Our viral marketing video case study: Mother's Day Flowers

Pre-production: It’s all about a story

It always begins with a goal and a message. Our goal was to create a video that would teach our fellow students about the steps to creating a viral video. We knew it had to teach. Yet, we also understood the ultimate goal of any viral video is to entertain. This is when we realized the importance of subtle selling with exaggerated entertainment.
We determined the best way to illustrate the steps to creating a viral video was to create a hypothetical selling goal. We discussed many options. We had to choose a theme that all members of our audience could relate to. This would encourage our audience to share the video (which is the key to a successful viral video).

Ultimately we chose Mother’s Day as our theme and selling truck-loads of flowers as our subtle sell. Everyone knows a mom and most people recognize the mother’s in their life with a card, an email, or flowers. Our hope was that they would send our email as a part of their greeting.
Make people feel something

Again we had to select captivating images that would maintain the viewer’s attention. Research tells us that the most appealing and relatable image is a child. This was a great fit with our Mother’s Day theme. We decided to ask the children what they like most about their mom. We searched the Web thoroughly and could not find any examples of this idea. And so we proceeded.

We hoped that our audience would feel moved by the sincere expressions of love from the children. We were surprised to hear the children’s responses and decided the video would twist in another direction, humor. In the end, the story was that the young children were honest. Yet, their honesty told the story of the difficulties of being a mom and pleasing everyone. What we found most endearing was the deep sentiment of love that the older respondents had. As we understand that viral marketing is about emotions, we hope we achieved both humor and sentimentality.

Do something unexpected

With our audience and ultimate goal of educating our classmates in mind, we wanted to include something that our classmates would find unexpected and fun. We chose to interview Professor Caywood. His mother was so amazing and his love for her so evident, the juxtaposition became a nice ending to our Mother’s Day story.
Do not try to make advertisements

The homemade quality of the video gave the viewers a feeling of being a voyeur into a private life. Its roughness assured the viewer it was not a sales pitch. With the thought that it was a real viral video for ProFlowers, we purposely held off from mentioning the product or the call to action until the end.

Production: media technology

We created the video with a digital video camera and used Microsoft Movie Maker to edit. The most difficult part of the process was integrating the music crisply, so that it did not spill over onto the next scene.

Make sequels: Never leave people standing with nothing.

We sent the original video out several days before Mother’s Day. However, we found that some of the children were difficult to understand. So, we added subtitles to clarify the video and to incorporate additional humor. It also served as a sequel and an additional reminder of Mother’s Day.

Allow Sharing, downloading and embedding
We posted the video onto YouTube and to our blog www.subtlesell.blogspot.com. It will also be viewed in a Second Life tour. We welcome sharing, downloading and embedding. We encourage comments and have responded to all of them. Access was not restricted in the least.

Measurement

Using YouTube and Google Video to publish a series of short videos, we can measure the number of times they were viewed, the ranking or rating of the viral video, how many click-troughs were generated, and how many site visitors converted to subscribers, etc. At the time this was written, we had over 500 viewers and a five-star rating. The video was shared all over the world including such countries as Ireland, England, China and Korea.

Our competition

Although we conducted a search for a mother’s day viral video that was created by a flower company, we found none. Yet, when we went to post our video we discovered 1-800-flowers did create a Mother’s Day themed viral video. At first we were disappointed that our idea was not more original. Upon viewing their video, we were encouraged. It reinforced our message even more: The key to a successful viral video is subtle selling with exaggerated entertainment.

The 1-800-flowers video was poorly executed. The photography was clearly done by an expert (it lacked the homemade feel). They guided the children by asking them to compare their mother’s to flowers, a completely unnatural request. The result was forced answers that were not humorous or moving. The setting is a sterile computer lab and the company logo appears throughout the video in the lower right-hand corner (reminding the viewers it’s a commercial and they are being sold to). Just when you thought it could not get worse, the CEO ends the video with “Kids, I couldn’t have said it better myself.” It was a commercial from the beginning to the end and it lacked any of the qualities of a successful viral marketing video.