Capstrat's Viral Marketing Campaign Written up by BulldogReporter.com

Rules of Engagement Marketing: PR Goes Viral with a Post-it Note Elvis Campaign to Land Massive Coverage, Win New Clients—and Drive Enormous Traffic to the Website

Capstrat creative director Todd Coats knew he needed an original idea to boost creative brainstorming at the Raleigh, NC-based PR agency. What he didn't know at the time was that the idea would spark an innovative PR campaign leveraging groundbreaking new media tactics—and ultimately lead to his appearance on "The Late Show with David Letterman."

"I wanted to show our team that a lot can be done with a little," Coats says. "The idea was to use creativity to inspire us and demonstrate that you don't need a giant budget to be successful."

The challenge: Inject creativity into "The War Room"—and drive traffic to the website

In addition to spicing up the conference room, which they call "The War Room," with an atmosphere of creativity, Coats and the Capstrat team wanted to drive traffic to the firm's website to attract clients. With both goals in mind, Coats considered creating a wall-sized mural using plain old office supplies. The mural would feature some icon of creativity that would grab both Capstrat team members and potential clients.

Figuring that brainstormers use tons of Post-it notes, Coats suggested a giant Post-it note mural.

Next was the question of subject: A Post-it note mural of what?

While talking with one of the team's designers—who's also a huge Elvis Presley fan—the idea occurred: A portrait of The King.

The strategy: Leverage a Post-it note mosaic of Elvis and a no-budget, online viral campaign

Elvis was just the iconic, inspiring presence needed in "The War Room," and over Memorial Day weekend 2005, Coats "posted" his masterpiece.

It took ten hours, but the result was a stunning image of Elvis in yellow, green and blue textures—using 2,646 Post-it notes. It covered an entire wall and towered over "The War Room" conference table.

With the Elvis mural in place, it was time to go viral. Coats and the Capstrat team took digital pictures and uploaded them to Flickr (www.flickr.com), a free photo-sharing website.

"We set out to do this with a low investment, and Flickr was the first thing we thought of," Coats says. "This was a few years ago, and sites like YouTube weren't even mentioned at that time."

Using a free Flickr account, the Capstrat team posted pictures of the mosaic and let popularity grow organically.

"We didn't try to promote it a lot," says Capstrat account director David Chatham. "We wanted to see if it would take on some viral quality of its own without a lot of promoting and pushing. We just took advantage of new media and put it out for mass consumption."

It worked: "It was cool to get out there in the new media space to see some of our stuff in play," Coats says. "It really caught on, and when we saw that people were interested in it, we knew we could capitalize."

Letting go of control: Capstrat allows the campaign to grow organically

But a huge challenge was relinquishing control and letting interest build on its own: "As a PR person, it was hard to let it live on its own," Chatham says. "My initial reaction was, 'This is great—we have to do something great with this.' But Todd said, 'Let's step back and let it gain a life of its own.' And to Todd's credit, that was a good observation."

Photos of the Elvis Post-it mosaic were passed around Flickr, and before long, bloggers began linking to them. There was so much interest in creating Post-it note murals, in fact, that Coats posted a how-to blog entry about using Photoshop and a few thousand Post-it notes to make a mosaic of your own. This led to more buzz online.

With the blogosphere abuzz, Chatham felt he could give the campaign additional online legs with a simple email promotion. "Our agency often runs what we call a 'PS campaign,' which is a little PS note at the bottom of our emails with a little saying and a link to an interactive piece on our website. The mission is to keep people going back to our website by providing the link in our emails. I knew we could use Elvis in a PS campaign."

From Elvis to Einstein: The campaign goes mainstream

But they weren't finished with online tactics: A year after the Elvis mural was complete, Coats created a second Post-it note mural—of Einstein—with a companion "6 Degrees from Elvis to Einstein" section of the Capstrat website. "That's the part that helped us get wider recognition and get us on the 'Late Show,'" Coats says.

It was time to launch an all-out assault on traditional, mainstream media: "By the time we made the change to Einstein, we were already getting some local and syndicated coverage," Chatham says. "The Raleigh News and Observer covered it along with some of the other McClatchy papers, and even 'Voice of America.' We also ended up in some magazines that we didn't really see as natural fits, like a knitting magazine, a kids' magazine and a decorating magazine. And the sincerest form of flattery was that other PR and marketing agencies started doing their own versions of Post-it note murals."

Then, they went for the gold: "Eventually, we did the down-and-dirty story," Chatham says. "I was watching Letterman and I saw that they featured someone who did Biff Henderson in cheddar cheese. I sent an email to Letterman with a link to our YouTube video—and one of the writers had already seen it and was familiar with it. He thought it was a great idea, and within two weeks Todd was on Letterman."

Translating viral success: What does it mean for the clients?

The exposure from Letterman and the campaign's online buzz meant that Capstrat met its original goal: "The hits to Capstrat.com have been about three times as high year over year since we did the Elvis and Einstein campaigns," Coats says.

But there was a further challenge: "We don't make Post-it note murals for a living," Chatham says. "It's not about the symbol, but it has opened up many doors with existing and potential clients."

Coats continues: "This is not the kind of client work that you would point to when pitching new business," he says. "But it gave us an opportunity to engage in conversations about new media and what we call 'engagement marketing.' It forced us to ask the question, what is the real fundamental success we can give our clients? We came up with the term 'engagement marketing' because it goes beyond online and viral. And in a broader PR sense, it gave us opportunities for webinars and speaking engagements where we could discuss these kinds of 'engagement marketing' programs."

Secrets for success: Read on as Coats and Chatham offer more tips for your own PR campaigns based on the success of this one:

1. Relinquish control: Let your viral program grow organically. "The biggest rule of 'engagement marketing' is don't over-promote or make it too sales-y," Coats says. "The bloggers see right through it. This is a new way to communicate—and we can't impose the traditional PR and marketing rules. You have to let the community build on its own. And if you impose the traditional rules of promotion, it will backfire."

2. Think offbeat. "Quirkiness sells," Coats says. "Inappropriateness sells. We weren't inappropriate in this case, but you'll notice that a lot of inappropriate stuff gets forwarded along online. That's because it's an alternative to traditional media." Additionally, try a low-maintenance approach: "One of the big mistakes is over-investing," Chatham says. "If it looks too polished, it comes across as an advertisement. In the case of 'engagement marketing,' there is such a thing as too much of a budget. In this campaign, the budget was the hours we put in—but it was a minimal investment," in terms of dollars, he says.

3. Make sure it makes sense. "Always keep your eye on the goal," Coats says. "For us, it was increased web hits. That helped us define strategy the whole way through this campaign."

Chatham continues: "We didn't lose track of the goal," he says. "Our goal wasn't national media attention—we wanted to drive traffic to the website. The key is to know why you're doing it." You can't just do it for fun, he says: "There are a lot of things on YouTube that are fun. But for a business to invest in this activity or to recommend it to a client, you have to approach it like any other PR strategy—with the ultimate goal in mind. There are a lot of viral marketing campaigns that fail and get criticized."

4. Manage client expectations in the online arena. "'Engagement marketing' comes with a hefty educational price," Coats says. "For us to recommend this to a client, we have to make sure they understand the benefits of this way of communicating. Consumers are far less likely to believe advertisements than their friends. So on the one hand, if you plan a viral campaign right, the community will grow. But you have to be prepared to hand over control. And the client must be aware of those risks as well."