Inspiration For Developing Your Own Buzz Marketing Campaign
Hello marketers, are you ready to take your marketing efforts to the next level? To really launch a buzz marketing campaign? Take a look at your campaign; now look at the Old Spice campaign. Look at your campaign, now back to Old Spice. The Man Your Man Could Smell Like is a powerful example of how buzz marketing can revolutionize your brand.
Launched in 2010, the Old Spice campaign was the perfect combination of an unforgettable brand spokesman and a humorous concept that had the word viral written all over it – the initial spot (first in a series of spin-offs) has received more than 35 million views on YouTube to date.
What made the strategy so effective was the cleverness of the video combined with the appeal of Isaiah Mustafa, Old Spice’s new sexy spokesman. Following the success of the first ads, Wieden + Kennedy (the agency behind the campaign) created a series of videos in which the Old Spice guy responded personally to bloggers, tweeters and others who commented on the ads through social media.
Suddenly the Old Spice guy had corralled people everywhere into his virtual world, where everyone should smell like him. The video series exploded and has become one of the fastest growing video campaigns in online history. The graph below shows its views compared to other popular videos in the first 24 hours after being released.
Then, as happens with popular marketing campaigns, imitators came out of the woodwork. Brands everywhere hopped on the Old Spice train and created videos of their own. Some, were such close imitators, the public balked (such as Cisco Spice),
but others like the political campaign video for Joe Miller of Alaska
and the spot promoting the book Crucial Conversations
took the best of the concept and plugged their man and their product with success.
So what can marketing professionals learn from all this?
1. Humor is a great viral booster. If you can, leverage it in your viral campaigns.
2. Don’t be afraid to experiment. Embed video in your press releases and link to it on your website or social media pages.
3. You can pick up good ideas by following trending memes (ideas, styles and behaviors spread from person to person).
4. It’s okay to imitate as long as you do it carefully.
The Old Spice guy is an ideal example of how marketing campaigns can become part of our collective consciousness. When you do it right, viral marketing can have immediate and long-lasting, positive results.
Take a second look at your online marketing to see if you can get your buzz marketing campaigns to smell more like Old Spice.
What are some of your favorite viral marketing campaigns? Share them with us in the comments section below.
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