Did it Hurt or Help the Company?

Viral marketing campaigns rely on an interaction between a firm and its customer base which can be initiated by either. These campaigns can have positive or negative outcomes and combining these two dimensions results in four different types of campaigns (Kaplan 2011).

Nightmare In 2016 a Twitter user tweeted this photo to their 4000 followers. It quickly accumulated 105,000 retweets, 108,000 likes and 8 million impressions. This raised concerns with people about Whole Foods environmental practices and forced them to take all related products of their shelves.

Triumphs 

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge was a phenomenon over the (American) summer of 2014. ALS was a relatively unknown disease that had received little research funding. With a fun, simple task and message they managed to raise $115 million and amassed over 1 billion Youtube views of people participating. This funding later led to a research breakthrough.

Strokes of Luck Damn Daniel was a viral sensation in 2016. The video and boys gained internet fame and were invited onto Ellen. Vans quickly recognised this and changed their marketing campaign in order to capitalise on this unexpected advertising. The quick response and ability to adapt to the environment around them allowed them to increase their direct to consumer sales by 20% and their online sales by 30%.

Homemade Issues  In 2017 Pepsi made international headlines for their tone-deaf video, doing considerable damage to their brand. The ad amassed five times more down votes than up votes on Youtube and was pulled within 24 hours of appearing on the website. This demonstrates that insensitive campaigns to relevant issues will often backfire.

Not all virality is good. Sometimes companies are not expecting it. Can you think of any other campaigns like these, let me know in the comments!