7 Great Viral Marketing Campaigns That Can Inspire You

7 Great Viral Marketing Campaigns That Can Inspire You

Why should you both­er about old viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns? Because there’s so much to learn from them.

Great viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns from the past can help you craft more engag­ing mar­ket­ing strate­gies that bring you mas­sive expo­sure and new cus­tomers. After all, the win­ning strate­gies of viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns have always been the same. It’s only a ques­tion of adapt­ing them to today’s trends and tech­nolo­gies.

Mar­ket­ing trends may be chang­ing all the time, but these fan­tas­tic viral mar­ket­ing exam­ples ideas will always have a place in the his­to­ry of mar­ket­ing.

Speak­ing of exam­ples and ideas, we’re giv­ing away a free E-Book Guide on Going Viral to give you tons of tips & tricks on how you can build viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns into your own busi­ness. Just fill out the form below and we’ll email it to you.

Viral Marketing Campaigns #1 — Dollar Shave Club: “Our Blades Are F***ing Great”

When it comes to video viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, the one video that real­ly stands out is Dol­lar Shave Club’s Our Blades Are F***ing Great. You’ve prob­a­bly seen it already. Many times. After all, the video got 25 mil­lion views on YouTube since 2012 and helped the com­pa­ny grow to 3.2 mil­lion sub­scribers in just a few years.

When it was first released, it gen­er­at­ed 12,000 orders in 48 hours, mak­ing it one of the most suc­cess­ful video viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns of its day.

It’s enough to watch the video once to under­stand why it’s been so suc­cess­ful. The mes­sage is great. The brand has a face — a charis­mat­ic one to which men can eas­i­ly relate. The offer is also hard to resist — cheap high-qual­i­ty blades deliv­ered at your doorstep.

This video illus­trates how viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns can become amaz­ing­ly suc­cess­ful when employ­ees step into the spot­light. Peo­ple relate more eas­i­ly to the real peo­ple behind a brand than to face­less logos.

The les­son you can learn from the first entry in our viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns list is that mak­ing your­self (or your employ­ees) known to your audi­ence can make your video viral.

Viral Marketing Campaigns #2 — Old Spice

Talk­ing of video-based viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, we can’t help think­ing about Old Spice’s 2010 ad cam­paign. The 30-sec­ond “Your man could smell like me” com­mer­cial brought the brand mas­sive expo­sure. More than that, it rein­vent­ed a brand that was begin­ning to feel slight­ly out­dat­ed.

It gen­er­at­ed 23 mil­lion views in 36 hours, an 118% increase in Face­book fans, and 227% more YouTube sub­scribers. It also brought the oldspice.com web site a mas­sive 300% traf­fic increase. The bold, cheeky video star­ring Isa­iah Mustafa pro­pelled the actor to inter­net star­dom.

This is a very dif­fer­ent video from Dol­lar Shave Club’s, though. The inge­nious use of dig­i­tal imagery and the shift­ing set­tings make it a feat of cre­ativ­i­ty. Admit­ted­ly, not every brand can afford to hire an actor and cre­ate viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns like this one. But there’s much that mar­keters can learn from it.

With its cam­paign, Old Spice proved that suc­cess­ful viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns talk direct­ly to con­sumers. They do it in a wit­ty and per­sua­sive way that peo­ple can’t eas­i­ly for­get. They also pack a heavy punch in a short amount of time. Any­thing that’s not nec­es­sary is removed to cre­ate an intense, fast-paced visu­al and audi­to­ry expe­ri­ence that sticks into view­ers mind after they stop see­ing the video.

Yet the inter­est­ing thing about the Old Spice ad and the oth­er viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns that fol­lowed is that they didn’t always fea­ture calls to action. These ads were sim­ply meant to raised aware­ness. They won the brand the atten­tion of a more than inter­est­ed audi­ence. Old Spice didn’t tar­get men direct­ly, but rather women, a nov­el­ty for this cat­e­go­ry of prod­ucts.

