Viral stunts: do things so ridiculous people can’t help but share.
The hack here is you don’t even need to execute it to get crazy press.
KFC Flavored Prime
7 days ago, Logan Paul and KSI’s energy drink, PRIME, announced a KFC flavor. They called it, “frydration.”
The bottle looked like a bucket of chicken wings.
They had influencers make it look real.
This video of Casey Neistat trying it and going “nope” is both ridiculous and hilarious:
It was an April Fool’s joke, but tons of people thought it was real.
The result?
Tons of press. Tons of awareness. Makes the brand more top of mind.
If they were trying to do SEO (and I don’t know that they’re not), they also get an influx of high-authority backlinks from top news websites.
It’s crazy because this wasn’t even real. Just some fake branding.
Viral Stunts Are...
I love viral stunts because they:
- Are fun/creative
- Bring a ton of awareness
- Get many SEO backlinks
Two more stunts.
Cut Dat
In 2014, my friend and I created a YouTube channel where we cut things in half with spoons:
The videos were easy to produce. 5 minutes for the shoot. 15 minutes for the edit.
Our original distribution was the r/ASMR and r/Videos subreddits of Reddit.com.
It didn’t take long for friends to share the videos with each other.
We had this article on the front page of The Verge and were covered in lots of other places: https://www.theverge.com/2014/7/9/5884637/inexplicable-youtube-series-demonstrates-how-to-cut-things-with-spoon-cut-dat
The idea was ridiculous enough that people felt compelled to share.
One more example.
Score by Neon Money Club
Neon Money Club is a lifestyle finance startup.
The main issues:
- Customer acquisition cost is high
- It’s competitive
- To do SEO they need above-average domain authority
So how does Neon Money Club handle this?
Viral stunts.
Their most recent one is brilliant.
Score: https://joinneon.com/score
It’s a dating app that requires a credit score of 675+ to use.
The idea is so ridiculous they went hyper-viral.
Look at all the press they’re getting (they share it on their page):
This:
- Increases top-of-mind awareness
- Increases SEO domain authority through backlinks
The most amazing thing?
The dating app is barely functional and the journalists who write about it don’t even try it.
It wasn’t made to be the next dating app unicorn.
It was made to be a viral stunt.
