Don’t know if you got a chance to read “Getting Consumers to Spend $150,000 With a Viral Effort,” this article published Monday in Advertising Age, but I’m pretty sure we would all love to have our institution featured in such a positive way in any media outlet (minus the price tag in the headline, maybe, in these difficult economic times):
I’m not in the market yet. But the other day, my 12-year-old, Morry, showed me this funny video clip he’d seen on one of the free online games he plays. (Yes, we’re cheap and we’re raising cheap kids.) It showed a really rotten rapper singing the praises of his college, Roanoke, and getting rejected at mascot tryouts. Morry clicked on another clip, this one of a redneck also trying out. Rejected. A streaker? Rejected. A goth girl? Rejected. Every possible stereotype had a 30-second audition in front of a weary, bemused panel of judges à la “American Idol,” and they all failed delightfully.
“Roanoke College,” mused Morry. “I’m thinking of going there. Or M.I.T.”
As this was our first college conversation, I had to find out more about this campy campaign.
A quick look at Roanoke College’s channel on Youtube shows that these videos did have some real traction with their target audiences — including the rapper video the Advertising Age journalist’s son loved so much with close to 70,000 views at the time of this writing (although this success might be explained by the ads the college bought on an online gaming website as reported in the article).
Roanoke College used a very interesting tactics that you might want to steal for your next viral video campaign. They posted some of these videos as replies to other popular high traffic YouTube videos, piggybacking on their success.
If you’d like to view all the videos, I’ve compiled a nice playlist of the 11 videos for your convenience.
The whole campaign is supported by a dedicated website to engage even further high school seniors: Classic College.
What do you think? Have your institution launched something similar?
I don’t like it make the school look cheap and low class