Celebrity selfies, intimate strangers, and an unpredictable penchant for getting wet set new records for viral viewing and sharing in 2014.
You can’t plan on hitting the viral marketing campaign jackpot, but you can hope to implement some of its hallmarks. Take a look at the viral sensations of 2014 – from a tweet heard round the world to a chain reaction that left everyone all wet, in a good way.
1. Samsung Values Ellen’s Oscar Selfie At $1 Billion
In March we saw the most retweeted tweet of all time. This tweet captured all the coveted characteristics of viral social media: a celebrity tweeter, the who’s-who of Hollywood celebrity photo, tied into a mainstream TV broadcast, backed by big brand marketing dollars.
The value of Samsung’s celebrity-packed selfie (and stealth product placement) snapped on stage at the Oscar’s by award show host Ellen DeGeneres was calculated to have been worth $1 billion in ad dollars for the phone manufacturer, AdWeek reports. The photo was part of the campaign to advertise Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3.
If only Bradley’s arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap — Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) March 3, 2014
The tweet was posted on March 2, and according to Mashable, two days later, it had 3.2 million retweets and nearly 14,000 web pages had embedded the tweet, which at that time had been seen 32.8 million times.
The selfie was originally planned as Ellen snapping a pic of herself and Meryl Streep. But Samsung’s policy is to stay flexible in its ad shoots with celebrities, finding that the willingness to give up some control can deliver greater rewards, according to AdWeek. Mission accomplished!
2. When Strangers Kiss On Camera, The Video Goes Viral
In March, WREN Studio’s “First Kiss” short film became the most viewed fashion film ever. It wasn’t immediately apparent to viewers stumbling across the video on social media that it was an advertisement for clothes, or that the strangers were professional performers, actors, models and musicians. But all those elements almost certainly helped.
The film’s director Tatia Pilieva wrote about the backstory to the film on the Huffington Post. About the speed with which the unexpected viral marketing campaign took off, she said:
“In the first hours, the film had a couple hundred views. Melissa and I were happy that our friends and the kissers liked it. By lunchtime, we had about 30,000 views and by the time I was going to bed it had reached close to 600,000 and made the front page of Reddit. The following morning it had 5 million views and I was interviewed over Skype live on CNN.”
To date, the video has nearly 100,000 views on YouTube.
3. ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Warms America’s Heart
For several weeks this summer, dumping a bucket of ice water over your head in the name of charity became the thing to do, and brands quickly got involved. The first Ice Bucket Challenge video benefiting the ALS Association was posted July 15. A TIME Magazine article chronicling the rise of this summer’s runaway Ice Bucket challenge indicated that the “ALS Association says it started seeing an unexplained uptick in donations on July 29, and on Aug. 4, it was clear something was really taking off.”
By September, Entrepreneur reported $100 million in donations to ALS related charity organizations, compared to $2.5 million during the same period a year earlier.
Mashable has a collection of 60 celebrity #IceBucketChallenge videos, from Oprah to Justin Timberlake to Steven Spielberg, and celebrity involvement in the event definitely played a role in its mainstream visibility. Not on the list but a personal favorite, Patrick Stewart’s classy interpretation of the Ice Bucket Challenge:
4. Greeting Card Company Says Moms Have #WorldsToughestJob
Honoring mothers as title holders for the #WorldsToughtestJob, card manufacturer American Greetings took out newspaper and online ads for fake job openings for a director of operations with experience in solving with “sticky situations.” A video posted in April got 18 million views, and Mullen, the Boston ad agency behind the campaign, told the Boston Globe that American Greetings saw “significant year-over-year increases” in site traffic and card sales.
5. Humanitarian Crisis Hits Home With Powerful PSA
What if the conflict in Syria was happening in the UK? That was the scenario imagined in “Most Shocking Second a Day,” a video by Save the Children UK and film production agency UNIT9. The horror of civil war was brought home to viewers in an artful and heartbreaking 90-second video done in a second-a-day structure, showing how one middle-class girl’s life could fall apart in a single year, as has happened for more than 5 million children in Syria.
AdWeek reports the video went viral after publication on March 5, receiving 21 million views in its first five days. Today the video has more than 43 million views on YouTube and has helped raise more than $100,000 for the cause.
Which viral marketing campaigns from 2014 do you think were the best?