How a rumor generates word of mouth
DSG develops and spreads the Air Racer for killathrill.com
Since several weeks people speculate and debate online about the authenticity
of an Internet-Video: It shows a scene of the training of an alleged pilot with
the name James
Andersson in which his plane loses a wing while a risky maneuver but anyhow
he manages it to land the plane save.
The Air Racer is a viral campaign of the DSG to create a rumor. The DSG drafted, developed and seeded the clip for the client killathrill.com internationally. Killathrill.com is a new online fashion-label from Hamburg. On killathrill.com user can produce and present their own design proposals and then they can vote online which designs should be produced.
The speciality by creating this viral campaign for killathrill.com was that this fashion-label went online simultaneously. Because of this, all measured results can be ascribed to the viral campaign, as there has been no other marketing.
So far, more than 5 million people have watched the clip on the Internet. Not through conventional media bookings, but through seeding it strategically on relevant hubs. Furthermore, the clip was adapted on a lot of websites voluntary.
The interesting fact is that the DSG uploaded the clip on YouTube two times. The intention was to show how effective seeding is: One version was uploaded on October 25th 2008 and has been left on its own. A second version was uploaded two days later but this one was seeded by DSG on an international basis.
The digits speak for themselves. Seeding as a media service is very effective: The first clip that was left on its own generated around 180.000 views until today. But the seeded one which was widespread internationally generated after one week more than one million and until today more than 3.000.000 views.
Furthermore it gained more than 350 adaptations on YouTube, which means that other users uploaded it again to YouTube. More than 200 national and international communities and plattforms, and more than 200 blogs discussed, speculated and gave active feedback on the clip. Beside of this, the broadcasting show „Galileo“ on ProSieben documented and analyzed the video and dissolved the rumors.
To complete the campaign and give insight information on the clip and the so-called pilot James Andersson the DSG gave him a face. James got his own website, which was not advertised but tons of clicks got on it because of investigative motives. Furthermore James got an account on twitter.com and he states on his risky flight-maneuver in an interview on YouTube.
The contemporaneous start of the fashion-brand killathrill.com got a lot of positive spillover from that campaign. It is remarkable that the keyword „killathrill“ was looked up in search engines from zero to thousands from on day to the other. Through this the campaign created a buzz for the brand and generated traffic on their website. Sandra Thielecke, Managing Director of killathrill.com stated on the success as follows: „Our goal was to create brand awareness on the Internet, that is getting traffic on the website and spreading the keyword „killathrill“ through the Internet. Three weeks after the campaign kick-off we got hexamerous numbers of impressions and more than 45.000 visitors. In the same time, the keyword „killathrill“ was looked up at Google for more than 13.000 times (still today more than 4.000 times) and more than 9.000 times at Yahoo!. These results clearly exceeded our expectations.“
For more information about the Air Racer campaign please visit the DSG-Blog.
Hamburg, 22. Dezember 2008
