Harnessing the power of viral marketing

Viral marketing facilitates sharing of web content that usually involves something amazing or hilarious, and is spread like a virus among pre-existing social networks. It is a way for a company to increase brand awareness, which is what Sun Drop and it’s producer Dr Pepper Snapple Group (DPG) aimed to do with their new marketing campaign. Sun Drop was created and marketed in the South and has had a loyal customer base spread through the south and Midwest for many decades. They are known for their original citrus soda of high caffeine content, but later developed caffeine-free, diet, and other flavors of soda. After a few efforts to reach a broader customer base, they decided they wanted to go national with their brand.

DPG partnered with MTV’s millennial marketing division, MTV Scratch Marketing Group, to reach the millennial generation (those born after 1980) through marketing and advertising strategies including different integration of product placement, social media, retail activation, etc. MTV Scratch and DPG chose Sun Drop as the product to help “reinvent,” with the objectives of competing nationally for the citrus category of soda and to drive brand awareness and purchase. They launched in January 2011 and started a new marketing campaign that launched in March 2011.

While this campaign contained many aspects that have made it successful, the focus we draw in on is the commercial/video they produced and launched nationally in March 2011. Their campaign with this video, Show Us How YOU Drop it, featured Snoop Dogg’s song “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” and how many people describe as a “funny white girl dancing.” The video was first shown to loyal fans on Facebook and Youtube before airing on MTV’s premiere of Real World-Las Vegas on March 25, 2011. This video inspired and encouraged parodies and remakes. With over 5000 copycats, with over 4 million views of it on YouTube within the first 4 weeks, combined with their video competition (“It’s gonna get hot today, grab a nice cold Sun Drop, and show us how you drop it”), the video went viral. Spreading and sharing across Youtube Channels, Facebook, twitter, sent in emails and texts, this video got the reaction Sun Drop wanted. They accomplished their objectives of not only increasing brand awareness, but also purchases, as they explain in their Second Quarterly Review, “Since its national launch in January, Sun Drop has grown by almost 90% adding 5 million incremental cases.”

Sun Drop is trying to harness the power of viral marketing; did they create a campaign that went viral or does it appear too inauthentic? I conclude that it was successful; the original and entertaining video spread among pre-established social networks and continues to be successful at promoting the video with the competition on their website. What do you think?