Viral marketing. Everybody seems to want it, but making a campaign go viral is much harder than you think. It requires out of the box thinking, social engineering, a great understanding of behaviours, and above all - a solid strategy.
To give you some insight, let's take a look at our viral marketing example 'Britain's Sexiest Cow' that we produced for one of our agricultural clients RAGT Seeds.
Viral Marketing Campaign Example
You may have actually seen our viral marketing campaign as it hit national news, TV, and radio. It even hit the US, featuring on Conan O'brien's website TeamCoco and as far away as New Zealand. We'll take a look in detail about the coverage of the viral campaign further down the post, but first, let us deconstruct the campaign.
The Campaign Goal
To create a national campaign with-in the farming and agriculture sector for brand awareness of our client's seed variety.
A pretty hard task, right? Let's be honest, the farming and agriculture sector is pretty boring to the average person. To get this viral needs some real thought.
The Idea
So, how can you turn the nation's head to such a topic?
A campaign with a sense of humour, high shareability, and something the brain isn't used to - provoking thought, opinions, and engagement. Through these factors, our creative team came up with the viral marketing campaign 'Britain's Sexiest Cow'.
Why would this work? This is the type of feature that newspapers love to devour and share. It's also a talking point on social media channels and the type of topic that radio hosts like to explore.
I bet when you saw this title you already wanted to see what Britain's sexiest cow looked like? That's the kind of excitement and curiosity that propelled the campaign.
It's also a competition in a competitive industry where people are extremely proud of their produce, work, and lifestyle.
Altogether, this was a recipe for a digital explosion.
The Viral Marketing Strategy
Now for the execution, how can we launch this campaign successfully? Strategic director Julie Dupree explains;
To help get the message out to the UK’s feed-wheat growers, we strategically devised the ‘Britain’s Sexiest Cow’ competition, driven by social media, to go viral to the UK’s agricultural audience. The intention of the competition was to create a bit of fun for the cattle farmer who simply needed to submit a photo of their best looking cow.
Identify the target audience.
Find key players who would share the story.
Use social platforms to promote the campaign.
Use different angles for promotion and messaging.
Keep engaged with the competition and audiences.
Make entry submission as simple and easy as possible.
Open the campaign so that all cattle farmers could enter and have a chance to win.
Our full strategy was much more detailed than this, but we can't reveal all our secrets in our viral marketing example.
The Viral Campaign Results
As mentioned at the start of the post, our viral marketing campaign made national TV, news, and radio.
Here's just some of the coverage of our viral marketing example:
This morning, ITV
BBC News
BBC Three
Have I got News For You
Ripley's Believe it or not
Heart FM
Metro
Farmer's Weekly
Farming UK
Team Coco
Radio Jersey
Radio Guernsey
Yorkshire Post
Farmer's Guide
An abundance of local newspapers, magazines and radio stations
An abundance of social media posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
What did you think to Britain's sexiest cow, wasn't she an absolute stunner? Let us know your thoughts.
If you're looking for a team of creative minds to help create a viral marketing campaign, get in touch and we will provide a bespoke solution:
+44 (0)1780 757666