Viral Campaigns
Campaigns engineered to spread through social sharing
19 campaigns in this category
Red Bull Stratos
A man jumped from the edge of space. They never mentioned the drink once.
Burger King's Moldy Whopper
They showed their flagship burger rotting over 34 days. On purpose. In a global campaign.
Dollar Shave Club: Our Blades Are F***ing Great
A $4,500 launch video that beat Gillette's entire marketing budget in cultural impact.
Blendtec: Will It Blend?
A marketing director spent $50 blending marbles and turned an unknown brand into a YouTube legend.
ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
Nobody planned this. $115M materialized from nowhere. ALS research changed.
Old Spice: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like
A deodorant ad so good it turned around an entire brand in 72 hours.
Dove Real Beauty Sketches
An FBI-trained forensic artist drew women he couldn't see. The gap broke the internet.
Volvo Trucks: The Epic Split
Jean-Claude Van Damme does the splits between two reversing trucks. At dawn. To Enya.
Popeyes vs. The Internet
A single tweet — '... y'all good?' — sold out every Popeyes in America.
The Blair Witch Project: The First Viral Marketing Campaign
They listed their actors as 'missing, presumed dead' on IMDb. $248M followed.
Oreo: Dunk in the Dark
The Super Bowl's lights went out. Oreo tweeted one image. The internet declared them the winner.
Domino's Admits Their Pizza Tastes Like Cardboard
They ran ads showing customers calling their pizza 'cardboard.' Their stock doubled.
Pepsi's Accidental $33 Million Lawsuit
Pepsi jokingly listed a fighter jet for 7 million bottle caps. A 21-year-old raised the points and sued.
Volkswagen's Piano Staircase
VW turned a subway staircase into a giant piano. 66% more people took the stairs.
Spotify Wrapped: When Data Became the Ad
Spotify turned your embarrassing listening data into a cultural event. 156 million people posted it voluntarily.
Burger King's Subservient Chicken
Burger King put a man in a chicken suit on the internet and told people to boss him around. 1 million hits in 24 hours.
Tesla Spent $0 on Advertising for a Decade
Tesla has never run a traditional ad. Their product is the commercial. Their CEO is the media.
Hotmail's Six-Word Footer That Built the Internet
Every Hotmail email ended with 'PS: Get your free email at Hotmail.' 12 million users in 18 months.
WallStreetBets vs. Wall Street: The $30 Billion Brand Moment
Reddit turned a dying video game retailer into a $30B meme stock — and gave GameStop more brand awareness than 30 years of advertising.