At Hotcow, we talk a lot about marketing and, in particular, experiential marketing. The whole point of experiential marketing is to get people (potential customers) to notice, engage with and grow to a love a brand…
… via an experience.
Now, experiential marketing is an incredibly powerful strategy, but it still relies on exposure.
A brand using such a tactic needs an experiential campaign that will reach people, otherwise even the most sophisticated and creative idea will not yield much ROI.
Exposure is the key component. Which prompts the question, are there are any other ways that a company can put their brand name in front of loads of people? After all, no one should put all his or her eggs into one basket.
Actually, social media is a great way of achieving such exposure. ‘Going viral’ is a phrase you’ve probably heard of, but as a business, it’s the marketing Holy Grail.
Why? Because you can put your business (or your products, services and ethos) in front of a lot of people for next to no cost.
Think about it. Facebook is said to have 2 billion active monthly users. That’s just one social media platform. Technology has made potential consumers more accessible than ever.
It’s now possible to reach people in ways that traditional marketing methods could never do in years gone by.
So, how does a business go viral exactly? Well, you need to create something that’s of interest. A piece of content that’s either funny, entertaining, shocking, touching or amazing in some way.
Viral content is also distributed in a highly logical way and has a clear strategy behind it (more often than not).
One of the best recent examples was McDonald’s idea to create a completely useless product – the Fries Fork.
The ‘Frork’ was intentionally naff… but the creation had the desired effect. Hovering somewhere between genius and ridiculous, the invention got people talking.
Whether responses were positive or negative, people were entertained. And for something that effectively cost nothing, the McDonald’s brand name was plastered all over the internet.
On some level, we discovered that this is a business that does have a sense of humour. When brands pay millions for billboard adverts, magazine pullouts and TV commercials, you wonder why.
Contrast the sheer reach of this campaign. You can do the same.
Hotcow is a non-traditional creative agency that specialises in experiential marketing that goes viral. Our campaigns generate buzz through crowd participation, PR and content sharing. Contact us on 0207 5030442 or email us on info@hotcow.co.uk.
