The marketers always look to spread the word regarding their brand or product to a wide audience and they try to do this in hope of making their content go viral and engage a wider audience. Viral Marketing is a technique used by the marketers for intentionally spreading the message about their brand quickly. Similar to a biological virus, viral marketing campaigns aim to spread from one individual to another with the hope they result in getting a large number of views, brand awareness, and a substantial number of social media shares.
Here are some of the most successful examples of brands that went viral with their marketing campaigns.
- The Man Your Man Could Smell Likecampaign by Old Spice
Old Spice has always been the king when it comes to viral marketing as it has some of the most humorous and out-of-the-box marketing campaigns. They came out with their brand character “The Old Spice Man” that appeared in their campaign in 2010. They managed to create quite a stir with this ad as it appealed to the female audience which in-turn led a massive proportion of men into buying Old Spice.
- Real Beauty Sketches campaign by Dove
Dove Real Beauty Sketches started in April 2013 and it was meant to empower women about the way they look. This campaign was a short film that featured Gil Zamora, an FBI-trained sketch artist who was shown sketching two portraits of women based on the description. Neither the artist looked at the appearance of the women nor were these women aware of this social experiment but it proved to be a massive hit among the masses.
- ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
This challenge started in 2014 as an online effort to raising awareness for people suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) disease and raising funds for them. This campaign was hugely successful and was able to raise a massive $115 million within 8 weeks. It was a challenge where the people had to pour a bucket full of ice-cold water over themselves and the challenge had to involve a minimum 3 people for doing the same and then making a donation to the ALS Association.