Fast Company has a great article about Campfire - headed by Mike Monello and Gregg Hale (otherwise known as makers of The Blair Witch Project) - a production agency "branded entertainment company" specialising in viral marketing.
At a time when every marketer worth his salt is investing in online viral campaigns, Campfire's campaign results are impressive. Considering, JupiterResearch reported that 69% of users are skeptical about marketers that try to insinuate themselves into social media like blogs and MySpace. About one of every five advertisers plans to employ viral marketing strategies in the upcoming year. More than half of those advertisers (52 percent) will be completely new to viral marketing. How can they crack it to reach a "young, cynical, media-saturated audience"? Campfire's campaign for Audi's new A3 - called "The Art of the Heist" - sounds particularly innovative (an Alternative Reality Gaming campaign) and is a case in point.
"The Art of the Heist" premise was that two agents were trying to prevent the largest art theft in history at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence; the master plans were embedded in SD memory cards planted in several A3s just in from Germany. The sleuths--actors playing the parts of Nisha and her partner/boyfriend, Ian--were requesting the help of the public in tracking down the SD cards. Unlike traditional product placement, where a product is jammed into a storyline, the A3 would become a central character.
During the final weekend of the New York International Auto Show, [Campfire]"stole" the A3 on display and replaced it with a mysterious sign asking people to call a number if they had information on the theft. ("It's like, Who the hell could have stolen a car out of the Javits Center?!" Monello laughs.) When people did call, a voice mail told them to file any tips at an obscure Web address; there, they found a password-protected site, but clicking on "password" took them past a firewall, giving them the illusion of having hacked into the email system of the two field agents. Suddenly, they had access to hundreds of private emails and files, even Nisha and Ian's MP3s and personal photos--things that were peripheral to the narrative but gave it the texture of truth. "The next thing you know, you're 40 minutes into this and you're in way too deep to pull out," says Monello.
Within hours of the sign going up at the auto show, car blogs as far off as Japan were posting photos of the missing A3, and a gritty security video began circulating online of a car being stolen. The story slowly unspooled in TV, print, and online spots. Every few weeks, a classified ad ran in various cities, urging the public to join Nisha on a critical real-world mission to retrieve an SD card from one of the A3s. Each volunteer was required to submit to a background check, and the missions--which took place everywhere from the Coachella Valley Music Festival, in California, to a waffle house in Atlanta--were streamed live to as many as 500,000 people at a time. Finally, after three months of code cracking and plot twists (which included Ian's becoming the prime suspect), the chase concluded at the Viceroy Hotel in Santa Monica, where 15 audience members helped nail the thief.
Although the final audience was only a whooping 15, Campfire explains this by identifying 3 audience types according to their level of interest: the "divers" who participate minute-by-minute; the "dippers," who casually tune in on the message boards once a week; and the "skimmers," who accidentally read about it.
The pay off was: '2 million unique visitors to its site, and 4,000 test-drives within two months, more than 5,000 cars sold in the A3's first seven months on the market, and 75% more dealership leads than on any previous model launch.' This doesn't even include the customer buy-in, and the community building. That's how it's done.
Campfire's latest campaign involve Second Life.
Tags: viral marketing, Campfire, Audi A3, The Art of the Heist,