Tag Archives: viral marketing

Exclusive: Anthony Koutoufides talks about viral Souvlaki Hut video

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A 2009 advertisement for Souvlaki Hut starring AFL and Carlton Football Club legend Anthony Koutoufides has gone viral after it appeared on US website College Humor and was then picked up by pop culture news site The Huffington Post. The commercial has caused a stir thanks to its poor production values and its use of low budget special effects gorilla. It has now been viewed more than 1.3 million times.

Koutoufides was unaware that the video had gone viral when contacted by Marketing today, but spoke to us about the making of the now famous commercial: “I was the face of the brand, so I had to be in the commercials, the first commercial we did went really well… obviously they cut the budget,” he says.

“I had no idea what I was doing when I rocked up. They just told me where to stand and what to do. It only took a few hours.”

The commercial was only ever destined for the internet, with bosses deciding against putting it on television. It was filmed entirely in front of a green screen and the concept was thought up by the then owners of Souvlaki Hut.

The commercial was awarded a Brown Logie for ‘worst ever commercial’ and has won a similar award in Greece.

Kouta also shared with Marketing his biggest regret about the ad.

“I never got to meet the gorilla.”

Koutoufides is taking his new-found viral internet fame in his stride, saying, “It’s all just a bit of fun.”

And… if you like Kouta’s performance, you’ll love Marketing‘s Top10 list of ads that make absolutely no sense, right here »

Latest Superman film hits new viral marketing heights

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Entertainment marketing continues to evolve with the latest Warner Bros Superman film trailer being projected to users via an intriguing use of viral marketing.

A new billboard located in Culver City, LA is showcasing the ‘Man of Steel’ trailer release with a clever marketing twist that drives the user through a series of clues to unearth more information pertaining to the Christopher Nolan-led reworking of the popular classic.

Using the established Kryptonian numbering shown on the Deep Space Radio Wave Project  website, the Kryptonian enscription on the billboard translates to an internet IP address of 168.161.242.137 at which the website www.IWillFindHim.com is being hosted.

Incorporating its audience into the teaser storyline where General Zod is giving Superman an ultimatum to turn himself over, fans can track the progress to see what happens next via the coding mechanism.

 

Viral marketing and human emotion in advertising

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In recent years, viral marketing has emerged as one of the most effective strategies that can be used to increase engagement with your audience.

Today’s technological and social landscape allows content to be shared with hundreds of our friends with the mere click of a button. If harnessed correctly it can spread like wildfire among social circles, rapidly gaining exposure and in turn, spreading the brand message.

Viral successes

Kony 2012 is arguably the most famous viral campaign of all time. The video, created by American NGO Invisible Children was styled as a documentary on the Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony. It was trending on Twitter internationally and was covered in traditional media globally. The video became the fastest growing YouTube video of all time, with more than 85 million views accrued in just 25 days.

The campaign focused on appealing to the emotional touch points of the public through the use of confronting footage of child soldiers and the impact Kony has had on their lives.

Another example of a viral campaign is ‘Isaac’s Live Lip-Dub Proposal’. Although less known, this has also received extensive exposure with nearly 14 million views in 20 days. While it is unclear whether this is a subtle marketing video, or a real proposal, the video’s success is easy to see.

The five-minute video shows Isaac’s girlfriend riding in the back of a Honda CRV and watching her friends and family perform a synchronised routine to the song ‘Marry You’ by Bruno Mars.

Again, this video’s success can largely be attributed to its ability to appeal to our fundamental emotions of love and happiness and joy.

What can marketers learn from the success of these videos?

Central to any viral campaign, is a deep understanding of what appeals to your audience – you must know what will make them laugh or cry – it is appealing to these base emotions that will cause people to share the video with their friends and family.

1. Market research is a given. However marketers might benefit from a new approach to this task. In addition to focusing on numbers and statistics and market segmentation, marketers should also look at the habits and behaviours of their audience in greater detail.

2. Incorporate the principles of sociology and psychology into marketing decisions when trying to reach the audience in a meaningful way. This means finding ways to analyse the audience’s thinking and how it affects their decisions.

