When a viral conceives a TV commercial, drives store traffic…and helps a good cause!
Sound like the Swiss knife of marketing 2.0? That’s actually an apt metaphor.
There was a time when brands and major agencies would approach viral marketing agencies like us (CAID Productions, in partnership with our sister company Vanksen USA) with their glossies TV commercials and ask if we could make them “viral.” Our answer was always the same (“pfffff,” … followed by): “You cannot make something viral out of a TV commercial unless it has been conceived as a viral from the start. People do not forward sales pitches, they pass along entertainment!”
It finally seems that our preaching has been heeded (at least in some cases). One of our recent campaigns serves as a good example of this novelty, taking the opposite path and bringing a true viral to TV screens (to everyone’s satisfaction, we should add).
In Fall 2009, SEARS outerwear company Lands’ End asked us to come up with a creative concept for a web-based viral campaign. The objective was to encourage people to donate gently-used coats to Lands’ End shops in order to help the 8,000 homeless people of Boston, MA. The effort was titled “Big Boston Warm Up.” (www.bigbostonwarmup.com).
We created a short-format video (timed at 1:30 for the web) depicting the lifecycle of a coat (and its owner), using stop motion effects. The video depicts the moment a snappy new coat is offered to a young man, who wears it through his college years, his first job, the first date with his (eventual) wife, and the arrival of his kids. Finally the coat is donated to Big Boston Warm Up, where it passes into the hands of a grateful homeless person — and a meaningful new destiny.
We personalized the video’s ending, making the call-to-action more memorable to viewers: their names appeared on the label of the donated coat. We also developed custom modules, allowing the spread of the video on Twitter and Facebook.
When Lands’ End’s top management saw the video, they were so excited that they took the campaign national, renaming it “Big Nation Warm Up.” They also decided to run a 30-second version of the piece on TV! In this case, we went from Viral to television — which seems to be the way to go in the 21st century, if only because an effort that first goes viral online enables you to forecast the sentiments of a larger number of people – thereby justifying the higher cost of a TV ad.
Additionally, the campaign had a built-in means of driving traffic to stores, since users had to bring their coats to Lands’ End shops nationwide in order to donate them. The results? We beat the odds in Boston, with Lands’ End collecting more coats than the total number of homeless people in the city. Nationwide, donations topped 30,000 coats in total.
What’s at the end of all that math? — an ROI positive campaign, a defining moment for the brand, and 30,000 homeless folks who will be warmer this winter than they would have been otherwise. Way to go viral!
