Campfire is a viral marketing firm based out of New York City. The firm takes an extremely creative approach to marketing that often tries to target consumers without them knowing and turn the media and individuals into a free source of publicity.
For example, in a campaign they ran for Audi, they organized the theft of the first A3 in the US at the Audi dealership on Park Avenue. They followed through with fake security guards, police investigation, media coverage, etc. In addition, the next day at the New York International Auto Show, they placed signs explaining the theft of the car where the car should have been on display. Campfire followed through on every single detail to make sure that if someone wanted to investigate (which they strongly encouraged), everything would add up and give the person more to look into. Here is a link where you can watch a video that explains the whole campaign:
http://www.campfirenyc.com/archive/2006/10/10/audi-the-art-of-the-heist/
The campaign was extremely successful as within 90 days there were 45 million PR impressions, 2 million visitors to AudiUSA.com, and 500,000 story participants.
Here you can find entertaining videos that detail their other various projects:
Campfire is a very small firm, but it works with large players such as HBO (True Blood campaign), Verizon (Fios campaign), USA Networks (The 4400 campaign), and more. They are able to deliver a great product with a small workforce because they use creativity to generate buzz around a brand that eventually snowballs into extensive coverage by taking advantage of the curiosity of individuals other external sources. This gives the large firms great grass roots and word of mouth marketing. With such a value proposition, Campfire can make sizeable margins (I was as an analyst on an investment banking team working with Campfire and dealt with their financials) on these very large contracts as they run a lean shop.
This area in marketing has been growing fast over the past several years. I see it playing a much more integral role in firms' marketing campaigns going forward as it is so effective from both a cost and performance perspective. Do you agree?
Consumer involvement is perhaps the most valuable form of publicity. I had actually wanted to ask the American Express person today to see if their organization has ever considered a campaign where the design of the packs for their new card could be carried out by consumers.
ReplyDeleteNo one knows best of what consumers want than the consumers themselves; and to have them become involved would be a great way to generate publicity that could easily enhance the product.
So your article on viral marketing is of extreme relevance; as one of the main reasons the campaign was so successful was because of public interest. When you feel that you are part of a big idea and that your contributions will be known and that it may have an impact; then you are more willingly to give it your thought and consideration. My thoughts are why advertising agencies do not do this as often? Is it because of bureaucratic structure or is it because new outsiders should be hired these days? Maybe more of us from Wharton and Penn =)
"The Art of the Heist" is rather impressive and creative. I agree, using consumer involvement to generate publicity is an asset to any firm. From the way it was presented in the video, it seemed rather complicated; I am amazed it was successful.
ReplyDelete@ Andy, the research and execution of the strategy is time consuming. And given that people's perceptions change, many companies, particularly startups, neither have the human resource nor capital to launch a project of this magnitude.