Every September 19, people around the world celebrate the odd holiday known as ”International Talk Like a Pirate Day.”
People around the world enjoy dressing like pirates and greeting their friends with “Ahoy, maties” and ordering “grog” so they can get “two sheets to the wind.” There are multiple websites offering insights into how to talk, dress and act like a pirate — as well as many pirate-themed parties.
Two friends living in Oregon — Mark Summers and John Baur – started the holiday as a joke among friends. So how did an inside joke become an international phenomenom? Essentially, this is a case of viral marketing.
The joke took off in 2002 when it was featured in a column by humorist Dave Barry, a columnist with the Miami Herald. At the time, Barry’s nationally syndicated column was read each week by millions of Americans. He wrote best-selling books and even had a television series based on his life, Dave’s World, which ran for four seasons. So when he praised the joys of talking like a pirate, people listened.
After that, the concept snowballed and became part of pop culture, perhaps helped by the enormous success of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies (2003, 2006, 2007) . The founders were even featured on a 2006 episode of ABC’s Wife Swap. Summers and Baur have written books, produced videos and conventions, and of course, developed a website.
Today, they can be found on all the social networks, including YouTube:
Facebook (which celebrates year-round by letting you choose English [Pirate] as your language):
Google:
Twitter:
And Flickr:
“International Talk Like a Pirate Day” has been celebrated on every continent, even Antartica. Here’s how this is a good example of viral marketing.
1) Viral Means Sharing
For something to go viral, it needs to be something people want to share. It can be something touching, funny, silly, or even shocking but at heart every single thing that goes viral, from appeals to send cards to a child dying of cancer and pictures of a plane in a river to some kid pretending to be in Star Wars and epithet-spewing toddlers (just to name a few random examples) is something people felt compelled to share with their friends, family and colleagues.
If you want your viral campaign to be successful, you need a concept that compels sharing. After all, who knows why people want to talk like pirates and have their friends talk like pirates, too. Could be that most people romanticize pirates, secretly like dressing up, or like being part of something that seems “cool.” The bottom line is, people felt compelled to share the idea of “Talk Like a Pirate Day” with their friends — and even better, participate in it.
2) Medium is the Message
The interesting thing about “International Talk Like a Pirate Day” is that it exploded before social networks were as important as they are today (YouTube, the viral campaign tool of choice, wasn’t even founded until 2005). The founders happened upon Dave Barry’s email address and essentially talked their way into a column. It was a near-perfect match-up between the humor of the holiday and Barry’s tongue-in-cheek approach. Word-of-mouth took care of the rest. The lesson? Find the right vehicle(s) to deliver your viral message, ones that showcase it best and are easy to share.
3) Viral Doesn’t Mean Commercial (Usually)
If you think about the videos, cartoos, and jokes your friends have forwarded to you over the years, they most likely have one thing in common — they aren’t commercial. There’s no way for anyone involved to profit from most viral items. Even “Talk Like a Pirate Day” started as a joke; it wasn’t until later that the founders leveraged their success to make money.
People don’t like forwarding something overly commercial because they don’t like to feel “used” or part of corporate advertising campaign. Ironic, given the amount of attention and time given to viral marketing by professionals. So does that mean you can’t include messages, links or commercial images in your viral campaign? If so, why do one at all?
The good news is, if something is funny or cute enough, people will forward it. One of the best recent examples is the Evian rollerskating babies campaign. Clearly, the video was promoting Evian but people were so enthralled with the cute little babies, the cool tricks, and the nostalgic soundtrack that it didn’t matter — more than 4 million people viewed the video in less than two weeks, including just about everyone I know (based on the emails and forwards I received).
4) Goals + Metrics = ROI
Conventional wisdom says that it’s difficult to measure return on investment for a viral marketing campaign. But is it? The “International Talk Like a Pirate Day” founders can certainly measure their success — thousands (if not more) of visits to their website, a book in its sixth printing, gajillions of photos on Flickr, even a language option on Facebook. All very measurable, and all with very clear impacts on their bottom line.
A successful viral campaign will also have built-in metrics for success, appropriate to the goals of the campaign, such as increased awareness or product sales. The key is to identify those goals and agree on the ways success can be measured, whether that means website visits, video views, awareness survey results, product sales tracked for a specific time period, increased calls — whatever is realistic for that campaign.
But is viral right for you? That depends. Viral campaigns can be a risk. The risk can be minimized if you truly understand your customer, are willing to invest in getting the right concept and the right vehicles, and have targeted, realistic goals with specific metrics attached. Hit it right, and viral can be a great way to have tremendous impact with relatively minimal investment.
So next September 19, when you don your finest plumed hat, dust off the stuffed parrot and greet your coworkers with a gruff “Arrrrgh!” thank two guys from Oregon with a twisted sense of humor, a dream, and a successful (if inadvertent) viral marketing campaign.
Labels: pirates, talk like a pirate, viral marketing