A New Prize Category: Viral Influence
Pssst, pass it along. Ikea is doing it, and so are Glamour.tv and Nike.
Doing what, you ask? Why, adding a new winner category to games, sweepstakes and contests: the player with the most viral influence.
Veet has included the prize category in its “Spray on Your Summer Smooth” campaign to promote its new Spray On Hair Removal Cream. The winner for most viral influence receives a year’s supply of Veet products and a popular CD. To become a finalist, players must have a high viral score (based on reviews, votes and views), which makes them eligible for the grand-prize trip to Barbados.
Two weeks into the campaign, 248 individual entries had been generated, with each entry generating four reviews, 11 votes and 557 views. One of the most viral entries at the time had more than 62,000 views across the social Web, says Jamie Dicken, executive vice president of sales at Brickfish, which handles the campaign.
That’s amazing, considering “you’re talking about hair removal,” she says.
Brickfish serves up instructional tips at the Web site, http://www.veet.us/legs/, on how contestants can share their entry on Facebook, MySpace, myYearbook, hi5, LiveJournal, Tagged and Xanga. Players are also encouraged to embed their entry codes on blogs, forums and other sites.
“Marketers are realizing that consumers are the new media, and that for brands to be successful, it’s time to reward people for talking about their brands,” Dicken says.