3. Find their pain point and providing a solution: another way to connect with an audience can be to identify an emotionally charged problem and provide a solution.

4. Understand the principle of the meme. A meme is an image, a quote or a video that spreads virally, in a way that’s similar to a viral video. Memes are often universal truths that a majority of people can relate to. If you can become skilled at coming up with memes in a way that’s relevant to your brands, they can significantly increase the emotional connection the market feels with your brand.

Avoiding viral mistakes

The very nature of viral marketing requires the brand to break down the traditional commercial walls and appeal to the audience in a personal, emotional way. If the campaign goes wrong, consumers don’t just lose a little faith in the brand, they feel a deep rooted sense of anger and betrayal.

As with any public debate, there will be at least two sides. In using viral marketing to open up a dialogue with consumers, especially one that is emotionally charged, you run the very real risk of dividing your audience – some people will love you, and some will hate you.

If marketers are not prepared for this, it can cause them and the campaign to break down – as was the case with Jason Russell, creator of Kony 2012. His public mental breakdown diverted much of the public awareness away from capturing Kony, and onto potentially positioning him, as well as Invisible Children, as frauds.

Emotion can be a powerful concept in marketing, just as it is in other areas of our lives. In blurring the divide between brand and individual, it is possible to open a two-way dialogue with consumers, significantly increasing engagement and awareness.

It does also mean, however, that the brand has become a trusted member of society, and must tread carefully, so as not to leave the audience feeling as though their trust has been betrayed.

 

Get in the game

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Background

XCOM Media was appointed Mater Foundation’s digital agency in December 2008 with a brief to develop and implement a full digital strategy covering all aspects of its business online. One of the outcomes of the strategy project was the identification of the opportunity to integrate viral marketing into its marketing mix.

In May 2009 XCOM Media and the marketing team at the Mater Foundation worked together on developing the concept for their first viral marketing campaign.

Campaign: Mater Lotteries ‘Change Lives’
Client: Mater Foundation
Agency: XCOM Media

Objectives

The Mater Foundation had not gone to market with a viral campaign prior to the ‘Change Lives’ campaign. In doing so, there was an element of educating the client about the processes of delivering a viral campaign and working with their internal stakeholders to help them understand the opportunity, and for them to feel comfortable that the campaign would deliver a positive message to the audience and represent their brand the way they require.

The other primary challenge was the relatively small campaign budget. The campaign team wanted to take a campaign to market that would bring attention to the Mater Foundation’s brand and generate a level of interest within the audience that would facilitate content sharing and the viral effect.

Strategy

XCOM worked with Mater Foundation to explore the partnership opportunities that could be leveraged to assist in the delivery and marketing of the campaign.
Based on the strong campaign concept, it was strategised that the campaign would meet the KPIs set and therefore invested in bringing it to life.

The Brisbane Lions, a long-term supporter of the Mater Foundation, was identified as the perfect partner and was approached with a brief of the campaign and a request for the required assistance and it did not disappoint.

The Brisbane Lions provided the campaign with a number of key components:

  • ‘at game’ charity partner rights for a game that was played on 6 June 2009
  • access to Michael Voss to film video content
  • marketing of the campaign to its member email database, and
  • prizes including a signed team jersey, a corporate box and attendance at a Lions training session to meet some of the players and the coaching staff, and receive a framed photo of the winner with the players.

These prize components were included along with to and from game limousine transfers, flights and premium accommodation.

Execution

The concept that was developed was coined ‘Change Lives’, which centred on the opportunity for the winner of the campaign to experience a ‘once in a lifetime’ experience by winning the ‘Ultimate Lions Experience’ and in the process supporting a charity that helps change the lives of sick people at the Mater Hospital.

It was decided that the campaign would be broken up into two phases:

  • at game – phase one, and
  • online – phase two.

The objective of phase one was to introduce attendees at the Brisbane Lions football game to a competition to win a signed Brisbane Lions jersey. Attendees entered the competition by SMSing their email address into the campaign mobile number at the game. The entry then triggered both a confirmation SMS message delivered to the entrant’s mobile phone and an email delivered to their email address giving them an entry into both the ‘at game’ prize and the major prize that was phase two of the campaign.

