Viral marketing: self-incarnate Dwarf

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When it comes to digital marketing, forget about the subservient chick from Burger King, and the office supplies manufacturer OfficeMax's "Avatar" campaign, which has been the best spreading network viral marketing campaign ever. For this event, we have previously in the holiday marketing of the newly-made virus greeting card in the serious popularity of the discussion. At the end of the holiday season, specific statistics show that this activity is indeed very successful.

Almost a 26.4 million of the people (roughly 1/10 of the Internet users in the United States) visited the holiday site of the Office products company this season. The site allows users to put their own face heads on the dancing Dwarfs. This figure was 10 times times that of 2006, and the event was first introduced in 2006.

"This is really a spectacle of the digital age," said Anne Bologna, president of Toy, the advertising agency that proposed the site's creativity. According to her, if you add up the amount of time people spend on the site during this holiday season, the total is 2,614 years. "In the holiday season of 2007, 123 million of the dwarves were created, and the 200-year figure was 11 million," she said. All we do is add more dwarves.

In fact, this small site strategy at a glance. When the site was resurrected in October 2007, the site's Hitwise (the famous Internet tracking agency) ranked 400,000. By December, it had risen to 55th place in all sites. Hitwise's research manager, Heather Dougherty, said: "The first month's site grew 99%, the second month the site grew 89%, and the third month was 29%." Every week is a breakthrough growth. After November and December, their share of internet users grew by 508%. ”

According to another research professional, the site's effective arrival in December (that is, how many of the 165 million Internet users visited the site this month) is 16%. The figure is 26.4 million-----one out of almost 10 Americans. Since last year, this activity has had a good echo effect. When people talk about it through blogs, it becomes very powerful.

Burger Wang Fort site (whopperfreakout.com) is a dwarf everyone site competitors, but the influence is not the same.

Dwarf site and the growth curve of the fort

But the real question is how much help does the OfficeMax brand get from these silly dwarfs? "There are always some dangers in this kind of advertising campaign," Ms. Dougherty said. They are smart, they are funny, but they have nothing to do with the brand. In this case, however, OfficeMax is a winner. Of the 20 most popular search terms in the four-week period of December, 6 contain the words OfficeMax. This shows that brand awareness has been implemented.

This is the most valuable point for OfficeMax's senior marketing and advertising VP Bob Thacker. "What we are looking for is building a brand to make our image more cordial," he said. We are not looking for sales. Because it's the third-place brand in the industry, we try to differentiate ourselves by being humorous and humane. ”

Mr. Thacker, it seems, got the gift he wanted for Christmas. "Our goal is to double the effect of 2006," he said. The result is 10 times times. "The budget for the campaign is lower than the average cost of a TV ad." These days, a TV ad spends between 300,000 dollars and 500,000 dollars.

One of the successes of this activity is that people are still talking about it. Here are the key to the success of viral marketing that we learn from these little dwarfs:

Personalized

Personalization can lead to more buying behavior and intimacy. Companies can get huge benefits from digging their personalities, which will be a good reference for the beauty industry.

Don't underestimate old customers.

Heather Dougherty, Hitwise's research manager, said 40% of site visitors were people over the age of 55---were not expecting viral marketing to reach these people. This is definitely a lesson worth learning for marketers.

Provide fun

Bob Thacker that the secret lies in respecting consumers. He said, "You are disturbing their lives." All advertising is unnecessary. So if you want to break into a party, bring a bottle of champagne. ”