The following is a guest post. Enjoy!
Back during the summer of 2014, Facebook was “overflowing” with videos of people dumping buckets of ice water over their heads. The Ice Bucket Challenge was mentioned more than 2.2 million times on Twitter and over 1.2 million videos were posted to Facebook. There, some 15 million people either commented or “liked” the Ice Bucket Challenge. Meanwhile, all of the major TV news entities carried stories about it.
And, $220 million dollars were raised for the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Association to help find a cure for Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
A brilliant example of ecommerce guerilla marketing done right, the campaign was easily doable, exceptionally social and highly flattering to the participants. People could take pride in doing something good, being “nominated” made them look important and they could do it without appearing narcissistic. After all, they were simply responding to a challenge—for a very worthy cause.
While it might look like the ALS Association captured lightning in a bottle — mainly because it did — this strategy is pretty easy to duplicate with a bit of outside-the-box thinking.
In 2010, James McDowell, MINI’s North American president, appeared in a You Tube video challenging Porsche to a race at Road Atlanta (Porsche’s home track in North America). A legendary sports car builder, Porsche’s 911 Carrera S of 2010 made 385 horsepower to the MINI Cooper S’s 172.
That Porsche would easily win the race was a no-brainer—or was it?
Ultimately, it didn’t matter, because Porsche refused the challenge.
When this happened, McDowell made another video and even hired a plane to tow a banner over the Porsche headquarters challenging them once again. Porsche still refused, so MINI got a 911 on its own and ran the race anyway.
In the end, over 300,000 people watched the videos on You Tube and MINI’s Facebook page spiked to 82,000 views on the day of the race. The MINI vs. Porsche Facebook tab generated 400,000 views, along with 15,000 petition signatures goading Porsche to race and nearly 8,000 new fans for MINI. Print, TV and online coverage earned MINI 3.3 million impressions. The company also made its mark as a builder of fun to drive cars and got them thought of in the same breath as Porsche.
Regardless of the outcome of the race, MINI had already chalked up a win.
Anyone who has ever been to an event like South by Southwest (SXSW) knows you come home with a bag full of swag. Water bottles, T-shirts, backpacks, hats—all sorts of stuff. Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce these items, which they give away. People take them home, stuff them in drawers for a few years, then throw it all out to make room for more free stuff they’ll never use.
Medallia, a Silicon Valley tech company, teamed with Austin’s Foundation for the Homeless at SXSW to give convention swag to the homeless. Hats, book bags, water bottles, T-shirts and even food were collected and donated. Medallia had people stationed around the event wearing “Donate Your Swag” T-shirts, who directed people to drop the goods they’d collected at a Medallia booth in front of the Austin Convention Center.
In the process, Medallia created a significant presence for itself at the event, without spending tons of money. In fact, the company leveraged the spending of other companies to attract attention to its booth. Through finding a way to help other people, Medallia helped itself.
Ideas such as these are creative, fun and grab attention. They are also extremely cost-effective when you consider results garnered vs. dollars spent. Rather, “how will I go about spreading brand awareness in a cost-effective and fun way?
