A New Presentation by Tod Maffin
Now booking for Fall 2010/2011
Can blind luck be reproduced? Absolutely, says Tod Maffin.
Today’s viral campaigns may seem like jackpots in a one-in-a-million lottery, but it turns out they are well within the reach of any marketing team’s grasp. All it takes is knowing the secret ingredients behind some of the world’s most talked-about campaigns.
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By reverse-engineering each element of a successful viral campaign in your industry, Tod Maffin will show your audience the key markers that can launch a campaign into the viral stratosphere — markers that can be programmed into the smallest budgets.
He will literally “deconstruct” a viral campaign, piece by piece, then show your group how to re-assemble a campaign for their own organization.
And, using his ASSURED ROI™ methodology, he’ll detail for your attendees each of the seven action steps required for launching an impactful and measurable viral campaign.
You will never look at a viral campaign again the same.
UPDATE: I did a segment on CBC Radio about this viral marketing campaign. Click the yellow Play icon on the bar below to listen.
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Kevin Rose had a fever. And, because he’s a nerd, he tweeted about it. That prompted the writers behind the deadpanned-but-hilarious TV ads for Old Spice to create a video response just for Kevin. You can see it below:
This video has been the talk of the web in the last few days — not so much for its content, but that the company would pick one person to direct a response to. But Kevin Rose isn’t just any ordinary nerd; he’s a well-connected and highly influential one. More than a million people follow his Twitter account.
The amount of publicity Old Spice has generated from this single well-directed message is incalculable.
Can you do the same with your business? Absolutely. And you should.
Take Canadian coffee chain Blenz. It reaches out to specific people through its Twitter account — sometimes rewarding them with gift certificates. While Blenz apparently pings random people, you may want to consider being more strategic.
Tools exist today to let you determine who the most influential people who follow your brand are.
Klout.com, for instance, gives you a score between 1 and 100 that estimates a person’s level of influence. It calculates everything from how often they are retweeted, how many influential people follow their social media accounts, and so on.
The recent release of the excellent and free Hootsuite social media dashboard now lets you filter tweets by Klout. In other words, you can see a stream of people who are tweeting about your brand — and can tell Hootsuite to only show those people who are very influential on the Internet. These are the people you should focus on. Invite them to participate as advisory board members. Send them a gift certificate. Invite them to your next staff party.
This screenshot shows one of the Hootsuite columns I run — a search for any time someone mentions my Twitter username, but only people with more than a Klout Influence Score of 39. These are the people who others trust to bring them valuable content. They are paid attention to.
When you randomly surprise influential people with something of value, they’ll talk it up. And your brand wins.
Have you ever randomly surprised one of your brand’s followers/friends? What did you offer them?
NB: You can do surprise your fan base and customers offline too — this summer, some Virgin Mobile customers will get replacement phones hand-delivered right to their door. To kick the program off, Sir Richard Branson made one of the first deliveries in Toronto earlier this week to an unsuspecting Virgin Mobile customer. “I don’t even know what to say right now. I can’t believe you guys did this!” said Morrison. “I got my new phone right away and Richard Branson is here. He’s the coolest delivery person ever – and I didn’t even have to tip him!”
I’ve been slowly assembling a list of CBC Facebook pages. If you can suggest any changes, please note them in the comments. (I’m looking for actual Facebook Pages, not those automatically generated Community pages.) Thanks! –Tod
I’ve been really lucky in my career to have travelled the world on business, consulting and giving speeches in Romania, Melbourne, London, Berlin, Stockholm, on a cruise ship, and more. Like everyone who does a lot of business travel, I’ve developed a set of little “rituals” to keep myself safe and and (relatively) sane.
I realized the other day that my most best tips all seem to come in pairs, and I thought I’d pass them along.
The Taxi Two-Step
Whenever I step out of a taxi, I now do two things: First, I look back at where I was sitting to make sure something didn’t slip out of my pocket (I’ve lost two cell phones this way over the years), and second I look on the outside of the cab for its taxi number, which I try to remember. I almost never have a need to be able to identify the taxi afterwards, but in the rare case when you need to, knowing the specific cab you were in can help. (In Las Vegas once, I left my MacBook Pro in the backseat. I didn’t know the specific cab I was in, so all I could do was hope that the cabbie was honest and returned it to the cab company’s lost and found; he did. As I was a flagged cash fare, he could have easily made off with it without any record of me being in his cab.)
Two Keys
When I check into a hotel which uses those magnetic-stripe cards as keys (don’t they all now?), I always ask for two keys, even though I’m the only person checking in. I stuff one card in my wallet right away as a backup. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve left the room without my key or lost one along the way. This little trick has saved me some time here and there.
Two Wake-up Calls
Some hotel chains, like the Fairmont, ask if you want two wake-up calls — usually spaced 15 minutes apart. I always opt for this, just in case I answer the first one then slip back to sleep (jetlag can be a bitch). I’ve almost always been awake and moving when the second call comes.
Two Oils
Studies have proven that certain scents can have an effect on our brains and I’m a huge believer in this. I always travel with two essential oils — rosemary and clary sage. Rosemary is known to promote better concentration, alertness, and a general sense of well-being. It’s a great oil to burn if you’ll be working in your hotel room on your presentation or a report. Just bring along a small tealight candle diffuser or a ceremic light-bulb ring to burn it. At night, I use Clary Sage, a rich, musky smelling essential oil which gives me a very calming sense of rest. Put ten drops of Clary Sage into a hot bath — it’s more of an absorption oil than a burning oil — soak in it for 15 minutes, and you’ll be asleep in no time.
A brief detour from social media strategies for a moment…. I wanted to update you on something I’ve launched (well, re-launched, really) that I’m pretty excited about.
Back in 2006, I had one of the most popular podcasts on the Internet — the How To Do Stuff podcast. I always tried to make it a quirky, entertaining, and informative how-to series on all sorts of random things. Things you wouldn’t hear or read about on any of the many how-to sites out there.
The podcast came to an abrupt halt in September 2006 when I became ill. Well, I figured, now is the time to re-start it! And so HowToDoStuffPodcast.com is back up and running! New episodes will come every few days. So far, here’s what’s on the site:
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I’ve been really lucky in my career to have travelled the world on business, consulting and giving speeches in Romania, 
