Important Elements of a Viral Marketing Campaign - Be Fresh
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Burger King also took advantage of the element of surprise. Honestly, who would have expected a big corporation to do something that seemed, for the time, so strange and even a little illicit? Taking what people expect and turning it on its head, but in a good way, is sure to get you noticed.
Philips also made use of a fresh approach, in more ways than one. You may have heard of their electric shaver for men, the Bodygroom, which is designed to shave everywhere. Women have long shaved their legs and underarms (among other areas), but when the Bodygroom was introduced, most men only shaved their faces (if that much). If a man was particularly fastidious, and had major hair problems, he might shave his ears or nose hair.
The Bodygroom came on the scene with a handsome man in a white bathrobe who had the air of your older, more knowledgeable friend who always gets the women. Well, okay, he was also slightly smarmy to female eyes, but that just made him funny and non-threatening. Anyway, this time, he was sharing his secret: the Bodygroom. The site featured plenty of PG-13 material, discussion of the extra “optical inch” you can gain from using the Bodygroom, some interactive elements...and it worked.
At the time, it was hard to imagine a big company letting down their hair in this way to serve up something “fresh,” in more ways than one. But Philips did it. What's more, they kept doing it. If you've been doing SEO for any length of time, you understand the importance of fresh content. I just visited the Bodygroom web site and saw that Philips had made some significant changes. Playing off the popular vignette-laden dramatic work “The Vagina Monologues,” they introduced a “Bodygroom Manalogues” portion of the site.
The Bodygroom Manalogues takes reader letters about their experiences with shaving various parts of their body and displays them in a friendly, interactive, easy-to-read format. You really relate to the embarrassing experiences of the guys who have written in, even if you're not male. Are they letters that readers have actually written? Well, that's hard to say -- but they could be; it's easy to picture someone actually having the experiences described. If these were written by the advertising firm, they did their homework.
At the end of each Manalogue – and you can choose from quite a few – you can give it a score of one to five razors. Before you click on any of the stories, however, a spokesman comes out, dressed down in jeans and a T-shirt, saying that “we knew you guys like to keep things tidy below the belt, but we didn't know how vocal you'd be about it...” He goes on to encourage visitors to write in with their body grooming experiences, and “who knows? If we like them, we just might put them on the web for all to see.” Now that's user interaction, and a great way to keep your viral marketing campaign fresh.
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