one point during the summer they were not able to meet the demands because they were short-supplied with the trademarked black bottle caps the Zero bottles feature.
Batman – The Dark Night (movie)
The movie might not be screening for another eight months, but the early marketing efforts Warner Bros have made to promote it already stands as a bright and shining example of just how effective a viral marketing campaign can be, even within a limited budget.
Starting out with only a simple teaser page featuring the image above, fans were ecstatic when they proceeded by clicking the image and found themselves redirected to a page that featured a District Attorney Election promotional poster for a known character from the Batman Universe named Harvey Dent. This page again sent us to the real trick of the campaign (a site which is no longer active), another promotional poster, only this one defaced and seemingly mockin Harvey Dent. This page would also let users interact with the campaign by entering the email address which would give them a code that would reveal a few pixels of an image hidden “under” the defaced campaign poster.
Of course people immediately spread the word in order to get the full image revealed, and within hours the page instantly became popular on various forms of social media, and generated a lot of interest from online publications including blogs and newspapers. Naturally it didn’t take more than a few hours before the entire image was exposed, and it contained a somewhat creepy rendering of Heath Ledger portraying The Joker, which is another character in the Batman Universe.
I Love Bees – Halo 2 (video game)
The I Love Bees campaign which was launched with the initial marketing efforts of the video game Halo 2 is arguably one of the most intricate and detailed viral marketing campaigns to date. Structured as an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) the whole campaign gave no obvious mentions of any game.
It started when the first Halo 2 trailers quickly flashed a link to ILoveBees.com, a site about beekeeping that had apparently been hacked and taken over by someone who couldn’t be identified. The author, known as Dana, after finding that her site had been hacked, then created a blog asking people for help in order to get her website back.
The campaign generated a lot of attention, both from existing Halo fans, as well as new ones that were intrigued by the I Love Bees ARG. It was concluded when the players of the game were invited to a “Training Exercise“, which of course was simply a chance for those following the I Love Bees game to play Halo 2 before it was released. Participants were also given a DVD which among other things included a personal thank you message from one of the fictional characters created for the ARG.
Radiohead – In Rainbows (music)
After dropping hints about a new record even though they weren’t attached to a record label, Radiohead shocked the entire music industry when they in the beginning of October this year announced that they were giving away their album for free through their website. While downloading the album, fans were given the option to donate any sum they felt appropriate.
A month later, we can already state that this is one of the most effective marketing moves in the history of music. Even within two weeks, they had “sold” over 1.2 million albums, and on average each buyer had paid $8. That is almost $9.6 million in gross, all from a marketing campaign without any middle men, and practically no budget at all. What can we learn from Radiohead here? Think different, be radical, and people will take notice. Especially if you are already one of the most popular bands in the world.
Could Radiohead have earned more money from their album by releasing it the traditional way? Probably, I honestly don’t know what they earn these days from direct CD sales. The fact is however that most large bands earn the really big money through concert tours and merchandising, and I can assure you that Radiohead have, with this unexpected move, gained a lot of attention, trust and goodwill that can not be bought for money, and their alternative income streams will most certainly reflect that.