Viral Marketing Campaigns #3 — Lay’s Do Us a Flavor

The best ani­mat­ed viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns include with­out a doubt Lay’s 2012 Do Us a Fla­vor cam­paign. In addi­tion to a love­ly ani­mat­ed ad fea­tur­ing singing good­ies, it chal­lenged fans to cre­ate a new chip fla­vor. The prize? $1 mil­lion.

One of the best mul­ti-plat­form viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, Lay’s Do Us a Fla­vor took the inter­net by storm. It real­ly had every­thing. A killer com­mer­cial, a great chal­lenge, and a fan­tas­tic reward. The name of the cam­paign didn’t sound bad, either. Lay’s made use of all online chan­nels to pro­mote it.

No won­der it gen­er­at­ed almost 4 mil­lion fla­vor ideas, which peo­ple sent through a Face­book app and text mes­sages. The amount of expo­sure Lays got was mas­sive.

At the end of the cam­paign, Lays gath­ered togeth­er chefs, fla­vor experts, and celebri­ty food­ies, who chose three final­ists. The big win­ner? Cheesy Gar­lic Bread, vot­ed by over 1 mil­lion con­sumers over social media and text. Lays Cheesy Gar­lic Bread went on to become a real prod­uct.

Do Us a Fla­vor is one of the best viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns the world has seen since the advent of the inter­net. It was also a great social media mar­ket­ing cam­paign that called upon fans and fol­low­ers to engage with the brand in a unique way.

More than mak­ing Lay’s a buzz­word on social media for the whole dura­tion of the cam­paign, it tripled the brand’s Face­book fan base. It also increased direct sales in the US by 12%.

This cam­paign showed mar­keters how pow­er­ful viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns can be when called upon con­sumers to engage with a brand. It inspired Lays fans to get cre­ative. It also assured them that their opin­ion real­ly mat­tered. Rather than arbi­trar­i­ly choos­ing the win­ner, Lays enabled social media vot­ing so that con­sumers had a say in the mat­ter.

Viral Marketing Campaigns #4 — Honda Pintermission

Pin­ter­est isn’t the first social media plat­form that comes to mind when you think about viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns. Yet one of the most inge­nious viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns in recent years took place on the pop­u­lar visu­al con­tent net­work. As part of its CR-V mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, Hon­da linked the pop­u­lar SUV with get­ting out and liv­ing. Hon­da offered $500 to the most active pin­ners if they agreed to take a 24-hour break from the addic­tive net­work and do what they liked with the mon­ey.

While this cam­paign didn’t have the huge scale of some of the oth­er viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns men­tioned above, it did cre­ate a stir on Pin­ter­est. Hon­da cre­at­ed pins that chal­lenged each of the five users to take the $500. These sug­ges­tions were based on the things users pinned. All the users took on the chal­lenge. Lat­er, they pinned images tagged #pin­ter­mis­sion and #hon­da to show­case what they’ve done with the mon­ey.

As you may imag­ine, this meant huge expo­sure for Hon­da, since all the fol­low­ers of the top users got to see those pho­tos and the Hon­da tag. Web­sites, mar­keters, and plen­ty of oth­er peo­ple on the web picked up on this inge­nious mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. Word about it spread beyond Pin­ter­est- the fact that it’s still men­tioned five years after it took place proves it.

With a small spend and just a cou­ple of pins, Hon­da man­aged to bring mas­sive expo­sure to its Pin­ter­est page and win over many new fol­low­ers across social media. Such viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns prove that viral mar­ket­ing can start small and that it doesn’t even need that much con­tent. Rather, it’s all about the qual­i­ty of the con­tent.

Viral Marketing Campaigns #5 — Deadpool on Tinder

Fast-for­ward­ing a few years, and we have Dead­pool on Tin­der, prob­a­bly the most cre­ative viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns of our days. Even if you’re not into comics, you prob­a­bly heard about the Dead­pool movie. With so much mon­ey poured into its mar­ket­ing, it’s hard not to.

