When Turkish Airlines released an ad last December featuring soccer icon Lionel Messi and NBA superstar Kobe Bryant, it became a massive YouTube hit. When the airline released a sequel to that spot last week, the second ad became an even bigger smash with more than 77 million views in six days, including 20 million in its first two days online.
But the second spot, in which Bryant and Messi trade dueling selfies from exotic locations around the world, didn't just become a hit because of its predecessor or media attention; it also relied on a clever campaign to build viral steam, including rave reviews from some of YouTube's most influential members. It's a campaign that may surprise you, and one that sheds light on how viral marketing sausage is made.
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Plaid Social Labs is an online advertising company located in Utah. Its team neither conceptualized the clever Bryant versus Messi campaign, nor did it produce the new ad; but they did help it reach astronomical viral success by identifying high-profile YouTube users, then convincing and paying those users to casually share the ad with their large and dedicated online followings after it was uploaded.
The process is called "seeding." While an old-hat to online advertising pros, it may come as something of a revelation to the rest of us who often wonder just how some YouTube videos blow up with tens of millions of views, while others languish in the humble thousands.
"Every viral video that is very successful like this needs to have a good seeding program behind it to make it accelerate," Plaid Social Labs founder Ricky Ray Butler told Mashable. "If this video had gone live without our support, it still would have gone viral. Turkish Airlines' ad agency had all their ducks in a row to make it go viral, but where we helped is to accelerate that process."
The arrangement resembles a sort of viral assembly line. Turkish Airlines hired an agency called Crispin Porter & Bogusky to develop the ad itself. Then, Butler said, the firm hired Plaid Social Labs to seed the ad. After that, Butler's company found YouTube influencers to pay for sharing the ad early on with their wide audiences.
"It works in a ripple effect," Butler explained. "We pay the larger influencers to help send traffic to the video. Then a lot of other people see the video through them, and they end up sharing it for free."
Butler declined to detail specific payments, but said they typically pay YouTube users once — not based on click-throughs or other metrics — and that a channel's number of views, subscribers and engagement level determine what he is willing to pay. But Butler did say that top YouTube influencers can receive payments into the "thousands" of dollars for just one video.
Musician Lindsey Stirling is a YouTube user who likely fits that description. Her channel, where she posts her music as well as humorous videos, has more than 3.7 million subscribers and 491 million total views.
Under a Dec. 4 upload of her performing a song called "Oh Come, Emmanuel," the first line of the video description reads "Turkish Airlines: http://bit.ly/ImPa2s," with a link to the new Kobe-versus-Messi ad. At the end of the music video, a pop-up window shows scenes from the Turkish Airlines ad, while Stirling mentions the company's new "super cool video."
Another Dec. 3 video from YouTube user devinsupertramp, who has more than 1.6 million subscribers, shows adults racing go-karts to an upbeat soundtrack. The first line in the video's description reads "Selfie Wars! This is awesome, check it out! http://bit.ly/ImPa2s," along with a link to the Turkish Airlines spot.
If promoting corporate advertising via YouTube users seems like a delicate endeavor, that's because it is in many ways, according to Butler. He said content creators such as Stirling only agree to promote videos they find legitimately entertaining, and that makes the whole operation successful.
"It's a sponsored video, but it's not super advertise-y," Butler told Mashable. "It's very organic."
But could Butler's business just be a bubble, something that fades away as social and online advertising matures? Quite the contrary, if you ask him.
"This community, I really feel, is the future of television," he said of the YouTube users with whom he brokers deals. "More and more people are going to consume content online from people like this, so their influence is only going to grow."
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Image: Turkish Airlines, YouTube