social smarts
Within six weeks, about 900,000 people had viewed the video, and 20 per cent of them had clicked on the link to the Orabrush website. During that period, Orabrush sold roughly 10,000
The Result:
Old Spice’s viral hit made its TV debut during the 2010 Super Bowl.
The YouTube/BYU Connection
Looking to go viral?
If you need help launching a YouTube campaign, you might want to do some recruiting at Brigham Young University. Three of the most suc cessful YouTube marketing cam paigns launched in the past few years have been created by BYU alumni. Here’s the skinny on the campaigns.
The Bad-Breath Test
Will it Blend?
Orabrush founder Dr. Robert Wagstaff met Jeffrey Harmon in 2008, when Harmon was studying business and marketing at BYU. After launching Orabrush’s first viral hit, in 2009, Harmon became the company’s chief marketing officer. The original bad-breath video has been viewed 15.8 million times.
In 2007, Blendtec founder Tom Dickson (BYU ’71) and director of marketing George Wright (BYU ’93) devised a way to make their blenders interesting: Use them to pulverise stuff. The campaign’s most popular video, which featured Dickson blending an iPad, has had more than 12 million views.
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Social Speak
generate buzz. The grill was featured on the Today show four influencer times, along with dozens of local (noun) news broadcasts, but the Someone with appearances failed to translate the ability to into sales on the company’s webaffect the site. Last fall, EZ Grill founder opinions and and CEO Phillip Swan, who was actions of trying to target consumers in others in the their 20s and 30s, also began to social-media notice a drop-off in new fans and world. followers on the company’s Twitter and Facebook pages. That’s when a friend referred him to Banyan Branch, a Seattle firm that specialises in social-media marketing. Banyan suggested launching a video that riffed off the The Price Tag: $1,260 for youtube Ads popular Will It Blend? series on YouTube. Instead of putting objects in a blender, the The Company video would show a Windows 7 phone, an EZ Grill, a manufacturer of disposable iPhone 4, and an Android phone being charcoal grills in Bellevue, Washington grilled, to see which one would last longest. Banyan handled the video’s shooting, The Goal: Boost online sales and attract editing, and production, which took a few more fans and followers on Facebook days, and posted it on YouTube the same and Twitter week the Windows 7 phone, the HTC Surround, debuted. Banyan promoted the The Execution: After hitting the market in video,”What Grills Faster?,” on Twitter and 2007, EZ Grill hired a traditional PR firm to Facebook and e-mailed a press release with the YouTube link to technology blogs. tongue cleaners, clearing out its inventory. The company did not track how many free brushes it gave away, but Harmon said the sales generated by the video far outweighed any losses. In the past two years, the company has sold more than one million Orabrushes online, and the bad-breath video has been viewed more than 15 million times. The company now posts weekly videos on its YouTube channel. Recently, its tongue cleaner hit the shelves of CVS and Walmart stores around the country.
The Man Your Man Could Smell Like
Launched in February 2010, this video, which stars ex-football player Isaiah Mustafa (shown above) as a man-scented stud, helped inject new life into the Old Spice brand. Jason Bagley (BYU ’00), creative director at ad agency Wieden + Kennedy, helped create the video, which has had 35.7 million views.
The video was an instant viral hit, garnering 1.5 million views within three days, along with coverage on prominent blogs, including TechCrunch and Engadget. Swan credits the clip for boosting the number of “Likes” on EZ Grill’s Facebook page from 780 to 3,000 and increasing its Twitter follower count from 1,500 to 6,000. However, he says, the video did not translate into sales, probably owing to the fact that it did not include a call to action and a link to EZ Grill’s online store. The company has posted three new videos in the past year, including one that explains how to make a grilled cheese sandwich in the likeness of Jesus and ends by inviting people to visit EZGrill.com for a chance to win supplies for a Glee viewing party. But none of the videos have come close to the first in terms of views. “Marketing on YouTube was worth it in terms of building the brand, but not in terms of building consumer sales,” Swan says. “But as a small company, you’ve got to throw the spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks.” The Result:
The Price Tag: $1,500
Expert Tips
Consider the medium Some products and services are ill suited for YouTube
image source: youtube
and paid a former college roommate $300 to write the script. Finally, he rented a Panasonic video camera for $50 and headed to a pool hall with a white wall for the shoot. During the two-minute video, “How to Tell When Your Breath Stinks,” Craig dons a white lab coat and protective goggles to educate viewers about bad breath and how the Orabrush tongue cleaner could cure it. At the end, an ad pops up inviting people to try the Orabrush for free by clicking on a link to the company’s site. The team spent about 80 hours producing, filming, and editing the video. After posting it on YouTube, the team purchased YouTube’s Promoted Video Ads, which cost $30 a day and made the video the first result when users searched for specific keywords, including bad breath, on the site. The team also posted the video on Orabrush’s Facebook page and retweeted posts about it.