I mean, look at it…. it’s a chainsaw, that has to be plugged into a USB slot to run.  Awesome!  Who needs a USB-powered coffee cup cooler when you can have a chainsaw on your desk. And at only 3.7kg, suitable for home or office use, and the ability to cut through any type of wood – how can you go wrong?

Well, you haven’t even seen the most radical part yet!

The iSaw is actually a crafty website-based viral campaign. When you opt to pre-order the saw for a meagure $59.95 (plus shipping, of course),  you are presented with a little surprise.

The iSaw is in fact a spoof product, designed to remind you that each time you print a page in your home or office, that your PC is actually already a chainsaw, chopping down tree after tree.

It’s a well executed campaign don’t you think (however I must say, I was a little excited about the prospect of having a chainsaw sitting on my desk).

No related posts.

The campaign is delivered via a well crafted interactive online application, built entirely in Flash. The way that this campaign engages its users, is by prompting the user to upload their least favourite documents (pdfs, powerpoint files, word documents….whatever they might be), which are then joyously vandalised and disposed of right before your very eyes.  Think of it like the Windows Recycle Bin with an anarchistic and visual twist!

Rather than describe the experience from end to end, I recommend that you click on the link below and experience it for yourself.  After all, appropriately disposing of a hated document should be a satisfying experience.

The Unloader – Nokia interactive viral campaign

No related posts.

It’s probably a good time to mention that niche viral campaigns, such as this, can be just as successful as viral campaigns targetted at the masses.

If you can reach and appeal to 90% of your niche through a viral campaign, it could end up being a much better result for you than reaching 10% of a much broader (and therefore more difficult to target) audience.

No related posts.

View the TQ ‘Best Job in the World’ campaign website
 

It was an ingenious campaign, and really quite a simple concept. A ridiculously cool job to live on one of Australia’s most picturesque islands was ‘advertised’ by Tourism Queensland.  Because the job was dripping in awesomeness, those of us with dreary jobs (I’m guessing that 90% of the population) stumbled across the job of all jobs while cruising employment websites, through newspaper advertisements, and consequently, from friends via email saying “how cool is this job – I wish I was doing this instead of sitting in front of this freakin computer right now”

You see, the beauty of this campaign, is that is wasn’t really perceived as an advertisement at all by the general public, but more as the opportunity of a lifetime.  Any advertising campaign that can achieve this public perception is going to be a success.  

Ok, so that is lesson 1 – turn your viral campaigns into enviable opportunities, and you will reap the results.

But brace yourself, because lesson 2 take ingenius up a notch.

Based on the success of the Best Job in the World campaign, and the fact that a large percentage of the general public were aware of this campaign (every day I would hear people around me saying “have you heard about that cool job in North Queensland…maaaan, how good would that be!), a very smart spin-off was born.

The Worst Job in the World.   This smart Brazilian firm have struck while the iron is hot, and although it’s definitely a tongue-in-cheek mock interview, it’s a campaign that capitalises on a concept that I’m sure TQ would have spent hundreds of thousands of Aussie dollars putting into place. Ingenius….and down-right amusing…check it out in the YouTube clip below:

So inclusion, and at risk of repeating myself, lesson 1 when conceiving ideas for viral campaigns, is to try turning your viral campaigns into enviable opportunities, and you will reap the results.

And lesson 2? If you have a limited budget, limited resources, or limited imagination…..why not try simply flipping a popular existing advertising message upside down.  At the very least, you’ll have fun in the process!

No related posts.

• street-chalking (whereby stencils are used to apply chalk ‘graffiti’ on public foot paths and concrete walls)
• sea-tagging (a great new temporary street-art concept, again a stencil is used but this time the ‘printing medium’ is salt water, which takes a lot longet to evaporate than normal water thus remaining on the footpath for up to 15 minutes)
• snow-tagging (involves creating a branding imprint into the snow, using a large ‘stamp’)

All of these are fantastic methods of using our existing surroundings relatively innocently and harmlessly to create brand awareness.

So how do we adapt these Guerilla Marketing techniques from the offline world, to the online world?

The answer, my friend, is quite simple.   Search for ‘public spaces’ on the internet, put your creative thinking cap on, and devise an ingenious plan to somehow leave your mark for others to stumble across while they are leisurely going about their daily online business . The trick is, you must be careful not to act in a way that is seen as careless, or worse, illegal.

After all, back in the real world, graffiti isn’t legal, hence the reason most companies will draw the line at spray painting their company message on any old public wall….it simply ain’t kosher and will do more damage to the brand than good.

Ok, so what are examples of these online public spaces that I speak of?  Well, the list is endless, because it really depends which ‘spaces’ are relevant to your industry.

Ebay is an easy one to begin with, as the rules for listing items are quite straightforward.  Ebay has been used succesfully many times in the past to create fun, viral hype about various products and individuals. For example, did you see the guy who sold his entire life on eBay late last year?

 
Or perhaps the piece of Nutri-Grain (an Australian breakfast cereal) that looked like ET and sold for over $1,000 Australian dollars.

These are fine examples of viral eBay listings – an online marketing medium that I believe still offers many opportunities to the astute online guerilla marketer.

Another example of an ideal online public space for online guerilla marketing, is a job listings website.  These websites are frequented by millions of users every day, and most users are either desperately unhappy or downtrodden, which offers you the perfect opportunity to brighten up their day with a clever and light-hearted job description that promotes your company’s image and ideals.    The company below took it one step further, and created (what I believe to be ) a very humorous phony job listing, that was recently posted on Australia’s most popular job seeking website, Seek.  Click on the image below to zoom in – it’s quite an entertaining little piece which received a lot of viral attention in a very short space of time (mostly through the general public emailing the link to their friends for a laugh).

The moral of this story, is that on online marketer should not only focus on traditional online spaces to post their marketing message. Think laterally, aim at the online spaces where your loyal fans and potential  consumers might be ‘hanging out’ , and as long as the website traffic is there your online guerilla marketing efforts could well pay off.

No related posts.

HEMA is actually the first Dutch department store that was opened in Amsterdam. The flagship store opened on November 4, 1926, and now there are 150 stores all over the Netherlands.

Despite the age of Hema, from a business point of view, it appears that they have persisted in keeping their image ‘fresh’, to continue to appeal to the masses and demand attention as a modern and innovative online store (not to mention their retail stores).

You may be wondering how a simple online store can be innovative, or even interesting. Most usability experts will argue that deviating from the tried and tested standard e-commerce website architecture (which the likes of Amazon.com have set the benchmark for) is a waste of time. You will simply lose customers during the sales process, as they will become confused, disengaged, and most probably leave your website without purchasing a single thing.

I think now is an appropriate time for you to visit the Hema site. Once you have clicked this link, sit back and take a few moments to of quiet delight as you watch the ensuing show that will soon unfold before your eyes.

The Flash site design of Hema is certainly not revolutionary, most of you have probably already seen these Flash overlay pages before (whereby an existing website appears to be ‘defaced’ or ‘vandalised’ as your computer seems to ‘come to life’ and take over your screen).

However, by doing this, Hema has created a Flash ‘splash’ page which almost makes their own website a viral campaign in itself. To me, that sounds like the most successful viral campaign ever – driving traffic DIRECTLY to where you want them (as opposed to most other viral campaigns, which drive traffic to a landing page or alternative site, before attempting to redirect this web traffic to the primary website after their interest has been heightened).

If you own a lacklustre online site, perhaps you could look at leveraging of this concept to make your website a little more eye-catching and ‘sticky’ . Or perhaps you have seen some even better instances of this type of viral marketing?

Either way, I’d love to hear your comments.

No related posts.

Those who are familiar with the MTV show Pimp My Ride will understand the reasoning behind the title (Pimp My Ride is a television show based on the ‘surprise-someone-who-is-low-on-cash-by-restoring-their-prized-possession’ premise).

It’s quite an addictive formula, as we all like seeing someone less fortunate than us (as sad as it might sound)….but, to save our humility, we also like seeing people’s lives being changed for the better. It’s human nature.

Pimp this bum takes advantage of this concept, and uses online media as it communications method…. it’s highly viral, and highly adaptable if you are in the services or retail industry. For example – if you are a web design agency – why not trying Pimping a dodgy website for free, and creating a case study out of the project and the positive results each month. Or perhaps you’re in outdoor marketing, and you Pimp a local retailer by giving them free billboard space on an unused billboard for a week or two.  

The results are guaranteed to be succesful (because it’s free marketing for your lucky recipient), it will create a positive brand image for both the pimper and the pimpee, and everyone will be a winner in the long run.

So get pimpin!

Pimp This Bum.

No related posts.

It looks like a video shot by Los Angeles Lakers start Kobe Bryant and a few of his mates. It was actually a thoroughly planned, professionally developed video by Nike. The ‘home-video’ feel was created in order to engage the target audience, generally young males from early teens through to late 20s. This demographic are frequent users of video, both recording and viewing, as a means of entertainment and capturing (sometimes not so sensible) antics on the street.

