Virals have been popular with brands ever since Burger King's Subservient Chicken burst onto the scene five years ago. However, advertisers are now taking a much more integrated approach to viral marketing, more often than not, using it to give TV ads a new lease of life online.
Having missed a trick with its iconic 'Gorilla' ad, which had no official online element, Cadbury has made its new 'Eyebrow' spot available via YouTube. This strategy has already proved a huge success; with more than four million consumers going online to watch the two po-faced children make their eyebrows dance to an electro-funk track.
T-Mobile, however, has taken things a step further with its new 'Life's for Sharing' campaign, which had a viral element built in from the start. Lysa Hardy, head of brand and communications at T-Mobile, claims that tapping into the viral nature of the internet is a crucial part of the campaign, which features a seemingly spontaneous 'flash mob' dance at London's Liverpool Street station.
'Life's for Sharing' was originally intended to be premiered on TV before appearing online, but passers-by filmed the flash mob dance on their mobiles and it quickly spread across the internet. T-Mobile was quick to build on this momentum, creating a branded YouTube channel that has since attracted more than 1,800 subscribers. Meanwhile, the official version of the TV ad has now been viewed more than 3.5 million times online.
Hardy says new content is still being loaded onto the YouTube channel, including clips featuring copycat dances from Kelly Brook and Peter Crouch. T-Mobile has also created a viral game allowing users to upload photos, which are superimposed on people dancing in animal costumes.
"We're seeding stuff to entertain people, put a smile on their face and really encourage them to interact with our brand," says Hardy. "The whole thing about viral is that it's got to catch someone's interest in the first place."
A sure sign that the T-Mobile ad has captured the public's imagination came when a flash mob descended on Liverpool Street Station, mimicking the original campaign. The subsequent closure of the station is not necessarily great PR, although the lasting effect is that, thanks to T-Mobile's viral activity, the 'Life's for Sharing' ad is now firmly rooted in the public's consciousness.
Brands making their TV ads available via YouTube can prolong their campaigns by giving consumers the chance to create mash-ups and spoofs. Cadbury's 'Eyebrows' has already been spoofed by Lily Allen and Alan Carr on The Sunday Night Project, a clip that has been viewed more than 300,000 times on YouTube.
According to Hardy, this kind of impromptu activity can add significant value to a viral campaign. "We are encouraging people to take our ad, set their own music to it and parody it with their own dance," she says. "The great thing about the internet is that it enables consumers to engage with your brand in a way they can't do anywhere else. We want people to take our ad into their own domain and make it their own."
Jimmy Maymann, chief executive of GoViral, says more brands are following T-Mobile's example by devising virals capable of making a long-lasting impact. "One thing we're seeing more of is people and brands having an ongoing narrative with consumers," he says. "Two years ago, viral marketing was very hit and miss, but now it's won a place on the media plan."
The big idea
Coming up with a compelling creative concept capable of capturing the public's imagination is crucial to the success of a viral marketing campaign. This is where creatives such as Mark Boyd, creative director and head of content at Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), come in.
Boyd says the key difference between a viral and a TV ad is that a viral is something you will seek out, take pleasure in finding and send on for someone else to enjoy. The appeal is its ability to lend street cred to a product and turn a passive viewer into an active participant. A clip that makes viewers wonder if it's real, how it was done, or simply causes them to splutter coffee over the keyboard is almost guaranteed to be passed on to friends with similar interests, expanding the brand's potential reach.
Maymann says good viral concepts do not need to be funny, laden with innuendo, or borderline offensive to attract attention. "There is a lot of clutter when it comes to virals, but what consumers really appreciate are good, interesting ideas," he explains. But for brands considering viral marketing there is a warning. "Some categories are more difficult than others," he says. "With the financial sector, for example, it would be stupid for a brand to go out there now and bring humour to a campaign."
