Martha De Vet from the Royal Cabinet of Painting Mauritshuis (staff of 40) in the Netherlands introduced the museum crowd to viral marketing by way of one of their museums viral marketing campaigns. The campaign was an email “blast” combined with an online game.
Goals:
- Make website more widely known
- Alert regular visitors to the new site
- Find new customers for site and museum
- Image promotion
The gallery game featuring modified masterpieces. For instance the Girl with the Pearl Earring became the Girl with the Pearl Lip Ring. Players of the game were supposed to identify the error in the painting.
A player can play the game only once unless they invite 3 people who also play. Each person who plays got registered to win a prize. De Vet reported that the email and prize were both integral to the projects success.
The take away from the initial mailing is that 70% of people who received the initial emails activated them and played the game. From the graph shown it looks like about half of them got a second chance (meaning they recruited 3 other players).
De Vet also suggested that a viral game should be short and fun for the user. They had problems initially with their game being to long and difficult.
Checklist before starting a viral buzz:
What is your objective?
Does the technology work on all systems?
What is the incentive? (this is really important)
What is the duration? (longer is better)
How to start your buzz?
What do you want to measure?
Is you product buzzable? (and museums generally are)
I love this idea, such a perfect fit with the launch of new website. Have they been able to determine any impact on actual museum attendance?
Comment by robind — March 23, 2006 @ 6:40 pm
I don’t think she showed any statistics for that (we can check the DVD later), although informally afterwards she mentioned it changed the image of the museum in the minds of many people. I wasn’t familiar with the museum but apparently it had a very conservative reputation, which made this sort of viral campaign a more surprising idea i guess.
That’s anecdotal though no hard numbers to back it up.
Comment by eric — March 24, 2006 @ 10:16 am
and what about evangelism? Not intendend obviously on religion side but on the side of Apple or Ducati or Harley Davidson.
Please refer to this my post
http://www.mariobucolo.com/mb/?p=24
also to link to an evangelism guru, Guy Kawasaky
Comment by Mario Bucolo — April 3, 2006 @ 5:10 pm