In case you hadn’t heard, Elvis—or someone who looks sorta like him—has been seen again. This time it was not in a suburban Burger King restaurant but inside a Las Vegas credit union.
Actually, a guy named Elvis was the star earlier this year of a conference attendance-building viral marketing video series commissioned by Credit Union National Association (CUNA) in Madison, Wis. Proof the campaign achieved attendance-building objectives is in: Attendance numbers spiked by a third, reports Cheryl Sorenson, CUNA’s manager of conferences and meetings.
Called viral because of its resemblance to a virus that spreads rapidly via e-mail, blogs and websites, the initiative was a first for the association, which was also meeting in Las Vegas for the first time last March.
The term viral marketing has been attributed to the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson after its investment in Hotmail grew like the spread of a naughty joke on the Internet. Hotmail put an advertisement at the end of everybody’s e-mail message, suggesting they too sign up for the free service. After 18 months, more than 12 million people had become Hotmail users.
CUNA deployed traditional direct mail along with its new media tools to accomplish objectives. All components of the marketing campaign drove people to the CUNA website, where they found information about the conference. That was the objective.
The video series, created by Spokane, Wash.-based Corner Booth Productions and Boom Creative, ran off CUNA’s website and YouTube.
“Years ago, Elvis, the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, left us—but did he?” the series began. “Evidence suggests he actually may be masquerading as Elvis Wilson, manager of a small Las Vegas credit union. And he’s blending in with all the other Elvis impersonators. To get to the bottom of the rumors, CUNA will hold its marketing and business development conference in Las Vegas….”
In the videos, an Elvis impersonator arrives for work, talks to a customer from a drive-up window, and counsels other customers about identity theft: “Honey, someone could be impersonatin’ you right now….”
In tandem with the video campaign was a card game. A direct-mail piece offered a card that takers cut out of the paper brochure. Conference registrants received additional cards via e-mails. Trading cards among other registrants was okay; in fact, it was encouraged. To get the fifth card, attendees had to show up at the conference. At the final farewell event, three holders of winning poker hands collected their prizes.
“We had a 92 percent click-through rate on the card e-mails we sent out,” Sorenson says. “All during the conference, people were talking about their cards and asking people for this or that card to complete the poker hand they wanted. It was an excellent way to create buzz before and during the conference.”
Sorenson says CUNA knows Vegas is an attendance-getter on its own. But this year’s viral marketing success has produced a model. Creative minds are already at work to deploy similar conference-builders for CUNA’s 2008 Nashville, Tenn., meeting.
For his part, the Boom Creative mind behind CUNA’s Elvis videos says viral marketing gives legs to conference marketing.
“Every piece of communication we do is intended to be a welcome guest in a person’s home or business because they will send it along to someone else,” says Daniel Thorpe. “It’s not a hard sell, because we want it to be effective,” he says. “Inside humor is a good way to go.”
