EVB is known for doing work that gets talked about and passed around. The agency’s three most successful viral and social media campaigns in the past couple of years were “ElfYourself.com” for OfficeMax, “FreakYourMind.com” for Criss Angel/A&E and “MistletoeMakeover.com” for Sephora. Combined, these three campaigns reached more than 200 million people without any paid seeding or paid media to drive traffic.

Although the pace and sheer numbers were very different, the course that each of these campaigns took to “become viral” was identical. Each was launched and gained momentum over time using the same set of tools: 1) igniting interest and engagement amongst a passionate core audience, 2) social media to add credibility and finally, 3) mainstream press to report and validation.

“Elf Yourself”

ElfYourself.com originally launched in 2006 as part of a larger collection of viral sites. This first year, the site attracted 36MM people in a matter of 5 weeks. The most difficult part of managing the campaign was hosting. We nearly shutdown our hosting partner and were forced to add new servers daily to keep up with the demand. By the end of the campaign, the hosting bill for the site was 7X the production budget.

In 2007, an improved version of the site drew 193MM visitors in the same time period. (Thankfully, we were prepared for the traffic that year.)

What a lot people don’t realize is that there was no paid seeding effort for this campaign. The firestorm of traffic was originally ignited by an inter-office email to the OfficeMax employee database. This small, but passionate, group of souls was the starting point and ensured the campaign got some serious traction from the start. Next came social media. It is difficult (probably impossible) for a campaign to really gain serious momentum if it is ignored by the blogs and social networks. By the time “Elf Yourself” hit MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the blogosphere, we were seeing 1MM elves created per day.

The icing on the cake came when the mainstream press picked up the story. Both traditional and digital media wrote about the “elf phenomenon.” Elves showed up all over lifestyle magazines, sporting events, and news and talk shows, including Entertainment Weekly, Good Morning America, The Today Show, David Letterman and ESPN. Honestly, we have no idea just how far the campaign reached through PR, but we do know that it resulted in droves of traffic to the site.

Elf Yourself Case Study Video

The ultimate success of “Elf Yourself” is hotly debated in the blogs. But the bottom-line is that, for a modest investment in 2006 and using nothing more than social media, OfficeMax was able to create a brand in “Elf Yourself” that is as recognizable as OfficeMax itself. It raised the company’s profile in the social media space, led to increased purchase intent in-store and, according to VP of Marketing, Bob Thacker, was able to generate $5-6 million in sales of “Elf-related” merchandise in 2008.

“FreakYourMind.com”

Evolution Bureau worked with A&E to use social media to drive viewers to the premiere episode of season three for Criss Angel: Mindfreak. At the heart of the campaign was “FreakYourMind.com”, a site that used dynamic video and mobile to create the illusion of a magic trick that enabled Criss to seemingly “guess” the viewers name and phone number. Later, the viewer would receive a personalized phone call directly from Criss himself.

Again, we started by igniting the core. The first correspondence went to the Criss Angel fan club, a small but insanely passionate group. These folks talked, blogged and passed around this site non-stop. Within about a week the site had the full steam of social media behind it, especially the mainstream blogs. Once the blogs took hold, the mainstream press took notice and the site was discussed and reported on in traditional print and broadcast outlets.

The site launched about a month before the series premiere. During that short time, it engaged over 3 million visitors and the season premiere exceeded ratings expectations; even beating out other more popular shows on the network.

“MistletoeMakeover.com”

Inspired by the success of “Elf Yourself”, Sephora approach EVB in an attempt to engage its audience and drive holiday sales. Evolution Bureau created an experience that allowed participants to upload a photo, create a “makeover” and explore Sephora products in a fun and interesting way. After engaging with the site, customers would receive a coupon to purchase the products used in their makeover.

This campaign’s path to success was practically identical to “Elf Yourself” and “Freakyourmind.com.” We started with Sephora’s built-in installed base of fans and hit their e-mail list with a link to the site. This passionate group took the site to the mainstream through social media and, eventually, traditional press.

In the weeks prior to the holidays, the campaign garnered hundreds of blog mentions and traditional news stories and engaged nearly a million visitors.

A Formula For Success
Each of the campaigns outlined here have followed the same path to success: passion + social media + mainstream press/pr. We would argue that this path is necessary. It is important that social, viral and word-of-mouth marketing campaigns are propagated by consumers, not by the media. By the time the traditional press begins writing about a campaign, they are doing so because the blogosphere has already accepted it. Otherwise, it just feels like the press is writing about a new marketing campaign…and we all know that won’t “make something viral.”

With social media, our goal is to inspire the right 5000 passionate individuals to reach the much larger mass audience for us. This is very different from traditional advertising thinking which attempts to identify a target audience, buy mass media to cast the widest net and then influence them with a controlled message.

As consumers gain more control over all the media in their lives (traditional or digital), it becomes imperative for agencies, regardless of their core discipline, to start thinking about using innovative new ways to engage and enlist the passionate brand base. These fans, or “brand freaks” (as I have heard them called) have a built-in affinity for the company or the brand. To be successful, we need to give them something that is worth talking about and the tools to do marketing on our behalf.

Of course, the key to creating anything worth talking about is to start with a great idea. It is not good enough to simply entertain the consumer or make them laugh. You need to create something that is so interesting, unexpected, or useful that fans get something from it and feel compelled to talk about it and pass it along. Always remember, users are “there” for themselves and their friends, not for your product.

One way to make this happen is through participation. What role does the consumer play in the action? How will your brand enable self expression? How do they join the club or become part of the movement? The “upload-your-face” technique has been done to death (yeah, yeah, we’re guilty of going to the well quite a few times). It works because the viewer is instantly the star and they want to share their newfound fame with others. But it is not the only way to strike a personal chord. As digital and social media becomes more pervasive and standards become open, we are now finding ways to create personal campaigns to inspire crowds by using Facebook Connect, location-based iPhone apps, Twitter feeds and other connected social media implementations.

The agency has a number of exciting new creative applications in the works as we speak. We’ll keep you posted on all our new developments here. Stay tuned.