Viral Marketing
Example: Society in Science – The Branco Weiss Fellowship, ETH Zurich
A staggering 1.5 million videos are uploaded to the Internet every day, occasionally with some achieving successful viral spread. Viral marketing is the conscious effort to generate and leverage this effect.
The entrepreneur and philanthropist, Dr. Branco Weiss, aimed to test viral marketing to attract applications for his fellowship program, Society in Science – The Branco Weiss Fellowship. We collaborated with web design agency Hinderling & Volkart, and film production firm Blush Films, to develop an elaborately staged, humorous short film about a completely unsuccessful award ceremony. British actor, Roger Ashton-Griffiths was cast as the protagonist.
The central idea around the film is its use as a personalized video – the viewer can enter the name of the recipient, and their prize into the site, then forward the video via a link to selected people. The film ends with a twist, and encourages the viewer to visit Society in Science website to seek information about the fellowship. We sent personalized videos to 2400 recipients of a Swiss National Science Foundation Fellowship and half a year later one of those recipients became a Branco Weiss fellow.
The Interactive Media Council awarded www.theawardceremony.org the “Outstanding Achievement” prize in the Associations category. The entire campaign also won the Internationaler Deutscher PR-Preis and an Econ Award for Corporate Communications. This campaign was also a finalist in the EACA Euro Effectiveness Awards, one of the most coveted awards in the international advertising industry.
Implementation: Hinderling & Volkart AG and Blush Films GmbH, Zurich