Campaign components included:

  • street teams (XCOM and Mater staff) handing out 15,000 fortune cookies at all entries to the Gabba on game day with the ‘call to action’ message inside the cookie inviting them to SMS their email address to 0448 CHANGE
  • inbound SMS competition entry mechanism – 0448 CHANGE
  • triggered SMS response to entrants ‘at game’
  • triggered email to entrants telling them about the major prize and informing them they had entry into the major draw and giving them bonus entry opportunities for forwarding to their friends
  • two-minute video of Michael Voss played on the Gabba scoreboard during the game
  • ‘at game’ announcer promoting the campaign at multiple stages throughout the game
  • on-screen (full screen) promotion of the campaign at multiple stages throughout the game
  • XCOM-built electronic competition drawing tool used to draw the ‘at game’ winner at a certain time of the game, and
  • winner announced at game on screen.

The objective of phase two of the competition was to drive traffic to the campaign m-site, www.changelives.com.au, and convert visitors into one of the following four options:

  • enter the competition for a single entry only – not forwarding to friends
  • enter the competition and forward to friends to receive up to four entries (one entry for user’s own entry and up to three bonus entries for forwarding to their friends)
  • inform them of the benefits of becoming a Mater Lotteries VIP member, and
  • generate awareness of Mater Lotteries and the Mater Foundation.

Campaign components included:

  • an m-site
  • streaming video
  • email marketing campaign to Mater Lotteries’ existing subscribers
  • email marketing campaign to Brisbane Lions members (VIP and regular), and
  • social media activity through Facebook and Twitter.

The campaign prize was for two people for a three/four-day Lions experience, with flights from anywhere within Australia, accommodation in a premium hotel, attendance at a Lions training session in Brisbane, meeting the players and the coaching staff, a signed jersey, a framed photo with players, being wined and dined at the game in the Mater corporate box and limousine transfers to and from the game.

The m-site included a video of Michael Voss on the landing page promoting the competition and outlining the exclusivity involved in the Brisbane Lions ‘opening their doors’ to someone outside the Brisbane Lions organisation and the opportunity to be involved with an organisation such as the Mater Foundation.

Both the video and m-site used a combination of the ‘money can’t buy’ competition hook and emotive drive of the Mater Lotteries cause at key parts throughout Michael Voss’ address, with text overlay to reinforce key points and calls to action – to enter the competition for the major prize, learn about the VIP program, raise awareness about the Mater Foundation and share the opportunity with friends.

High-level campaign objectives included:

  • raise awareness of the Mater Foundation as a charity
  • raise awareness of the benefits of the VIP membership program
  • strengthen association with the Brisbane Lions
  • associate an exciting and exclusive prize that will be engaging to the audience
  • drive visitation to the redesigned Mater Prize Home website, and
  • generate sharing of content and viral activity through an email forward to friend mechanism and social media channels.

The campaign’s KPIs included acquiring:

  • 1000 SMS entries from the ‘at game’ competition
  • 1000 online entries through the campaign m-site
  • 2000 total competition entries into the major prize competition
  • 1000 forward to friend messages, and
  • 2000 new subscribers to the Mater Prize Home e-newsletter

Results

The campaign was of a high quality, delivered on a tight budget and the results provided Mater Lotteries and the Mater Foundation with the confidence to undertake more integrated online campaigns in the future:

  • 1364 ‘at game’ SMS entries
  • 1265 online entries through the m-site
  • 1729 forward to friend messages
  • 2629 total competition entries, and
  • 2418 new subscribers to the Mater Prize Home enewsletter.

Pixar returns to 80s for Toy Story 3 campaign

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Animated film producer Pixar has surreptitiously released a fake vintage TVC featuring one of the characters from its upcoming movie Toy Story 3 as a part of a viral marketing campaign.

Created to look like an ’80s-style advertisement for Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear, the TVC has spread through social media networks and has been viewed on YouTube over 650,000 times.

The TVC has elicited mainly positive responses from consumers despite it not making any references to the movie itself.

Yahoo! Movies writer, Mike Ryan, has commended the idea as a unique way to market not only the film but its new characters.

