Wow a lot happened in March! It started with a bang at the Oscar night with the most retweeted selfie of Ellen. And of course the kiss, ahhhh the kiss, the kiss of Wren. So sit back, click and enjoy the best stories of March 2014
The Oscar Selfie by Ellen
At the Oscar night Ellen made the most retweeted selfie ever. Beating Obama’s victory tweet hands down. The famous picture has now been retweeted 3,5 million times and temporarily brought the twitter servers down. It was so popular. Twitter wrote a blog post about the amount of tweets send during the Oscar night. They calculated that 24 hours after the selfie tweet it gained 32.8 million views. The tweet was even temporarily lost from the twitter servers, but it was fixed. The question remains of course if this was a planned advertising campaign by Samsung. The picture was taken by a Samsung phone provided by Samsung a sponsor of the Oscar night. But it is still unclear if Ellen just wanted to make the most retweeted picture ever or if it was a campaign. In my opinion it was not planned but Samsung spinned the story in the right way. Well twitter was obviously pleased with this iconic selfie, they made a painting for the Twitter HQ.
Hey, @TheEllenShow! We painted a picture of you at Twitter HQ. Come take a #selfie with us! @LizFiandaca @genaweave pic.twitter.com/ORCcDiGA2F
— Lauren (@LaurenMitcheom) April 10, 2014
First Kiss
The biggest and most touching viral was of course the Frist Kiss from fashion label Wren. The briljant video of kissing strangers that made everybody smile. Melissa Coker is the founder and creative director at Wren and came up with the concept without an ad agency. Together with film director Tatia Pilieva
she wanted to make movie that was different and with emotion. The key question was: what makes people share ideas? They where inspired by photographs from Richard Avedon of people kissing and started calling friends if they wantend to kiss a stranger and work for free. Nobody knew each other, so they couldn’t Google the other kisser. Some where actors, some designers or worked in a store. Cool LA people. All people are wearing the clothes of WREN and the whole budget was $1500,-. Coker and Pilieva were not planning to make a viral, but a video to showcase her clothing line’s fall collection for Style.com’s Video Fashion Week. What about the results. Since launch the video gained 90 million youtube views (aug 2014). According to Coker, who was interviewed by Bloomberg, one week after the launch of the video traffic went up with 14.000% and sales went up with 13.000%. A huge succes for a viral that was not intended to be one.
GoPro: Pelican Learns To Fly
An other content marketing company is GoPro. They focus completely on showing all the amazing footage captured with their products. Like this pelican who got separated form his flock and was taken care of bij the staff at the Greystoke Mahale resort in Tanzania. They tried to teach him to fly and attached a GoPro to his beak. When the bird finally figured out how to fly he produced fantastic footage.
Rapha #DoingTheLittleThings
Most cyclist know Rapha for their stylish and not so cheap cycling wear and for their content marketing efforts. The brand started in 2004 and focusses on two key insights: 1) Cycling is about suffering and 2) most cyclist hated the ugly lycra gear. The ‘emotion of beautiful suffering’ is at the core of their product development and their marketing. Every product tells a story and all the marketing material is of the highest quality. A marketing team of 7 people produce a story every week. A good example of their content marketing is the collaboration with Team Sky: #DoingTheLittleThings. With their focus on quality off every detail in the design and production of Team Sky products. In a series of stories en movie clips team Sky give an insight and tips for cyclist. Like the rice cakes the riders eat, with an recipe. Or this movie about descending from a mountain in high speed.
Pepsi Bus Stop
The popular brand story of March was the campaign Unbelievable campaign by Pepsi Max. Part of the campaign was the Pepsi bus stop with an augmented reality poster. People waiting for the bus were in for a surprise: Aliens attacking a tiger in the streets and more. Very simply done and right on the brand theme: unbelievable.
Generic brand video
It doesn’t hurt to take a step back and look at our industry and wonder if what we do and make in marketing makes sense. Is it helpful for the customers and not too fake? To put things in perceptive look at this Generic Brand Video. A very popular story in March.