The Tendo View

If marketers had a template for creating the next Internet sensation—the next Susan Boyle YouTube video or the latest celebrity scandal—we’d have some serious job security. Sadly, there is no template to follow, but any marketer looking for a viral road map could take a lesson from Jared Holstein, editor for TopGear.com America.

Holstein, summer interns Matthew DuVall and Jonathan Masters, and editorial assistant Christopher Gifford created a fake video and photos of a non-existent prototype Porsche wagon. They then leaked the images to various enthusiast sites and let the grassroots fan base spread the word for maximum viral success.

We can all have a good laugh at the casual car enthusiasts and industry experts that were fooled by the fake news. But the facts and figures behind the hoax also provide a great, real-life example of how anyone can take a viral campaign from zero to the New York Times in little over a month.

It’s not about the money

For starters, you don’t need a big budget. The most successful and most talked about viral campaigns are often the least expensive.

“On TopGear.com America, for example, we ran clips with production values rumored to cost seven figures per episode, but we have a Mustang clip on our site that I shot with a handheld camera on the roof of a hotel and it’s the highest-performing video on the website,” Holstein says. “That got me thinking: How much havoc could we wreak with a minimal investment? As it turns out, a lot.”

Know your audience

A long product development cycle for vehicles has given rise to an industry of specialized automotive journalists, sleuths who make their living breaking news on top-secret vehicle models ahead of official releases by automotive manufacturers. Holstein knew that a rabid fan base would feed on fake pictures of a new Porsche in development—more than that, he knew which buttons to push to stir up some controversy.

Also part of the strategy: the reaction from Porsche. “We knew it would generate good PR for them. And if they were asked about such a car they would deny it—whether or not it actually existed,” Holstein says. In other words, Porsche couldn’t blow his cover even if they tried.

Plant the seed

“A lot of this has to do with psychology,” Holstein says. “When, where, why, who to tip, who not to tip? The seeding strategy is critical, as content will get more weight if one source picked it up versus another. All we did was take advantage of the greed for the big story—the greed to get a scoop.”

Holstein recorded the full timeline of events for the hoax, and it’s worth noting a few interesting occurrences in the path. For starters, the hoax never went viral on the Web’s stereotypical top sites: Digg, Reddit, et cetera. It took car news aggregators like Jalopnik less than a day to begin seeding reports of the fake story–essentially, a brief summary and rewrite of the blurb without any additional fact-checking.

The seeders didn’t let the story die out after hitting success on major aggregates, however. They began to launch additional information on sites with a tangential relation to the car scene to further the authenticity of the hoax. For example, a news snippet was released to a Czech fansite for the upcoming video game “Forza 3.” According to the source, the driving game was scheduled to feature—you guessed it—the spoofed car.  A quick tip to the news aggregates got the blurb in the enthusiasts’ eyes once again.

Persistence pays off, indeed.

Get the conversation going

In the first week alone, the video on TopGear.com America had more than 27,000 views and there were more than 400 Web comments. That’s a ratio of approximately one comment for every 68 views of the video. When the images spread to the Forza 3 videogame screen grab, TopGear.com America expanded from the car fan base to the excitable videogame fan base, giving the prank crossover appeal by bridging several significant Web audiences.

Holstein says that this type of hoax starts a dialogue because it forces consumers to question what they see on the Web—and that leads to real conversations and honest feedback. “You can go a whole year not buying a crappy product because instead of relying on a company’s spin, you can get honest opinions from your peers,” Holstein says. “People are hungry for open conversations and real information.”

Now if only the car was real…

Enjoy our look at the nitty-gritty of a viral marketing campaign?  Need to take a step back and examine the bigger picture? Check out our quick interview with fellow car enthusiast Trevor Traina as he reveals the three biggest facts marketers need to know about the online world!