Getting the message across
Distribution is crucial to a viral campaign's success, says Boyd. Despite its huge audience, fewer than 20 per cent of YouTube videos generate more than 500 views in their first month online and only one per cent of clips ever attract more than 500,000 views, according to Rubber Republic. With this in mind, seeding on specialised sites is more effective, especially when targeting specific demographics; if the clip goes mainstream, it's an added bonus.
"Distribution is always a major challenge with viral as the internet is overflowing with video, says Boyd. "It can mean the difference between a clip going unnoticed or being the most powerful thing to have ever existed on the internet."
Maymann thinks there is a standard formula for distributing virals. "We identify the most important influencers and where to find them. This approach may only generate five per cent of views but it is important. Then we roll the viral out to broader sites with more mass appeal, and then it's about YouTube and other entertainment-focused sites."
Some campaigns use a call to action, encouraging viewers to forward the clip to their friends, but Boyd does not recommend this approach. "If you get caught telling consumers what you think they should do next they will respond negatively," he says. "Ultimately it has to be something I want to send to my friends. A good viral is all about that exciting moment when something arrives in your inbox and you're one of the first people to get it."
The right price
Despite the growing importance of viral marketing, brands are still reluctant to invest more than the bare minimum in their creation. "Viral has almost become synonymous for campaigns that don't have any budgets attached," says Boyd.
However, Hardy claims the success of 'Life's for Sharing' has led to T-Mobile boosting its digital marketing budget by around 40 per cent, taking its online spend to about £24 million. Hardy says she expects viral to take a significant share of this, claiming it will play an integral role in all future campaigns. "The very nature of our business is about sharing, and viral is a critical part of bringing that to life."
The panel
Lysa Hardy is head of brand and communications at T-Mobile. She was recently behind the company's first-ever viral campaign.
Jimmy Maymann is chief executive of GoViral, which provides seeding and tracking services for advertisers and media agencies.
Mark Boyd is creative director and head of content at Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), and works with brands including Barnardo's, Barclaycard and Levi's.
Smart think!ng Viral ads
1. Good virals need a decent production and distribution budget - quality counts
2. Do something unexpected - this is crucial if you want to get noticed
3. Encourage people to share content by allowing downloading and embedding
4. Track and analyse results to optimise future campaigns
5. Use other sites' hosting capabilities to cut costs and spread your message further
Casebook: How Pot Noodle's viral campaign engaged a male audience
Unilever opted to promote its latest Pot Noodle video through web and mobile media alone, employing a large-scale viral seeding campaign to get the message across.
The content was made up of a mixture of 14 clips created by Mother, including online ads, humorous music videos and karaoke versions as follow-ups. Some were part of a series and were run sequentially, while others were standalone pieces of creative. The content, which included the 'Tipping Pot' spoof of a Guinness TV ad and 'Moussaka Rap', was intended to reach a broad audience of UK males.
Viral distribution company The 7th Chamber put together a viral campaign spanning nine months, from May 2008 to January 2009, targeting a UK audience. Each piece of content was seeded across The 7th Chamber's network of male-focused blogs and entertainment sites, and heavily promoted on Kontraband.com.
It was also distributed across the company's mobile network, including the Flirtomatic, Moko, Getjam, T-Mobile and Blyk mobile portals.
Richard Spalding, chief executive of The 7th Chamber, says that mobile distribution offered an innovative way to reach a highly connected and engaged audience, going beyond the possible reach and capabilities of previous web-only viral campaigns.
"Our aim on this project was to get the content into the heart of the target audience's daily media distractions," he says. Seeding the content into blogs resulted in discussion about the product and further promotion across related blogs and websites which, Spalding says, is more effective than trying to produce millions of views. "Within the social media space, we believe that brands need to be talked about, not just seen."
During the nine-month campaign, Pot Noodle content was viewed 1.16 million times, which led to 7,000 click-throughs to the Pot Noodle website. The content generated more than 350 points of coverage on blogs and UGC websites, and more than 1,800 comments.