This year’s Sports Media Marketing Summit & Awards in New York will feature seven-minute master classes from sports industry leaders and media innovators.

In anticipation of the Summit, Brief spoke with Wieden+Kennedy New York’s Neal Arthur and Marshall Ball about some of the agency’s innovative and highly social brand campaigns. Arthur will deliver one of the master classes on “How to Go Viral” on Tuesday, Nov. 19 at 3:30 pm at The Paley Center for Media.

If anyone knows how to go viral, it’s the folks at Wieden+Kennedy, who have put together innovative branding campaigns for Old Spice, Heineken, ESPN’s Sports Center and countless others.

But even those experts say that going viral is more art than science, more happy byproduct of a well-executed campaign than well laid-out strategy.

“There are lessons we’ve learned along the way but it’s still not a science,” says Arthur, managing director at Wieden+Kennedy New York. “We’re always a little skeptical of treating viral as an end game. That can’t really be the goal.”

What is the goal, says Ball, W+K NY’s director of interactive strategy, is to “build something or make something that one person will love. If it’s worthwhile to one person, if it reaches to their core, it can end up going viral because it’s so compelling to that one person.”

For example, W+K NY developed the above social campaign for Heineken, in which travelers at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport were approached and asked if they would drop everything to go anywhere right then and there. Turns out, it was harder to find willing participants than one might have thought.

People ended up so engaged in the campaign that they started Tweeting things like “I’ll drop everything including this sandwich and travel. My bags are packed and I’m ready to go.” “No question that I’ll do this in a second.” “That video is the first time I’ve so wanted to be part of some marketing ploy.”

That’s a lesson in being careful of what you Tweet because someone might show up at your house or place of work and see if you are willing to put your money where your Tweet is. Nearly three million people watched W+K NY’s first Heineken Departure Roulette video, and nearly six million watched the video below.

W+K NY also has taken that mentality of immediacy directly to Twitter, with a campaign for the Heineken-sponsored Firefly Music Festival in Dover, Delaware. The campaign presented names of bands in Japanese emojis - emoticons that appear in Japanese electronic messages — and had people tweet back the band’s name for a chance to win tickets.

Even though it’s had plenty of success in the social milieu, W+K NY tries less to “go viral,” than to solve business problems for clients. Sometimes that solution includes an innovative social campaign that really takes off, but that’s rarely the end game.

“It really depends on each client and what their cycles are,” says Ball. “We are really fortunate to work with a large variety of brands. I wish every client’s goal was consistent, but it’s widely different from client to client. Still, it all comes down to that litmus test of doing something that one person will love.”

Register today for the Sports Media Marketing Summit & Awards on Nov. 19 at The Paley Center for Media in New York.

Tags:


  Save as PDF