04 Sep How trusting employees can help a company score viral hits
From the Target employee that gave a rousing speech on Black Friday to the Southwest flight attendant that raps safety instructions, viral sensations get millions of views on YouTube and are endlessly retweeted and shared. They are even covered by media companies across the globe scoring truckloads of good press and marketing mojo for the companies they represent. Often these innovative marketing masterpieces don’t even come from the marketing department, but from somewhere else entirely unexpected.
For anyone who has been to a Black Friday sale, it can only be described as complete chaos. Courteous demeanors are replaced by carnal survival actions, eerily similar to an episode of The Walking Dead. Apparently Target employee Scott Simms seemed to agree. Simms was made an overnight success when a co-worker Chole Frebertshauser posted his “This is Target” video online, sharing similarities to the speech given in the film 300.
The stunt was not only engaging and fun for employees, but the general public. The video went viral and has almost four million YouTube views. News agencies across the nation jumped on the story.
You’d think that a video of this nature, scoring possibly millions of dollars in free exposure would have been cleverly crafted by Target’s marketing department. But Target’s headquarters denies any involvement.
Southwest Airlines scored a similar hit with a video of flight attendant David Holmes rapping safety instructions. In the video, Holmes gets the audience to stomp and clap a beat that he raps over. Videos featuring Holmes have collectively scored well over a million views and like Target, has netted Southwest some incredible exposure. Not to mention others have recorded Holmes and posted their own videos including this one. Just like Target, Southwest also denies any involvement in these videos.