This viral video is yet another example illustrating just how ideal the web is for reaching a target audience of any demographic. The bounds are limitless. The real challenge for online marketers, is reaching a level of engagement and trust through the use of an appropriate conversational and experience style that will appeal to the target demographic.

……and for those of you wondering whether the stunt was actually real, you can read all about it here.

No related posts.

With huge viral appeal it was not long before this video was circulated across the world via email forwards, social networking and social bookmarking sites.  As the hype continued, the Levi’s brand suddenly reared itself from the depths as the brains behind the video.

Fun, clean, well-thought out, addictive, clever, and without ‘in your face’ branding.  Two thumbs up from me!

No related posts.

…..except that I’ve not actually seen the end product anywhere. Please share your story if you’ve downloaded and/or seen the Doritos application in use.

No related posts.

Super Obama World - how can you resist playing just one level?

Super Obama World seems to have been developed just as a gimmick by a bored Flash programmer who has a few spare hours in between freelance jobs.  But this simple concept instantly brings a smile to your dial.

Why?

Because who doesn’t want an excuse to play a quick level of Super Mario Bros, right? And seeing Obama’s name replace Mario’s in that classic old-school Super Mario Brothers font, is just plain cool….

…so cool it makes me want to buy one of these t-shirts, even though I’ve no interest in US politics whatsoever.

Super Obama World t-shirt. The only political tee I may ever consider wearing.

Anyone out there who is looking for viral marketing ideas and has writers block…take a few notes from the above.  Adapt a retro classic to something of immediate relevance, and (o)BAM(a), you’ll be getting more votes of praise than the latest US president!

No related posts.

The relevance of this 7 legged arachnid will make a lot more sense once you've read the article

Quite humorous don’t you think?  Maybe you’ve even forwarded it to a friend, you got such a kick out of it?

It is these real-world, random acts that defy social norms and convention that are truly viral.  Sent via online means (whether it be Facebook, Twitter, email or blog posts), these ‘campaigns’ are the most cost efficient and effective campaigns money can buy.

So how can your organisation or agency use these principles in your next campaign?

Dream up a humorous and realistic scenario. Maybe it’s an email chain of correspondence similar to the above situation, maybe it’s a Facebook status ploy gone terribly wrong. Make sure it something believable, that will tug a few heart strings, or ‘a laugh at someone else’s expense’.  It’s all about creating a scenario that is out of the ordinary.

Another option is to tactfully sponsor an existing humourous viral campaign in its infancy.

Try it. It’s such an inexpensive method of marketing that you would be mad not to. You’ll be reaching the eyes of thousands, potentially millions of users who hopefully will not even see your campaign as advertising, they’ll see it as a leisure activity.

No related posts.

This Facebook blunder has received huge viral attention from virtually every Facebook user in Australia.  What exactly happened? Ok:

• Boy goes out partying
• Boy wakes up next morning, not in good shape
• Boy updates Facebook status to reflect current physical state of (no so) well-being
• Boy emails work, with a little white lie as to why he won’t be in today
• Boss is a little bit cluey and works out the real truth, through Facebook!

Not only is this unfortunate error forward-worthy because it is a laugh, but it seems that the article has been forwarded from one friend to the next as a ‘public awareness announcement’, to remind each other of the potential impacts of applications such as Facebook on their work lives vs their playtime.

Facebook cost this young chap more than just a hangover

It is this emotional attachement, the ‘this could very easily have been me’ feeling that can push an online viral campaign from mediocre status to huge success.  It almost belies the need to forward it, as opposed to a ‘maybe I’ll forward it because I have nothing better to do’.

To make a scenario such as the above work in your company’s favour, all you need do is get your  brand in the signature of the original e-mail chain, or perhaps your logo planted somewhere in the attached images within the e-mail comment, and you could be set for a very successful viral campaign.

No related posts.

Anyone who still remembers the glee of finding the games menu on Windows 3.1 (and I dare say that would be a few of us), will certainly take great delight in this clip.

Maybe this could be the inspiration for your next viral campaign? Or even a spin-off? I’m talking Pacman the musical, Donkey Kong on Ice, or even a Leisure Suit Larry vs Eminem MTV-style music clip. It seems that remixing the pop icons of eras gone by with the hype of new media can never go wrong, provided there is some thought put into the execution.

No related posts.