CASE STUDIES
Staples, the world’s largest office products company with over 2000 stores in 27 countries, tapped Duffy & Shanley to create and execute an integrated viral marketing program for its 2009 holiday season. D&S conceptualized a way to use online video as the launch pad for the entire viral program. The “Gift it For Free” Holiday Sweepstakes centered around the idea that 10,000 people would win their entire holiday purchase for free. D&S created a character named Coach Tom, who served as the mouthpiece of the program and the “star” of our videos. In essence, Coach Tom was a local youth sports coach who believed so firmly in the concept of one winner that he was baffled by a sweepstakes with 10,000 winners. He effectively believed Staples was ruining the very fabric of American competition. He made it his mission to inform the general public about what Staples was doing for the holidays – to stop the madness, so to speak! Duffy & Shanley produced nine videos with Coach Tom and seeded them to online video channels.
Duffy & Shanley generated awareness for Staples’ “Gift it For Free” Holiday Sweepstakes via video-sharing Web sites, blogger placements, and across social media platforms. Seeding our message via video was definitely a top priority, but we knew we could not ignore all the other Web-based messaging platforms that holiday consumers frequent. Blogs, message boards, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, and Flickr were all built in as an integral part of our plan. Online coverage resulted in 13.6 million impressions while viral videos netted 1.7 million views in a short 6-week holiday window.
