MA Social Media

Viral and buzz marketing are gaining more and more field. Companies and organisations resort to it for brand awareness, new jobs have been created (digital communications officer, Web 2.0. assistant, viral marketing campaign coordinator), and agencies emerged providing these services (e.g. www.viralfactory.com). Since 1998, the fabled Cannes International Advertising Festival introduced the Cyber Lions, covering interactive campaigns, online advertising, banners and rich media, mobile advertising, email marketing and viral videos. International organisations, like Amnesty or the Council of Europe, disseminate their video spots, podcasts, brochures all around the web, and the EU is present on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook. Let’s have a look at four remarkable online campaigns that stirred up extensive word-of-mouse in the last years!

1. Bacardi conducted the Planet Party campaign during 2004-2005. The campaign featured a web-exclusive video luring party-animals to a microsite. The Planet Party website allowed users to explore a virtual nightclub, listen to a Bacardi DJ, learn cocktail recipes and amuse themselves online. The viral action was part of a more extensive campaign aimed at recruiting influential consumers (the e-fluentials) and to check the end-user interaction with the brand.
2. Condomi, a German brand lagging way behind market-leader Durex, was trying to enter the UK market in 2002-2003. Noticing that one third of the condoms were bought by women, Condomi launched the “Size him up” campaign, featuring an online tool that enabled women to “guesstimate” the size of a person’s manhood (www.frankpr.it/sizehimup). After introducing hand, feet and nose size, the site calculated the prospected lover’s dimensions and suggested the right product from the Condomi range. In one month, the site stirred up buzz in the media, with journalists guesstimating the size of politicians’ manhoods, and attracted over one million unique users.
3. To launch the new console game Halo 2, Microsoft Xbox created the first promotional ARG (alternate reality game) in 2004. ARGs are cross-media games mixing fiction and reality elements by using fake websites, telephone messages and cryptic clues. The campaign to promote Halo 2 seeded an enigmatic reference to www.ilovebees.com, apparently an amateurish website of a bee lover in California. After a while, the site started to behave as attacked by a virus and spewed strange messages including GPS coordinates of telephone booths across the US. Those curious enough to visit the phone booths received mysterious messages and were drawn into a plot related to the forthcoming game. Halo 2 also introduced the ARG’s motto, known as “TINAG” (this is not a game).
4. For the 4-7 June 2009 elections, the European Parliament featured an extensive online campaign trying to persuade citizens to express their voting rights. During the election night, 2,189 tweets were produced and 659 photos uploaded on Flickr. The EP’s Facebook Page reached 52,000 fans and their MySpace profile displayed 100,000 visits.

And examples could go on and on…