Can a company spend or manage its way to virality? And can a competing firm spend or manage against that virality? That question came to my mind when I found myself watching the galaxy vs iPhone ad that has gone viral rather quickly over the past week.
Samsung launched a competitive ad to thwart the recent launch of the iPhone5. The ad, which touts galaxy's features over the much anticipated iPhone5 (amongst apple loyalists anyway), was posted to YouTube on September 19th and quickly climbed to 14 million+ views. The ad ran across multiple media channels from traditional TV, to Out of Home Posters/Billboards, to YouTube and also Hulu and other streaming mechanisms. If you haven't seen the ad, check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf5-Prx19ZM
In the ad, the Galaxy takes a blatant knock on the iPhone, which theoretically could have organically sparked the virality behind the YouTube video--after all, a flurry of die hard iPhone and Droid users would have been keen on providing a point of view on the ad either out of sheer joy or extreme anger.
While I don't doubt that organic virality occurred, having taken a few classes on Digital Marketing, it has become obvious that even companies with limited resources can take steps to increase the likelihood of having an ad 'go viral'. I know it all starts with great content and no doubt Samsung managed to deliver on content with this ad. But let's dissect the other pieces that likely came together to cause virality and see if there was potentially any opportunity for improvement.
Samsung launched the ad over multiple media channels, giving consumers multiple opportunities to see the ad and make an in-your-face comparison of the Galaxy and the iPhone. This more than likely led to instant consumer buzz (both real world and social/digital) around the Ad, but also importantly led to coverage by PR firms, major news sources, and blogs (exhibit A), which linked directly back to the ad or embedded the youtube video within the site.
Despite the organic growth, Samsung seems to have managed SEO rather poorly (or maybe Apple managed SEO extremely well?), given that most google searches related to 'Samsung', 'Apple', 'iPhone', 'Galaxy' or even 'Samsung vs Apple', did not take you to the YouTube video in question. In fact, the only search term that I could manage to find which took me to the ad was to literally type 'Galaxy vs iPhone youtube', which was probably a much lower searched term given the relatively low awareness behind Galaxy in the United States.
My take, for what its worth, is that the competitive Ad could possibly have gone even MORE viral had Samsung spent and managed SEO more effectively.
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