I Got a Voicemail from Snoop Dogg...

Ain't nothin' but a G-thang baby... ok, I'm a blogger not a rapper. Yeah it's true, Snoop's voice was on MY voicemail. Was it real? Nah, but it was so interestingly funny I listened. The punch line? It was a message about "dirty" mouths and Snoop knows a dirty mouth better than anyone. But this one was different. It was sponsored by Orbit Gum, the gum that "cleans" your mouth. Who better to have as your spokesperson?

By the way, I write these posts because I think there might be an idea that you might take away from this even if you don't have the Orbit big agency budget thang. I know I did.

So the voicemail was sent to me because Robert, our marketing manager, saw it online. There's a form on the site where you fill in a phone number to get a "message" from Snoop. Great viral idea. You can put in your number or the number of someone you know. You can also click a link that opens up an email window where you tell people Snoop is sending them a message.

So when I got the voicemail from Snoop and went to the site that they direct me to on the voicemail, I found the story.  I sent Josh our VP of Product Management the same Snoop voicemail. I also sent it to two more people I know. Two people then walked into my office and I showed them the site. Talk about viral!

So think about it. Orbit thought about the problem their product solved, then built a website and campaign around the solution to get more "new" people coming to their site. They also have a TV commercial as part of the campaign but I had not seen it except for when I got to the site and downloaded it.

We did something like this for our Salesforce integration. Check it out here.

Do you have a service that solves a problem you could build a campaign around? You don't need a big budget to do something like this (sans TV). Woot.com does a great job at selling products each day with funny podcasts and copy that gets forwarded simply because it's clever. These guys also have a Mac widget, I'm addicted to.  The Little Penguin Wine did a great job at putting up a photo gallery of people and the penguin. People tell their friends to visit the site to check out their picture. What do these businesses all get in the end? Potential new customers.

Viral marketing is an easy and cost-effective way to get people to your site or your store. All you have to do is put a little thought and creativity into it.

Ain't nuthin but a G-thang baby, Orbit is the gum that pays me, I'll leave you a message that's craz-y, and your friends visit the site..no mayb-es.  (No worries, I won't quit my day job.)

Do you have a clever viral marketing idea that was successful? Bring it on!

Comments

[lisi]

actually, i work for the company that did this site. EVB (www.evb.com) that was for real snoop that called you. We prerecorded messages of snoop saying all these things. Neato that you got inspiration from it.