How I engineered a viral marketing campaign

Retailer Sumo Salad began when founders Luke Baylis and James Miller returned from a stay in the United States and discovered there were no healthy options for eating out. The chain has boomed, with dozens of locations and turnover of around $50 million.

Three years ago, Baylis decided to give the growing chain some much-needed attention by starting a viral marketing campaign taking off a McDonald’s ad (see below). It went viral, and serves as a good example for other SMEs dabbling in web and video marketing.

How’s SumoSalad travelling?

The business is going very well. We’ve had a bunch of new projects, the franchisee sentiment is very positive. We’ve come through a bit of a challenging 12 months due to shopping centre traffic flow being down, but we’re now starting to come back in all the states.

Typically, the business has been growing by about 7% per annum on average since we’ve opened. Last year we had a more challenging year, but generally it’s been very good and we’re hoping to increase our growth up to 8% over the next two to three years.

What gave you the inspiration to start a viral campaign?

Sumo Salad was always viewed as a very challenging brand, you know, the young Australian brand taking on the US giants. With McDonald’s being looked at as the antithesis of unhealthy foods, we were well positioned to take on one of their campaigns and make a spoof about how that would apply to Sumo Salad.

What ad was it that you were taking off?

It was the inner-child campaign, where people are walking into the store, and all of a sudden these kids come out of people’s stomachs and they walk around, having fun. Our take on it was that the kids were so fat they couldn’t get out of the trap door and we put our Sumo Salad name on the ad.

Why that one in particular?

It was relevant at the time, and we thought it would be a good way to take on the multimillion dollar advertising campaign, and apply a bit of humour and relevance to what people may have been thinking.

How did you decide on a viral campaign, rather than an ad campaign?

We were looking at it like a viral advertising campaign, and we knew that if we structured it right it would go viral. It had to be funny, but had to be relevant as well.

You’d be more likely to get a large following as well.

That’s exactly right. Because we believe in word-of-mouth – viral is very similar in that you get much more buy-in and engagement with the people with that view it. They want to see it as opposed to having it be forced down their throats. It’s hitting a specific target market, so it’s a lot more controlled than just putting it across mass-market media.

How did you know who to target it towards?

Going for the young audience, who would find it funny and engaging rather than people sitting at home watching television who might take offense to it.

Did anyone get upset?

There are always a few people like that. You can’t please everyone.

How was the response?

It was extremely good. I recall we got about 150,000 views within the first month, so it was a very good response. It actually won an advertising award in France, which was great. Very good for such a small response.

Why do you think it was successful?

We were going through a lot of sales growth at that time anyway, and at that time we had a lot of growth momentum. It wasn’t a call-to-action type campaign where it was marketing to a particular product, or anything, it was simply to get Sumo Salad on people’s radar. So on that particular campaign it’s hard to do a conversion to sales.

If it were too-advertising like, it wouldn’t go viral. You look at some of the viral beer ad campaigns – do they make you thirsty and you go buy a beer? Probably not. But when you’re in the liquor store, you see that brand, relate to it, and you’re more likely to buy it.

So what makes an ad campaign like this work?

I think the timeliness is extremely important. It has to be funny or controversial, it can’t just be safe. It must be relevant to current issues – they are the main things that make it appealing as a viral campaign. Nando’s are extremely good at it, I must say.

To do it well, it’s not easy. You can’t have low production values. The thing with viral, is that it’s very risky form of advertising in the sense that if you put in three or four thousand hits, that’s not a valid campaign. It’s got to really get out there, and you’ve got to really push it and use as many channels as you can to sow that initial seed.

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