Marketing Amnesia

Lesson Learnt - We know nothing about Viral Marketing 07/15/2008

How does someone come up with an idea like this. Starting in 2003, way before viral became the huge term it is now. Simple, and daring as a concept, combined with the silliest dance ever, is Matt Harding's perfect recipe for 10 million views.

Source: Speak Media Blog

It is hopefully clear that Viral marketing success is really not easy and certainly not cheap. There is no way a company can think that Matt Harding's dance would go viral, and hence there is no way for a marketer to replicate this.

Stride chose the next best thing and sponsored this trip. They got a very insignificant mention in the end. Little does the traditional marketer who just cares for a bigger logo, realize the significance of the insignificant.

Stride just supported a guy to achieve a dream, something on his bucket list perhaps. It struck a chord like nothing else ever will.

The video series got enormous media attention. Also take a look at the number of diverse videos on youtube alone, ranging from queries like "Where is Matt?" to "Matt impersonators and fans". There is also a website called Where the hell is Matt

The series got a whopping 10 million views and is going strong. The positive rub off on Stride is obvious once you have seen the entire video. Take a look and judge for yourself.

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Comments

Eamon

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:45:06

I see that Stride spent $50 million on advertising during launch. Don't know how much the viral cost but something significantly cheaper. Seems to me that they got value for money with this viral - hitting the social networking world, and, also, an interesting event to build up some sort of brand story as well as brand personality. Not bad considering the short space of time.

Ishwar S

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:22:42

Absolutely Eamon, completely agree. The problem is that Viral Markeing is at times demanded of agencies, but the percentage of Virals which make i big are really low.

You might need to try 20 thought processes before you hit one success. The alternate is to recognise possible Viral success stories like Stride did.

No doubt it paid off for Stride, but if startups think it is a low cost alternative to traditional advertising, a feat like travelling around the world is not low cost by any means.

Of course it should not stop them from trying their hand at creativity and developing low cost virals that can potentially deliver fantastic results

Jennifer A. Jones

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 07:57:56

First up, thanks for the link to Speak Media Blog here! :-)

Secondly, while it's true that Stride's budget for the Dancing video was large, good viral doesn't always mean big budget.

Look at this viral video from Sansung for the Instinct phone. They shot a few videos and strung them together with YouTube's annotations. Very easy to do. And, people are seeking this out and going back through the ad over and over again to try different adventures. It's brilliant and I'm sure it cost peanuts next to a big media buy of equivalent length.

http://www.speakmediablog.com/2008/08/samsungs-instinct-campaign-lets-viral.html

or my video on it:

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZdHXTD6I-c

Jennifer A. Jones
Speak Media Blog

Ishwar S

Chief Amnesiac
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