“Pretty convincing stuff. The distorted sound, the flickering video, the noise on the bottom of the screen – all tell-tale signs of an old commercial uploaded to YouTube from a long-lost VHS tape,” said Ryan.

Christina Warren from Mashable has suggested that the campaign is indicative of the direction that brands are taking in regard to creating buzz around products online.

“Disney and Pixar have heavily marketed the film across different demographics, but there has a been a strong viral push to grab the attention of people in their mid-to-late twenties. For that reason, creating an ’80s-esque toy commercial makes a lot of sense, because we’re a generation that is obsessed with recollecting our past and relishing what once was,” explained Warren.

Toyota red faced over Yaris ad

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Toyota Australia has pulled an online video advertisement for its Yaris model off its website due to complaints of sexist content.

The ad was the winner of a social media driven short film competition organised by the car manufacturer’s agency Saatchi and Saatchi.

Entitled ‘Clean Getaways’, the ad depicts a boyfriend bantering with the father of the girl he’s arrived in a Yaris to take out. The conversation is made up with a series of sexual double entendres, which have been criticised on the blogoshpere as ‘sexist’ and ‘incestuous’.

Play TV shot the ad after being sent the script by freelance creative Micha McDonald, who has ridiculed ‘the big boys’ for its reception by the public.

Toyota spokesman Mike Breen said the company was sorry if it had caused offence, but could not say how many complaints the car maker had received about the video.

Weekly podcast: Viral humour

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Podcast

Marketingmag.com.au has teamed up with the guys at Love Digital to bring you this weekly podcast on all things digital.

In this weeks show:

  • That illusive word ‘viral’ is often used, especially in the marketing
    world, to refer to great content that makes its way around the
    internet. But is viral content nothing more than a complete fluke?
  • News in 90: with Kate Kendall. 
  • Interview: Interview with David Thorne – the original spider-man.

How viral marketing could work for you

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The importance of video to any successful online campaign continues to grow but still a number of campaigns are still not being fully used for either marketing or SEO campaigns. Video has jumped in importance for marketing as the recent announcement by the Rudd government that it will be launching a $43 billion National Broadband Network (NBN) across Australia.

At the recent SMX Sydney conference, Jason West from Websalad combined the topics of video optimisation and how business can benefit. His topic was more technical in nature but touched on the important points that business seems to be missing each time. What is the purpose of your video campaign, is it information, viral or just on the bandwagon?

The other important question needing to be answered is how will success be measured? For hosted video solutions YouTube offers YouTube Insight, and for a paid solution there is Brightcove. For web analytics solutions on your site the three main solutions are: Omniture ActionSource, Google Analytics Event Tracking, and WebTrends Video Tracking.

It is important that business understands the break between a YouTube video going viral and adding videos as part of your SEO strategy. YouTube allows for massive exposure with West outlining that video search is currently around 25% of all Google traffic within USA. So if your business is looking to expose your video to as many people as possible YouTube is the perfect platform as the world’s leading video portal.

If you are adding videos to increase the level of quality content on your site to help your SEO strategy, YouTube restricts this. You can get a large increase in traffic to your website as part of a successfully YouTube campaign but it is not always as valuable to support your SEO strategy.

I have examined some recent successful video campaigns and what elements made them successful, where they could have improved and what was the result.

1) Bike Hero

This video was uploaded November 2008 by madflux, and showed a shaky video of a guy on a bike recreating the experience of video game Guitar Hero. The video was a reasonable hit on YouTube with over 1.7 million views. The video was discovered to have been created by Droga5 with CGI assistance with the permission of Activision. While this was not a true viral campaign it did generate substantial buzz across niche gaming blogs, newspapers and across YouTube.

Review:

The video was successful as it engaged the target market for the product, the aspect of transparency could have been improved and not all coverage was positive. The result was a great secondary SEO benefit for Guitar Hero supported by the blogs, newspapers and anyone that linked to their product or company when talking about the story.

2) Still Free

This video was uploaded in 2006, but was supported by a campaign site that was promoted during the video showing the website stillfree.com.  The clip shows two people breaking into Andrew’s Airforce Base, scaling the fence and then sneaking onto the tarmac to tag Air Force One with the slogan Still Free.  This video was successful because it matched perfectly with the Ecko’s brand and their audience.

