Studi.net is a social networking site for university students in 15 countries, a project of Gerina-AG, Marburg, Germany.
The goal was to attract Polish university students to become registered Studi.net users and to build brand awareness. In practice it meant launching the website in a market dominated by well-established: StudentIX, Grono, Nasza-Klasa and other major players. Prior to our campaign Studi.net had only 4744 registered Polish users.
Source: Alexa.com
Due to lack of brand awareness, low traffic and reach we had to come up with something powerful that would grab attention of Polish students with Studi.net. Simply visiting studi.net website for the first time might not be enough for an average young person to become a user.
You can only appreciate what the site has to offer after you have signed up, browsed for people, joined groups etc. So the strategy was to make them really interested in registering their accounts and in the process, or shortly afterwards, help them find out what Studi.net really is about.
We've chosen to use the friend-to-friend viral mechanism, to distribute our message and created an involving story (different for female and male visitors) which brought unique experience when the visitor discovered that the main character of a video, that was the central point of the campaign, is in fact... him/her.
People engaged with the immersive experience through 2 viral videos (fake TV news report), emails, videownia.pl website, 2 personal Studi.net webpages: http://kinga.studi.net & http://kamil.studi.net
Source: Kinga.studi.net
It looks like one of hundreds YouTube-like video sharing websites. You see a news clip from a television station TV 6 telling you that a young and very attractive girl named Kinga, is looking for the man she fallen in love with, but hasn't learnt his contact details. She only knows which city the guy studies in and what year of studies he is in.
The girl is so desperate to find him that she buys a billboard ad in his city, hoping he would find her this way. As a reporter interviews her, the voiceover mentions some details about the guy: the name of the city and the year of studies, and they're remarkably like yours- same city, same year of studies...
Then comes one more surprise: on the billboard, right behind the girl's and the reporter's backs you can see "[your name], I LOVE YOU, kinga.studi.net". She says she hopes you are watching it and will get in touch with her (the only option seems to be visiting her website: kinga.studi.net). The video ends, and you feel puzzled to say the least, and more likely shocked, excited or anxious.
And here comes the real punchline: you've been hoaxed. The website and video are part of a viral campaign for Studi.net, a social networking site for students, where Kinga as well as thousands of other students socialize, and can easily build their personal websites.
Someone you know- probably one of your friends - entered your name, demographics, and email into the form provided on the website, which generated the video and sent you a link. And now that you've become a victim of the joke, you're offered the opportunity to forward it by providing someone else's info. The cycle repeats.
Despite having learnt that the email and the video was a joke, a large percentage (almost 50%) of recipients have felt the urge to visit kinga.studi.net website to satisfy their curiosity. And more than 10% of those who have, also signed up for Studi.net.
The incorporation of the personal data and a few other psychological triggers was a key to success.
How it Worked: (click here to slide text down)
When the viral campaign was launched in Poland, it became the center of controversy, with Immersum and Studi.net receiving calls and emails from the public- lonely people hoping it was not a joke, jealous boyfriends/girlfriends, threats (of legal actions) by those upset by the campaign and many others.
Results for Studi.net:
- more than 20.000 new registered and active users within the first 4 weeks of the campaign; the number continues to grow rapidly
- more than 300 000 visits to the campaign characters' webpages within Studi.net: http://kinga.studi.net & http://kamil.studi.net (both have become most often visited personal webpages on Studi.net)
- reach for Studi.net has increased 614% (according to Alexa.com)
- traffic Rank for Studi.net has gone up 272,628 positions (according to Alexa.com)
- since the beginning of the campaign between 80% and 90% of Studi.net overall traffic has come from Poland
Results for Videownia.pl:
traffic details, until 25.02.2008 (76 days after campaign launch):
- 2 471 481 page views
- 1 403 608 visits
- 703 880 absolute unique visitors
- peak of number of links (Google search records for videownia.pl): 3,460
- videownia.pl daily peak: 81 869 visits, 148 439 page views
- videownia.pl hit the top 1000 most visited Polish websites and stayed there for more than a month
- link to videownia.pl was third most popular link on Wykop (Polish Digg-like site) main page, and stayed there for more than a week