Retroviral recently conceptualised and carried out successful digital media campaigns for three new clients, proving once again that remarkable content shared through effective seeding via carefully selected and relevant influencers achieves great results for its clients.
Chicken Licken became the first South African fast food brand to offer a secret menu to its customers. Secret menus are popular in the United States, and see fast food outlets offering unofficial and unadvertised menu options that they will produce on request only. Net#work BBDO briefed Retroviral to spread the word, but in a way that gave the impression that the menu was only available to a select few password-holders.
Retroviral contacted secret menu specialists, #HackTheMenu, and asked them to list the local Chicken Licken menu. The team then ‘leaked’ the menu to popular blogger Dan Nash from Bangersandnash.com, who duly spread the word across his social media platforms using the #SecretMenu hashtag.
“Twitter users had to actively request the password to the Chicken Licken Secret Menu, which was sent to them via direct message. They could also ask for the password by visiting the fast food outlet’s page on Facebook,” says Mike Sharman, co-founder of Retroviral.
Only those with the code would know what to order when next they visited an outlet. The mystery behind the new menu soon spread virally, with thousands of South Africans ordered items from the secret menu in store.
The agency worked with SuperSport to create an influencer and YouTube marketing campaign to help build excitement ahead of the 2014 FIFA World Cup tournament in Brazil. To do this, the team leveraged off the character Phil, a football fan who ‘visited’ host nations of some previous FIFA World Cup tournaments including England, France and South Africa as well as a number of Brazil’s host cities. Highlights from past tournaments and snippets from what to expect from Brazil were packaged into a series of vlog (video blog) entries that were hosted on YouTube and then embedded in a blog on the SuperSport website.
“We then embedded remarketing codes into the online videos which makes it possible for SuperSport to deliver targeted marketing material to specific groups of viewers in each of the countries it broadcasts, for up to 500 days post World Cup,” Sharman explains.
Retroviral also worked with The Walt Disney Company Africa on a special project for its Disney Junior channel on DStv to spread the word that much-loved South African celebrity, Unathi Msengana, voiced the character of Rita the Cheetah in an episode of the popular children’s programme, Doc McStuffins. The project emphasised its commitment to the local market by including local content in one of its programmes.
The agency successfully seeded the story to local mommy bloggers so their children knew to tune into the show, while Unathi shared information through her Twitter profile and regularly spoke about it on her radio show, encouraging her listeners to watch the channel. The episode performed exceptionally well in its timeslot, and the show was rated top of children’s programming for that day.
“Our work on these various campaigns gave us the opportunity to demonstrate that a great story, shared with the right people, achieves tangible results for our clients,” Sharman says.
