Shark Week

The Discovery Channel had just created a new television program called Shark Week. They wanted a simple and relatively inexpensive way to create a stir about the show. They hired RAPP Collins, a marketing firm in Australia, to create the splash.

Their idea was to create hipe by planting surfboards all over popular beaches around Sydney that had huge shark bites taken out of them. When people started picking them up, they noticed that on the boards there was a short description about the show and when it would be aired. There were also photographers ready to take pictures of curious people gathering around the boards.

The pictures as well as the story were well circulated around Australia and the internet.

Whopper Freakout

Whopper Freakout is a viral marketing campaign created by Burger King. At a Burger King location in the United States, they told their loyal customers that the Whopper had been discontinued. They hired professional actors to play the parts of Burger King Employees. Burger King also placed hidden cameras throughout the store to capture customer reactions to the news. Once they had compiled a large amount of funny as well as complementary reactions towards the Burger King franchise, they created the site Whopperfreackout.com. This site contains an approximately 8 minute video of the prank containing many funny reactions and quotes like “If Burger King doesn’t have the Whopper they may as well call it Burger Queen.”

The results from this campaign can be found all over the Internet. If you Google: Burger King, Whopper, or Whopper Freakout you will find thousands upon thousands of results. Burger King was able to greatly increase brand awareness as well as create many new customers.

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing refers to marketing techniques that use existing social networks like Facebook or MySpace to produce increases in brand awareness. Like a virus, the marketing campaign or advertisements spreads from person to person either from word-of-mouth or over the internet. The best characteristic about viral marketing is that marketing messages are spread voluntarily. The most popular forms of viral marketing are: videos, Flash games, and images.