View the clip at the end of this article.

Review:

The video was successful because it built a site dedicated to track viewers engagement, it cant have been much more successful as AirForce 1 tagged Still Free, it was featured in over 7,000 news stories around the world, three official denials from the Pentagon and the video had in excess of 14 million views across the world.

3) Numa Numa

This is one of the newest videos to be launched onto your tube by Geico, so is not the best to review but its interesting that it is not branded or feature a call to action. This is a video that is design for the viral market that cannot be immediately dismissed by consumers as a great ad.

Review:

According to AdAge it has been showed around 442,653 times since going live last week. It would have been useful to have a teaser website attached to the video campaign.

4) Dance

This is one the most engaging and more expensive of the recent viral campaigns. It was designed around T-mobile campaign Life’s for Sharing. The clip involves a ordinary day at Liverpool station which bursts into a spontaneous dance routine that grows and grows with more dancers joining at each new song. The great thing about this clip is that it captures the moments when those watching shares in the fun with a small dance and a smile of appreciation. It also shows a number of people from the public using their mobiles to record the event to share with friends and family who are not there.

Review:

With a clear advertising message at the end of the video and an overlaid advertisement throughout the whole clip – its transparent about its purpose. This is clearly not an underground viral video, but it is such a great feel good video that people just want to share it with friends that promotes the good will of the brand and reinforces T-mobile and sharing.

The clip has been viewed close to 18 million times and T-mobile has a branded YouTube channel to support the campaign. From the viewer numbers it would appear that this was a successful campaign, also with a number of news, blogs and media sites covering the story. Its great exposure for the T-mobile campaign and has had no negative press to my knowledge.

5) Eye Brow Dance

This new clip from Cadbury takes their tagline A Glass and a Half and takes a new spin to match the theme of the video A Glass and a Half Full of Joy. The video is set to uplifting and positive music showing two unsupervised kids playing along in front of the camera moving their eyebrows to the rhythm of the music.

Review:

This campaign is interesting and might be more interesting to particular sets of demographics such as those featured or those who have kids of similar age. It does give Cadbury an opportunity to refresh their brand or test alternative uses for A Glass and a Half. There doesn’t seem to be any campaign site that is leveraged off this video such as a user generated content site where others can replicate the video so that is one area of weakness.

6) Extreme Sheep Herding

This video was launched around three weeks ago on YouTube and is a low key demonstration about Samsung LED lights. The interesting thing about this video is that the product demonstration is just a small part of the whole clip, but again is a light hearted video that includes a 1980s video game reference.

Review:

Currently around six million people have viewed the main video, and news companies have picked up on the trend and are now starting to show the clip on cable and free to air networks. The site could have benefited from a branded YouTube channel but does have a cheeky pitch for Samsung LED products and finishes call to action and a URL www.samsung.com/led.

Conclusion

So, the wrap up is that these successful viral campaigns, had search optimisation as a secondary campaign aim, but because many of these video were so successful it is likely they actually have got more benefit using the YouTube platform. The other important point is that all these successful videos were only two to three minutes. If you have a long video make a short sample version and have the full length version as a choice. Remember that hosting video on your server can be very expensive and needs to be considered as to why limit your audience if you can get such exposure?

Viral online sporting brand campaigns: real or fake?

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Three weeks ago a video appeared on YouTube of what attested to be the Uzbekistani national football team training for a World Cup qualifying match against Australia – nothing as sinister or earth shattering compared to what generally appears on the video sharing site. But what drew much attention to the video was that it portrays the Uzbek players kicking incredibly at a ball target – should one player miss, he places his head in the middle for his teammates to aim at.

Was it serious? Is this really the training program for an Eastern European national sports team?

It turns out that the video was a viral produced and planted by creative agency Lowe to promote the FIFA World Cup qualifying series. According to its website, Many Aussies think that the Socceroos are sure to qualify, so we’ve adopted an unorthodox strategy: we’re promoting the opposition. They’re fierce adversaries capable of knocking Australia out.