As you may imag­ine, the Dead­pool mar­ket­ing team used all the major social net­works to gen­er­ate buzz around the release of the prod­uct. So far so good. But then they did some­thing that real­ly got every­one talk­ing. They cre­at­ed for Dead­pool a pro­file on dat­ing app Tin­der and filled out a whacky pro­file descrip­tion for their star: Semi pro­fes­sion­al bad guy, un-aliv­er, chimichanga con­nois­seur, etc. You get the pic­ture.

Not every­one respond­ed pos­i­tive­ly to this fic­tion­al intru­sion on a net­work that prides itself with its verac­i­ty, but even the naysay­ers men­tioned Dead­pool a lot. Bring­ing Dead­pool to Tin­der is one of the cheap­est viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns on this list. Who­ev­er came up with the idea deserves some kudos. They man­aged to get a lot of expo­sure in an unusu­al way.

Viral Marketing Campaigns #6 — Disney’s #ShareYourEars

Among the many viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns of 2016, this one real­ly stands out. It’s as sim­ple as mar­ket­ing gets, and maybe this was why it was so suc­cess­ful. Dis­ney teamed up with Make-A-Wish foun­da­tion to launch one of the most suc­cess­ful viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns ever ran — #ShareY­ourEars.

The cam­paign encour­aged users to share pho­tos of them­selves using Mick­ey or Min­nie ears, togeth­er with the hash­tag. In return, Dis­ney pledged to donate $5 to the Make-A-Wish foun­da­tion, with a cap of $1 mil­lion.

The cam­paign went viral. Actor Neil Patrick Har­ris shared a pho­to of him­self wear­ing ears. The user engage­ment was tremen­dous, and the cam­paign end­ed up gen­er­at­ing over 200,000 social media shares. Dis­ney dou­bled its dona­tion.

This was only one of many viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns of 2016 that high­light­ed how impor­tant hash­tags can be for viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns. Today, when most social net­works fea­ture hash­tags, mar­keters can use them to encour­age more peo­ple to join in cam­paigns and share com­ments. Hash­tags improve the dis­cov­er­abil­i­ty of your con­tent. They can make it pop­u­lar.

Viral Marketing Campaigns #7 — Branded Ghostbusters Filters on Snapchat

Snapchat is yet anoth­er plat­form that mar­keters can use for viral mar­ket­ing. In one of the best app viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns in years, Ghost­busters mar­keters pro­mot­ed the film in an inge­nious way. They launched brand­ed Snapchat fil­ters which added ghosts from the film on self­ies. Includ­ed in the fil­ters was the fran­chise logo, togeth­er with the stamp In The­aters July 15.

Snapchat is known for its younger audi­ence, and so the Ghost­busters mar­ket­ing team struck gold. A huge num­ber of peo­ple added Ghost­busters fil­ters to their pho­tos, pop­u­lar­iz­ing with each one the movie and the brand behind it. Snapchat users just loved the fil­ters.

Today, when many apps fea­ture third par­ty-in app items, brands and mar­keters can use the reach of mobile apps to cre­ate com­pelling viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns. With a Los Ange­les SEO agency on your side, it’s pos­si­ble to dis­cov­er cost-effec­tive viral mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties that you would have oth­er­wise not thought pos­si­ble.

As you can see from the viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns above, when it comes to mar­ket­ing there’s no lim­it to cre­ativ­i­ty. Brands big and small have been using social media, videos, and the inter­net to cre­ate time­less viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns that often exceed­ed their wildest hopes. When viral mar­ket­ing comes out right, its impact can be tremen­dous.

Let the viral mar­ket­ing cam­paigns above inspire you to cre­ate your own viral con­tent. If you’re not sure where to start, gives us a call or send us a mes­sage. At Swift­ly Dig­i­tal, we can brain­storm ideas and build with you.