Dyson and Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is all the rage right now, and with good reason: a lot of it comes for free, as people share your content (therefore your product) because it’s interesting to them.

However, thinking up a campaign that can truly go viral is not easy. One of my favourite attempts at it, and I say attempts because I don’t know how successful it was yet, was the Ford campaign during American Idol. Apart from being a major sponsor of the show and being constantly name-dropped, huge logos notwithstanding, their marketing effort in the last few episodes was brilliant.

I’m referring to the custom Fiesta cars by the Idols, the participants in the show. The original youtube video I found when I blogged about it seems to have been removed, for some outlandish reason, however, I found a substitute.

Of course, you’ve all heard of Old Spice. Yes, what your grandfather uses! Well, they’ve been running extremely successful campaigns to bring down their age demographic to a more youthful audience, and have a whole set of youtube videos portraying gorgeously proportioned men saying what it takes to become an ‘Old Spice Man’, tongue in cheek of course. Their latest installment is a voicemail generator, which allows you tweak your message, include your number and download, so that presumably, the ladies will swoon when you don’t answer you phone and it goes to voicemail. Check that one out here: https://oldspicevoicemail.com/

On a similarly viral note, today, I discovered this genius spot by Dyson. Dyson makes a lot of products that suck or blow. Seriously, they do. You wouldn’t expect any different from a company making vacuum cleaners and fans. I did recently see an ad for a bladeless fan of theirs on Wired magazine, but although I thought the product was cool as hell, I paid no further notice. Then, this clip was brought to me by the magic that is Google Buzz. A CERN for dummies, as Dyson engineers with a lot of spare time on their hands, and about a truckload of bladeless fans, accelerated a balloon through the fans, all around the huge warehouse/plant/building they were in. Stuff of legends, truly. See for yourselves: