First Kiss
Every now and then someone comes along with a fresh take
on things and we all sit up and take note. Recently we’ve had not one but two highly
successful marketing campaigns that have caught the public attention and
produced incredible results. Results
that can be measured in public awareness and hard cash! We know these are great campaigns because we’re
already seeing many imitations. What
makes them great is their difference!
In the last few weeks we have seen the no-makeup selfie
go viral. Women have been using social media to post an image of themselves without
makeup and in the process raise over 8 million pounds for Cancer Research. We have also witnessed the recent video First
Kiss, produced by Wren Studio which so far has recorded nearly 75 million hits
on YouTube.
The Wren Studio video is yet another example of the positive
effect of social media marketing. Wren Studio is a clothing company based in
Los Angeles and came up with the idea to get twenty strangers to kiss. They
never intended to use this as a hard sell campaign but as a PR exercise to
raise their brand identity. This campaign travelled across the
internet at lighting speed and the effect on the company’s bottom line has been
phenomenal. Traffic to their website is up 14,000% with 96% of this is coming
from new visitors and their online sales are up a staggering 13,000%!
To the uninitiated these campaigns seem to spring from
nowhere but somewhere, in a small meeting room, design studio or even the pub
someone has contributed a fresh idea to a group of people and some enterprising
risk taker has said, let’s do it! Of
course, the more we see these original ideas come to the fore the more
difficult it gets to follow them up and the question is, can the same group of
people do it again?
What these campaigns really do is buy into our
emotions. Over the last few years we
have seen how John Lewis has achieved this with their Christmas campaigns and the public now wait in anticipation to see what they do next. There are other good examples
too, for instance, the hugely successful T-Mobile ads such as the Liverpool
Street Station flash dance which spurned imitations across the world.
Even without the advantage of social media back in
the eighties Mary Portas, then creative director
of Harvey Nichols, installed empty shop windows in the run up to Christmas
donating the annual Christmas display budget to charity. A brave and risky move
in the highly competitive and hugely important London retail season, but in its
way this was just as impressive and at the time attracted huge media coverage.
Marketing has now changed beyond recognition and will
continue to do so as technology advances and we all become more tech savvy. More and more people will begin to understand
how to get the best out of their mobile devices. In particular, marketing in the retail sector
will become ever more inventive but this doesn’t mean that marketing is some
complicated science or unattainable skill.
Anyone of us could come up with the next idea, the opportunities are
limitless but the important thing is to keep trying and keep doing. Who knows, you might be the person who comes up with the next viral campaign!
Making of T-Mobile Dance
Contact Peter by emailor phone 07907 691711
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