Subscribe to this blog via RSS
Subscribe to this blog via Email
Image from the IIHS
Since we just chatted about how web content and social media has changed the game for public relations practitioners, it only makes sense to give an example of that with a recent case study.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) – a.k.a. the people who do independent crash dummy tests on cars – is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Anniversaries are always nice excuses to highlight your company, even if you don’t have any “real news” to share. So the IIHS could have just sent out a press release talking about its accomplishments in the last half century (yawn), but instead, it made the wise decision to just show you.
Perhaps the phrase “they don’t build ‘em like they used to” should be said with gratefulness. See what happens when the IIHS decides to plow a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air head-on into a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu:
Blammo!
While the likes Jay Leno and other car enthusiasts are undoubtedly weeping over the demise of such a nice vintage car, the rest of us get a clear message: car safety has come a long way, baby.
This is web content, for the purpose of PR, done beautifully. The video is highly visual (this may seem like a weird point to make, but we’ve seen lots of vids online that are anything but visually stimulating), effective, well-produced and well-branded. It’s on YouTube – the second most popular search engine – a few times over, is shareable and has also been sent through to PR channels, as evidenced by the terrific media pick-up.
At the time of writing this post, this version of the video (there are many on YouTube) has received over half a million views in under a week. That’s word of mouth at work, and that’s what makes this a viral and PR success for the IIHS.
Did you know that as a content marketing company, ideaLaunch also deals with making videos? If you want to learn more about the art of going viral, give our web content experts a ring!