Lowe claims that the video notched up 180,000 views within a short time of its release – it’s now up to over 300,000.

Lowe is not the first agency to use this tactic – in fact it’s been quite common in the sporting promotions industry in the US and Europe for a few years.

The now legendary Nike ad featuring soccer prodigy Ronaldinho kicking a ball into the crossbar from outside the goal square has been viewed over 25 million times.

EA sports creatively answered a YouTube video that criticised the fact that Tiger Woods in his game could play shots on water – so the company posted a video online of Woods doing just that. It was an instant hit and showed to users that EA were listening.

But not all have been as well accepted. Gatorade shelved an ad produced by Harvest Films of a baseball ‘ball girl’ catching a fly ball over the stand, however the ad leaked onto the net and has since had just shy of 700,000 views – an unexpected success considering it wasn’t supposed to see the light of day.

Some viral ‘campaigns’ haven’t been so obvious. Since late 2008, New Jersey Nets star Devon Harris has been the butt of a serving at a UK basketball training session that has been viewed over three million times, depicting Harris and young local in a impromptu one-on-one game, in which Harris, a seasoned NBA player, is ‘hustled’ by Tanner.

But there has been speculation among YouTube commentators that the whole thing could be a viral marketing stunt, especially given Tanner’s connections to the British basketball scene. The training session where the contest took place appeared to be sponsored by sports brand Adidas, but there doesn’t seem to have been any follow up or reaction from the brand.

Kobe Bryant’s effort of putting on Nike shoes and jumping over a speeding Aston Martin was also been met with scepticism. While the video has copped over 4.5 million views, the general online consensus was that it was too blatant a campaign to be taken too seriously (not that I think anyone actually did). It didn’t hurt the brand’s image but very nearly could have.

More recently, UK agency Wieden & Kennedy seeded a viral teaser for its new Nike 5 campaign, featuring a teen ‘nutmegging’ Wayne Rooney (scoring a goal through his legs).

The 30-second short film, shot as if it was captured using a mobile phone, sees Rooney and Rio Ferdinand playing a five-a-side match with some teenagers. The film acted as a teaser for the Nike 5 campaign, ends with the strap line ‘show your 5’ and drives viewers to the Nikefootball.com website, so is a little more transparent.

Is this way to produce a viral campaign without being dragged ‘naked’ through the streets (pun intended)? Maybe so.

The videos that work best are the ones that are entertaining and don’t scream ‘buy our product’ – more like, ‘here’s an entertaining video, oh and by the way if you like Ronaldinho’s shoes contact Nike at…’

This style of online viral marketing is increasingly taking a central role in major digital campaigns. To ignore this channel, it would seem, could be at your own peril.

YouTube user paid to Lie To Me

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In the latest example of marketers using social media to launch campaigns, one of Australia’s most popular YouTube users has admitted to being paid to spruik Channel Ten’s new show Lie To Me.

Hugh Thomas’s ‘hughsnews’ YouTube channel has about 20,000 subscribers, making him the 12th most subscribed in Australia.

Thomas indicates he was asked by a third party (who he would not name) to create a video blog on Lie To Me and publish it on his popular YouTube channel in return for payment from 20th Century Fox. He says that he is bound by a non-disclosure agreement so could not say any more.

His six-minute satirical video on the TV show attracted 10,800 views but it was joined by scores of other clips created by YouTube users around the world – all sponsored by Fox – however none of the videos revealed he was paid by the company.

Both Fox and Channel Ten have absolved themselves of knowledge of the campaign – Ten says it wasn’t aware of it and a Fox representative was unable to comment.

The news follows the media furore over Naked Communications’ elaborate viral hoax ‘Heidi’ and Qld Tourism’s ‘Tattoo girl’ both appearing on YouTube as a part of marketing campaigns.

The last posting on Nakeds Witchery campaign… promise!

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Early this week I received a phone call from a Naked Communications representative, explaining that the agency’s CEO, Mat Baxter, wanted to have a chat.

A chat? What about? Is there anything else that can be said about the Witchery ‘viral’ campaign that featured in the media for nearly two weeks? That was splashed across TVs from Sydney to Los Angeles? That was analysed through hundreds of Tweets, forum postings and blogs (such as Marketing’s own)? What else could he want to talk about?

