Brickfish aiming to use viral adverts

When Kodak, the US photo supplies company, decided to re-enter the inkjet printer business with a range of printers that claim to cut the cost of ink in half, the company chose an unconventional way to get the message out.

Kodak teamed up with a San Diego-based start-up called Brickfish that has pioneered a new web-based viral marketing method called social media advertising.

Together they created a campaign dubbed 'Pricey Ink Stinks' built around a competition that challenged online visitors to find another use for their old, ink-hungry printer and blog about it, take a photo, draw it or video it for the chance to win one of the new Kodak models.

The campaign was a success, generating 87 entries and more than 173,022 'engagements' which Brian Dunn, Brickfish's chief executive, claims are a much better metric than unique visitors or page views. Engagements, or a campaign's 'E-score', measures consumer action defined by entries, votes, reviews, and views of branded user generated content.

Clients use the Brickfish platform to launch online advertising and marketing campaigns designed to capture the attention of consumers, particularly the young, creative and connected and tap the power and reach of social networking.

Instead of marketing to consumers, the Brickfish advertising platform effectively co-opts consumers who become part of the campaign, generating blogs, images, video and audio content that is shared virally and voted upon. Meanwhile, Brickfish enables its clients to monitor and track the campaign through 'viral map' technology that provides detailed analytics about campaign reach, performance and demographics.

"This viral, consumer driven, marketing approach has proven to be five to 10 times more effective than existing online advertising methods such as display ads and search optimisation," claims Mr Dunn.

With online banner ads stuck with their 0.1-0.2 per cent click-through rates, marketers at big name companies including Samsung, Nike, Qualcomm and Procter & Gamble have begun to listen.

P&G used Brickfish to launch a campaign for its Aussie shampoo brand. Like the Kodak campaign, the Aussie effort was a contest site. The competition attracted 4,017 entries and more than 2m visitors, 80 per cent of whom were viral connections through sites such as MySpace, MyYearBook and SugarFoot. Brian Jochum, P&G's Aussie brand manager, described it as one of P&G's most successful engagement branding efforts so far this year.

"In order to broadly reach consumers across the internet, Brickfish provided us with a highly cost conscious and effective method to virally spread our brand name to thousands," he said. "We were able to reach more active consumers than with many traditional online advertising methods."

Using Brickfish's media platform, P&G was able to track not only the initial message sent but subsequent ones to other social networks. This enabled the company to follow the viral path from one peer to the next, a colour-coded viral map shows the initial messages that were generated on the contest site and then messages that were later passed on from one social network to the next.

In total, Brickfish has launched more than 200 campaigns for clients, including about 30 for the fashion and cosmetics industry. Some of the brands the company has worked with include Givenchy, Frederick's of Hollywood, Estee Lauder's Clinique and Origins brands, and Smashbox.

Brickfish, which was founded three years ago by a small team of entrepreneurs, has quickly emerged as the leader in social media advertising with few if any direct competitors, though that could change.

Last year it raised $11.2m in a Series A financing from a group of venture capital firms including DCM, Draper Richards, Mangrove Capital Partners and OCA Venture Partners. The company is expected to launch another round of funding shortly.

Published by: Paul Taylor

Published 3rd July, 2008

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