Taking viral further

2228399 — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:11:00 GMT

This week's viral of the week in Media Week is BP Ultimate's latest campaign "Takes you further". Some might question why a viral video campaign for a big brand like BP is worthy of such an accolade and I'd argue it's based on the appreciation of the matching of well thought out planning with strong creative.

BP's creative team (Ogilvy) recognised that they (apologies for the pun) needed to take their viral further than most, and rather than simply produce a one off viral hit, create some kind of online narrative around the campaign over a lengthier period.

The strategy behind this was based around rolling out a range of unbranded teaser clips, to generate an initial buzz and general feeling of "what's going on" (or in YouTube land WTF!), followed by a main "reveal" viral clip - to help make sense of the campaign, and hit home the key messages of the campaign.

The campaign so far seems to be bubbling away nicely. The initial teaser clips have had 50,000+ views, and the main viral clip is starting to pick up nicely too - with some nice comments too. Importantly if you look at the comments and conversations they seem to be largely positive, which is largely linked (I'd argue) to the seeding strategy - as existing communities had been warmed to the campaign by the teasers, with the reveal then helping make sense of what had gone before.

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Taking viral further