What has been of interest to marketers about the ‘viral’ component of Naked’s Witchery campaign is the speed at which media outlets picked up on it. There seemed to be a common thread within mainstream media of hostility to the use of the medium.

Earlier in the week of the ‘Heidi Clark’ controversy, Qld Tourism was ‘outed’ for posting a video on YouTube of a competition entrant who tattooed her arm to win a dream job (which was explained by the department as a ‘how to’ video, though not many people in the media bought it).

It was as though media outlets were shocked that we all could be deceived in such a manner – how dare a marketing medium try and sneak under our influence radar, they gasped!

When I asked Baxter about Naked’s decision to use viral as its method for the campaign, he was well prepared to respond.

“The realities are that the format and the concept have to work hand in glove. To large extent, the format to which you’re playing with dictates a lot of the creative variables or parameters that you use.”

The agency reportedly began working with the Witchery account about a year before the campaign began. Since the video was posted, Naked commissioned a ‘post-reveal report’ from research company, edentify, for the purpose of proving the validity and success of the campaign so far due to the viral video.

Through all the statistics and respondent comments, the cut of it was that Naked received more positive and ambivalent replies than negative. Secondly, Witchery is happy with what is going on with campaign – no problem there. Baxter suggests that the media coverage has done more good things for the campaign than being detrimental. So what got the mainstream media’s goat?

I suggested to Baxter that perhaps if the tone of the video had been more obviously aimed at men, like the Kylie Minogue Agent Provocateur TVC, then there would have been less of a problem.

“You can attract young men by getting a scantly clad Kylie Minogue and putting her in a beautifully shot TVC. Problem is that not every brand is right for that as an execution and the other problem is that not every brand can afford that. We weren’t working on a brand brief with unlimited funds, and were looking for something that was absolutely going to be capable of dragging what is a really strong female brand… and convince men that they sell men’s clothes and it’s ok to shop at Witchery. That’s a really big shift and we needed to do something that would be capable of moving the brand the way we wanted to move,” explained Baxter.

Kylie appearance or not, the video that Naked released on YouTube was not only a national topic – reports on the video appeared in news outlets in China and the US, according to Baxter. What the media seems to have criticised Naked about most was not so much the content of the video, but its execution. I asked him whether this sort of criticism was a good or bad thing for the agency.

“There’s no doubt that the subsequent media post reveal that’s gone both local and international is commentating and critiquing the execution as it unfolded. I think that the initial media, where it was reported as news, had nothing to do with campaign execution it to do with the media jumping on a juicy tabloid story that felt could move more product for them.”

From Baxter’s perspective, there has always been positive and negative sentiment when it comes to marketing. The difference with social media is that there’s now an outlet present that gets people’s opinion to masses that doesn’t exist in other media.

“When you choose to go into the social media environment, you have to be prepared for the good the bad and the ugly all to be posted up there for all to see. There was always going to be a level of polarisation in this campaign, just as there is in any campaign, that is in any way shape or form controversial or just a way for people to radically reassess the brand.”

Radical measures for a radical change in brand positioning, when it comes to Witchery launching its men’s line. But now that the campaign hit its KPIs so early, what if it gets stale before the actual launch date. Baxter admits that whatever strategy Naked had before this furore is now moot, leaving the agency a small window to reassess and continue is projected campaign.

“I would be mad to say that we haven’t taken stock following for what has been a fairly manic week for us and the client and we have made some changes to the campaign strategy. We are in a very different place… we’ve essentially achieved an entire campaign outcome in a week, for something we planned to stretch over five, six or seven weeks, with exposure, conversation, coverage and brand shifts in a way we never expected. But there are other components to the campaign and they will be going ahead.”

So what do we take away from this whole experience? Mainstream media has always had the tendency to make mountains out of mole’s hills, jumping on a marketing technique because it doesn’t appear to be transparent enough to the naked eye (no pun intended).

The episode only encourages marketers to delve further into the viral world for their own campaigns, if not for more education on the subject. As a marketing medium, it will certainly appear again.