With an operating budget of just under $10,000, Paramount Studios was not expecting tremendous numbers from the release of Paranormal Activity in theaters. To their surprise, however, the movie theaters across the country did not want anything to do with the low budget title; regardless of how good it was. Since there was absolutely no advertising budget available, a viral campaign on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter was the sole forms of advertising.
Celebrity premiere parties were held around 13 college campuses to raise interest
Horror fans were taped watching the film to show their reactions
Promo clips and fan reactions were posted on many social networking sites
The Twitter campaign released new info during Twitter’s slowest hours- 2-6 AM
By creating one of the biggest viral movie campaigns of all time, hundreds of thousands of fans literally demanded that the film be brought to their local theaters. In fact, over 150 fans were listed within the credits simply for making the most noise around the net, which is a big reason why a $10,000 film grossed over $107,000,000 at the box office and an additional $16,000,000 on DVD. More about this study can be found here.
For the curious among you, know that Tayto crisps come in the following mouth watering flavours: Cheese & Onion, Salt & Vinegar, Smokey Bacon, Ready Salted, Prawn Cocktail (!), and Tex Mex.
Found a great interview with the team behind the wildly successful Old Spice campaign. In the interview, they talk about how they decided to employ various social media strategies, and which people to send personalized videos to.
One interesting disclosure was that Old Spice had built a custom application that ranks the influence level of people tweeting Old Space, providing the team with a shortlist of people to produce customized YouTube responses to:
We’ve built an application that scans the Internet looking for mentions and allows us to look at the influence of those people and also what they’ve said. They’re working in collaboration with the creative team that are there to pick out the messages that: 1. Have creative opportunity to produce amazing content; or 2. Have the ability to then embed themselves in an interesting or virally-relevant community. It’s not just picking people with huge followings, it’s a really interesting combination.
Sometimes elaborate tactics aren’t required to stimulate a viral response; all it takes is one great idea. Ad agency McKinney’s idea was to take holiday ecards to a new level by putting an employee inside a giant inflatable snow globe for four days and broadcasting it on a microsite 24 hours a day. Visitors could receive “season’s greetings” from Snowglobe Boy and chat with him.
In a week, a small seed of a Facebook page, a YouTube video and about 1,000 emails to McKinney’s friends attracted about 50,000 unique visitors, network press coverage and lots of search traffic. The buzz was astounding. The campaign generated 105 million PR impressions across all mediums.
Okay, I applied for the job. So did everyone I know last year when Queensland, Australia conducted a highly visible marketing campaign aimed at increasing awareness of, and visits to, the region.
It was, essentially, a contest. But it was packaged as a job — for six months, the winning “applicant” would be flown first class to the Great Barrier Reef from anywhere in the world, where your only tasks would be to feed the dog, clean the pool from time to time, and blog about how amazing it is being there. All expenses paid. Oh, and a salary of USD$8,800 per month.
While traditional advertising and public relations supported the campaign, this was one that was won in social media.
As a part of its marketing strategy, Kraft Foods, the makers of Toblerone, and its communications partner GeiserMaclang, went on to stage the first National Thank You Day in the Philippines. The major objective of the campaign was to make Toblerone synonymous to the value of gratitude. For the same, the company launched a viral movement, established official support to declare October 20 as the city’s National Thank You Day and giant Toblerone Boxes were given to students to carry around malls to generate buzz. Apart from this enormous support from retail partners, students and citizens was raised. The campaign was a huge success which can be proved from the fact that official website (www.thankyoudayphilippines.com) generated nearly 500,000 hits and the Toblerone sales escalated 132%. Case study
Tod Maffin, COO and Senior Strategist at tMedia Strategies, is a digital marketing strategist, specializing in social media, mobile marketing, and viral marketing. [keynote speeches | bio]
Found a great interview with the team behind the wildly successful Old Spice campaign. In the interview, they talk about how they decided to employ various social media strategies, and which people to send personalized videos to.
Sometimes elaborate tactics aren’t required to stimulate a viral response; all it takes is one great idea. Ad agency McKinney’s idea was to take holiday ecards to a new level by putting an employee inside a giant inflatable snow globe for four days and broadcasting it on a microsite 24 hours a day. Visitors could receive “season’s greetings” from Snowglobe Boy and chat with him.
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Tod Maffin, COO and Senior Strategist at 