Lessons Learnt from the Fake Storm

Marketing in Rambles 2: Lessons Learnt from the Fake Storm

Now that the media storm (he he!) has died down, I feel I can talk about the fake tornado incident without putting my head on the block.

It’s amazing what one email from a seemingly credible source can do. It created one of the media events (maybe anomalies is a better term) of the year: the tornado that never was. Even I, a fellow colleague of the guy who will probably be sacked for his email prowess, hit the tarmac at 3pm and burnt that diesel all the way home, closed all the windows and brought in all the outside furniture. In my defence there were some ominous dark clouds around, very rare for a warm Joburg afternoon!

So anyway, the economy grinded to a halt, the radios went mad and the roads jammed up, all because of the year’s most effective viral marketing email; whether the author knew it or not. Could this be turned into a case study on effective email marketing? I think so.

The recipe for a successful disaster:

Take a relevant topic, send it from a trusted source, at an opportune time (there was a tiny tornado just outside of JHB the day before) give incentive to pass it on and hey presto you’ve got a successful viral campaign! How can you use these parameters to create a successful campaign in your environment?

Were the results measurable?OK, asides from the panic, chaos and doomsday comparisons.

Some of you will know what I do for a living and will know that I have access to the Netcare website stats so without giving away too much information, hits for the day went up 750% compared to the averages, the webmaster’s mailbox got jammed, and the search facility, press release and emergency section of the site have never seen so much love. The search words around the website were pertinent as well: ‘storm’, ‘freak tornado’, ‘traffic chaos’, ‘are we going to die’? Now if he was selling something on these emails via the website, the email originator probably would have got a promotion but instead he will probably get the sack which is measurement enough of a successful viral campaign under such circumstances.

What do I think of all this? I’m not loving it, some dude in the admin department pulled off the company’s best viral campaign ever, doesn’t say much for my skills.