How to Boost Brand Visibility with Viral Trends

Ummmm...Any social strategists wondering what just happened?! The McDonald's team either just executed the most brilliant marketing campaign of the year, or a train went seriously off the rails... 🚂 🔥 Or both 🤷♀️ Let's break it down. Grimace sits perfectly at the intersection of a few powerful trends - 90's nostalgia, extreme authenticity, the joy of the unhinged, and brand mascots gone wild... 💜 💜💜 The #GrimaceShake trend is a prime example of the new ways that brands can captivate audience attention in marketing. Here's what we can learn from it: 1️⃣ Measure the New Success: McDonald's is redefining marketing success metrics. Users who make content about a brand care deeply - they invest their time and creativity into MAKING something in the brand's narrative. New fandoms can be measured - and 1 instance of UGC engagement is worth 10000 likes. 2️⃣ Drive Unexpected Virality: McDonald's Grimace shake unleashed a wave of fan-driven content, turning the campaign into something far beyond its initial intent. Fans dressed up, created art, and even made Grimace a queer icon. The hashtag #GrimaceShake got a mind-blowing 689 million views in just 15 days! 3️⃣ Embrace the narrative: Content creators took the Grimace shake trend to the next level by crafting elaborate narratives, horror films, and documentaries around it. The evolution of the trend kept it fresh and proved that audiences are not only intelligent but also wildly creative. Lo-fi horror has been making a comeback ever since Stranger Things blew up, and this trend doubled down on it. 4️⃣ UGC Highlights Community -Empower It!: McDonald's allowed fans to shape Grimace's perception and the shake's story, blurring the lines between creators and consumers. This created a vast network of user-generated content that boosted brand awareness and customer loyalty. The Grimace shake showcased the marketing potential of embracing and amplifying user-generated content. It builds a sense of community and a deeper connection with customers, resulting in massive brand exposure. The Grimace shake campaign demonstrates the influence of audience engagement and unexpected virality. By embracing customer creativity and enthusiasm, brands can expand their reach, foster loyalty, and create a strong sense of community. Successful marketing campaigns connect with audiences, ignite their imagination, and make them storytellers too! Every brand is an entertainment company, and the best ones give the audience the microphone. 🎤 (🍦🍦🍦 Also anyone else surprised the ice cream machines worked long enough to make all these shakes???) #viralmarketing #tiktokstrategy #usergeneratedcontent #grimaceshake #grimace

Here are 4 things you should do when a creator you’re working with goes viral. #1: Build on the momentum. Ask them to respond to commenters with new videos. Comment response videos are an easy way to keep the conversation going and resurface the original content. You can also ask them to create new versions of the video — an edit might go viral too, and might even beat the original. #2: Keep doing what works. Show the viral video to your other influencers and ask them to do their spin on the same concept. You want to capitalize on the trend, because virality doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s usually a measure of movement on the platform. It’s a sign of what people are looking for and talking about. #3: React from your account. Post organic content from your brand account reacting to the viral video. You can even pull back the curtain and talk about how excited you are that you’re going viral. Bring your audiences together with a behind the scenes taste of what the content means to you. #4: Invest in distribution. Squeeze more value out of a viral video by distributing it across other channels. - Turn it into a GIF and embed it in your marketing emails. - Make your cart abandonment videos more fun and exciting. - Get usage rights and repurpose it for IG and TikTok ads. - Embed it on your website, product pages, collections, etc. That’s how you turn UGC into social proof, improve time on site, and drive conversion. If the algorithms are telling you that a piece of content about your brand is crushing it, capitalize on that. You don't have to drop everything, but make sure you're doing at least some of these best practices. If you react quickly enough, you can 10x those results. But it’s the end of the road if you let that viral video fade into obscurity. What’s your best viral video success story? Bonus points for using any of these 4 tactics in your strategy...

How does a brand collaborate with the best baseball player in the world for free? For those who don't already know, let's break this down. 🔸 What Happened? Shohei Ohtani, Los Angeles Angels star, hits a Coors Light billboard at New York's Citi Field. Result? Viral buzz! 🔸 Coors Light's Action: Capitalizing on this viral moment, Coors Light crafted a brilliant marketing campaign: Special edition replica cans showcasing a design inspired by the 'dead pixel' impact spot. This minimalist yet impactful design – a simple black square – was both humorous and clever. These limited edition $17 empty cans became a sensation, selling out online well ahead of their anticipated shipment date. Coors further integrated this design into beverage wraps, stadium signage, and social media content, all encapsulated by the catchy tagline "Hits the spot." 📌 Takeaway for Brands: Real-world incidents can be goldmines for brands. Coors Light seamlessly transitioned a random baseball event into a viral marketing campaign, reaffirming the power of agile, reactive marketing. Such strategies not only amplify brand visibility but also foster a genuine connection with fans by humanizing the brand. For brands looking to stay relevant, this serves as a testament: Embrace the unpredictable, and when the moment arrives, act swiftly to bring the virtual buzz into tangible reality. #CreatorEconomy #Content #Growth #SocialMedia #InfluencerMarketing