Tiny Giraffe

In the EMBA session on Saturday, we discussed Cadbury's failure to implement a search strategy for its viral video of a drumming gorilla. Cadbury didn't anticipate keyword searches such as "drumming gorilla" and "something in the air" and missed out on a valuable opportunity for brand engagement, awareness, and sales.

One example of a successful search strategy aligned with a viral campaign came from DirecTV in 2010. A Google search of "tiny giraffe" produces the results shown below.

Unlike Cadbury, DirecTV created a microsite to support its ad titled "Opulence, I Has It," which featured a wealthy Russian man surrounded by gold and talking about saving money with DirecTV. The very end of the 30-second spot shows him kissing a tiny giraffe.

Another ad for the campaign shows the giraffe running on a tiny treadmill. DirecTV anticipated search terms related to the ads ("miniature giraffe," "treadmill giraffe," "giraffe commercial"), and even included these search strings in their meta data in order to point searchers to the microsite petitelapgiraffe.com. The site features a webcam, photos, and descriptions written in broken English. Clicking the button "I WANT GIRAFFE" results in a count of over 1 million people who are currently on the "waiting list" for a petite giraffe.

In class I brought up this campaign as an example, but we couldn't remember the name of the brand associated with this campaign. While viral campaigns can successfully create awareness, the challenge is connecting the campaign to the brand name. For example, a gecko is unrelated to car insurance, but now geckos make us think of Geico thanks to their successful branding efforts. Can you think of any viral campaigns that have successfully made the brand "sticky"? Or do they all fall short when it comes to long-term brand awareness?