Burger King - Bootyful Game

• Brand Burger King
• Project Football Your Way
• Services Social Video distribution and digital outreach
• Date 26 May 2008
• Headline 3m+ views

Background: the bootyful game

Given no previous affiliation with football, and lacking the budgets of the official sponsors, Burger King needed to adopt a cheeky, subversive approach in order to hijack buzz around Euro 2008, and used a saucy video with a sting in the tail to provoke debate about the state of the beautiful game.

Challenge: engage mouthy football fans

DLKW and Initiative asked Unruly Media to engage with mouthy football fans, and to use the film to drive viewers to a campaign microsite where they could join in forum conversations and download vouchers for the new Angus 6 Pack.

Solution: digital outreach to top footy blogs

Football blogs are often home to astonishingly vibrant conversations amongst fans, with some, such as The Spoiler, tackling exactly the issues of celebrity and player behaviour that DLKW's campaign was trying to tap into. Unruly Media executed a bespoke outreach programme to the UK's top 100 independent football bloggers in order to situate the film in exactly the right conversational context.

Result: true social + business success

• 3m+ views
• 4.6% clickthrough rate
• 20,000+ voucher downloads

Unruly Media achieved 38 high-value, contextually-relevant editorial placements for the video. While these placements generated a significant number of views by themselves, exceeding campaign targets within the first two weeks, they also got people talking about the issues and passing the video on.

Thousands of viewers forwarded the video and dozens of people downloaded the file and re-uploaded it to their own accounts on video sharing sites, thus demonstrating extremely strong affinity with the content and providing an extraordinary quantity of free media, with one fan-uploaded instance to Break generating over 1.6m plays during the 7-week campaign window.

As there was no other advertising or PR activity around the film, the full value of this earned media could be traced back to the activity undertaken by Unruly.

A Social Video win, with millions of free views, always gives people a warm fuzzy feeling. But, ask the cynics, so what? Does it shift brand favourability? Does it shift product? Burger King's Bootyful Game shows definitively that this can be done.

The video was extremely effective at driving viewers to the FootballYourWay microsite, with a recorded clickthrough rate of 4.6%. Web analytics on the microsite confirmed that over 20,000 voucher downloads were directly attributable to this traffic, contributing significantly against the overarching campaign objectives of driving store footfall and increasing sales of the Angus 6 Pack.

Aside: life outside of YouTube

Although YouTube enjoys dominant market share in many territories, it's not the only game in town. In this campaign, Break outperformed YouTube 5-to-1 for earned media. How come? Partly demographics. Break's demographic much more closely reflects the 18-35 male audience this film was targeted at, whereas YouTube's demographic no longer skews in any interesting way from the demographic of the internet population at large. Partly, intensity of competition. With 450,000 videos uploaded to YouTube every day, uploading to sites where competition for attention is less intense can make a lot of sense. Partly, of course, pure luck.

This nicely illustrates the importance of uploading video content to a broad and appropriate mix of video sharing sites as a matter of campaign hygiene, especially where a niche audience is being targeted.

Agency credits

• Creative: DLKW
• Production: Contentment
• Media: Initiative
• Social Video: Unruly Media

Pot Noodle - Tipping Pot

• Brand Pot Noodle
• Project Tipping Pot
• Services Social video distribution
• Date 10 March 2008
• Headline overtook Guinness's original Tipping Point ad in less than a week

Background: St. Patrick's Day Guinness spoof

On St Patrick's Day in March 2008, Pot Noodle released an affectionate pastiche of what was reportedly the most expensive ad ever made: Guinness's Tipping Point, a £10m, high-octane riff on the domino meme.

Shot by Mustard for AKQA on a shoe-string on a North London housing estate, Pot Noodle's Tipping Pot replaced Guinness's grandfather clocks and burning bales of hay with fag packets, traffic cones and wheelie bins, swapping south American scenic splendour for a gritty, oh-so-English urban detritus.

"Our aim was to send a clear brand message - that Pot Noodles are easy to make - while also doing something that would get talked about."

Cheryl Calverley, Brand Manager, Pot Noodle.

The punchline is an inflating sex doll, which tilts a boiling kettle to send hot water down a piece of guttering to - cue pack shot - moisten the awaiting noodles.

Challenge: beat Guinness, fast

St Patrick's Day fell on Saturday 15 March 2008. Unruly was tasked by Cake to drive as many views as possible through YouTube between Monday 10th March and Friday 14 March. The aim was to get the video onto YouTube's most viewed videos page and, crucially, get more views than Guinness's Tipping Point. And to do all this before the end of the week, so that Pot Noodle could press release the fact they'd beaten Guinness on the Friday before St Patrick's Day.

Solution: Social video distribution and digital outreach

Unruly kicked off seeding first thing on Monday morning, 10th March, with all activity conducted simultaneously to maximize impact. Bought media was planned in to deliver at the rate of 25,000 plays per day. Placements on classic social video hubs like Viral Video Chart and Popbitch were complemented by posts on satirical news blogs like The Daily Mash and Newsbiscuit and higher volume placements on media and entertainment sites.  At the same time, Unruly reached out to influential bloggers who had posted the original Guinness ad, with a view to earning coverage that would echo further in the blogosphere, generating a substantial amount of free media.

Result: more views than Guinness in 5 days

Media activity delivered over 50,000 YouTube views on the first day. By Friday, Unruly's activity had driven Tipping Pot to 200,000 views, taking it past the 190,000 views enjoyed by the Guinness ad and getting it into the top 40 most viewed videos on YouTube globally. This played perfectly into the PR strategy. The combination of blogger buzz and PR machinery generated significant coverage of Pot Noodle's coup in national and international press, including Sky News, The Telegraph, The Times, The Independent, CBTV and Sydney’s The Age.

The graph below, from YouTube, clearly shows the impact of the seeding activity over the first week of the clip's life cycle. The 213,567 embedded views pegged to 11 March are from blogs and sites embedding the YouTube player distributed by Unruly. On top of which, an additional 31,160 views are also pegged to 11 March, the result of links circulating on email, IM and other channels driving traffic back to YouTube.

Aside: (un-)branding content

Ad agencies often ask how heavily they ought to brand their videos if they want to maximize pass-on. Won't overt branding turn off would-be advocates? Surely nobody wants to feel like a corporate stooge? Now Tipping Pot is far from heavily branded. But with it's witty, crystal-clear pack shot at the close of the film, it's as heavily-branded and product-infused as many classic TV spots. Certainly, it's a far cry from the enigmatic, unbranded video exemplified by Herbal Essences' Bride Hair Wig Out.

The bottom line is that people are totally happy to share and talk about ads...if the ads are worth sharing and talking about. Think Budweiser's Wassup. Think Heineken's Walk-in Fridge. And some of the very best ads, like Blendtec's Will It Blend?, draw their power from a product truth and so promote the goods to a starring role. Conversely, deprecating the brand, just like shooting the film on a shaky hand-held camera or using expletives or C-list celebs, may make you feel that you're 'making a social video' but does nothing by itself to intensify the emotional power of the film, which is the electricity you need to spark pass-on.

Agency credits

• Creative: AKQA
• Production : Mustard
• Post Production: Smoke & Mirrors
• Planning: Cake
• Seeding: Unruly Media