Six months ago, Gilad Kahana (Girafot) and Tamir Muskat (Balkan Beat Box) approached me and told me about a new musical project they were collaborating on. The project, called ‘Lo Kohot’, produces eclectic, crazy, high-quality music pieces centered around vocals accompanied by drums.
As someone who has lived and breathed media for 6 years, manages many business pages, and resolves online crises, the project felt like a dream come true to me – taking excellent musical materials, top-level music videos, and presenters with limitless talent and capability without any restriction or rule; it simply had to succeed, the question was how. So naturally, our initial instinct was to think of paid distribution, Linktone, PR, and all the usual tools, but we realized that was the easy way out…
The three of us were sitting at midnight at ‘Tahtit’, and I wanted to text a good friend of mine, Niv Poehl, the owner of ‘Srtonim’, to come to the meeting and share his thoughts. A second before I texted, I told Gilad we should film him calling Niv to come over, and so we did. Gilad said in a few-second video, “Bro, come over, we need help here,” and Niv showed up within ten minutes in his pajamas. I realized that this was the breakthrough – we were going to market the group’s musical material through a personal, filmed, unfiltered appeal, straight to the people we wanted to reach.
In the first project to promote a single called “Ani Lo Me’usher” (I’m Not Happy), I filmed Gilad and Tamir sitting in the studio, addressing quite freely 70 people we had done a little research on, teasing them a bit, and finally asking them to click a link leading to the single. The people we chose weren’t necessarily ‘Facebook power users’ or people with thousands of Facebook friends, but rather people we figured would like the single we were promoting (more or less), people who would be happy to receive the video and share it multiple times on their personal wall.
The reactions to the videos ranged from: “I’m in shock”, “You cracked me up”, “Why me?” to “The lawsuit is on its way”, but in the end, almost everyone who received the link shared it immediately and received surprised reactions from friends who shared it, with some videos reaching 2,000 views each. Total views for “Ani Lo Me’usher” reached 50,000 without paid promotion or media buying.
So how do you run a successful viral campaign that brings 100,000 views on YouTube?
In the second project, where we are currently promoting the single “Nadlan” (Real Estate), we raised the bar and filmed 50 personal clips on a ‘green screen’ while embedding a photo of each recipient. This time the reactions were even more extreme, and with the help of paid advertising on YouTube, we managed to reach 100,000 views within a week!
In each video, Kahana and Muskat are filmed against the background of one of the photos uploaded by that user to the social network, and for a minute or two, Gilad Kahana addresses that user in a monologue directly related to various things they posted on their personal profile. Muskat accompanies everything with drumming. The request at the end of each video is the same: click the link to watch the band’s new music video, and share the video with your friends on Facebook:
Within a short period, the video received almost 100,000 views:
The second round of the campaign will begin soon, which will be no less funny and surprising….
This guest post was written by Avi Kasuto Rosenberg, the owner of Pe La’Ozen – specializing in guerrilla marketing. The company, established 6 years ago, manages new media operations for ‘Egged’, ‘Isrotel’, ‘Negev Group’, ‘Agadir’, and many others. The company specializes in precise guerrilla campaigns and providing creative solutions.
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