I heart creativity. It’s what a love about the marketing industry. Sadly I don’t see as much as I’d like. However today (9 months late) I came across a flash of brilliance.
Watch the video below to see PPC branding campaign that makes my heart flutter.
Converse only assigned a budget of $100,000. The Adwords campaign alone brought in over 600,000 unique visitors. I wouldn’t be surprised if they received more than 600,000 visitors from viral traffic. Obviously the campaign was a huge success.
Blessings to Anomaly who are the marketing company/brains behind this creative genius.
This gets me thinking of all the creative opportunities possible on different traffic sources….mmmyess interesting.
Anywho, love it? Hate it? Thoughts? Seen anything similar?
I think it'd be good for branding.
Might not be the most cost-effective campaign becuase you have to set up a network of sites. Might as well do a viral video and post it on Youtube.
This is total BS,
ONLY Converse can get away with this. Have you ever tried bidding on low competition keywords like that? I build micro sites around hot niches and still got slaughtered with QS.
BTW I used to work at an agency and can promise you 100% that Google is not fair. If you have the budget you can get away with just about anything.
But good idea none the less.
This is true in regards to Google being unfair and that you need budget. There is something at the backend of Google AdWords which ranks accounts with potential and as such they use a tier system to rank Google AdWords accounts. Accounts that have a good conversion rate and ability to spend more, they put into a higher system which lowers the CPC.
We know Google has the ability to change the base price of their auction (which is why mobile and display traffic campaigns have cheaper CPC's than traditional Search.) It's not something we can prove (although we do have screenshots of the backend tier system in play.)
(sorry had to split our comment into 2)
But if you really want proof that budget means that you get preferential treatment in Google AdWords, look no further than Groupon. These a spending wads of cash at the moment on Google AdWords on keywords like 'Easter Eggs' but their landing page is rubbish (Google it now if you dont believe us!) By this rational they should have a poor QS (3/10 we guess) and as such shouldn't be appearing in top positions all the time for terms like Easter Eggs (one of many of the numerous generics they are in high for.) We just dont believe that it costs in for Groupon as they would be paying massive CPC's due to their irrlevant landing page (the word easter egg doesn't appear anywhere on the landing page) but low and behold they still are able to advertise everywhere and they dont seem to be suffering.
Why? Because Google has ranked their account in the top tier and they are paying cheaper CPC's than anyone else…we know its true…we just cant prove it.
That's really interesting it does make sense. However I still wouldn't be surprised if big companies like Groupon are just footing a big bill for ridiculously broad low QS keywords.
I want to see them screenshots!
Welcome to the almighty power of a brand, where rules change.
Facebook kindly followed suit.
That is clearly badassery at its finest.
Rather than building an army of mini-sites, would it not be possible to do the same with highly relevant blog posts?
Of course, they're also building a nice little bundle of backlinks from sites that likely get highly commented/linked/shared in the process.
How many teen agers do you think spend their time reading "highly relevant blog posts?" especially in relation to TV shows, etc. They aren't house wives.
Sure it brought Converse back to mind from decades ago, but I'm still not going to buy them.
None the less watching this exercise made some additional neurons spark and that's always good.
Agreed.
The point here is creativity.
The method here is not the real lesson, but how it is creative for the advertiser's benefit.
I tried this before.. of course, im not converse so i can't speak for everyone but i tend to agree with FlipSite Media ·
Very interesting. For how haphazardly "branding" money tends to get spent, this seems far more sane because the results are far more measurable. Also, its an awesome corporate SEO technique (assuming they're not building these pages to be 100% flash, which would be retarded).
As a direct marketer I'm inclined to say, "yeah, but how does this shit translate into sales," just like I did with the stupid old-spice guy, but I think these microsites are a bit more "intimate" than the Old Spice guy who was perceived as "yet another viral video."
Also, for the people here posting saying this is stupid, keep in mind that you are probably not the target market. It sounds like they were targeting kids of ages 13-17 with specific interests/anxieties, so just like you shouldn't bring your personal biases when evaluating a landing page for that hot new Zwinky offer, don't make the same mistake here.
My $.02. Great post. Been done tweet (@the_hoth)
"Also, for the people here posting saying this is stupid, keep in mind that you are probably not the target market. It sounds like they were targeting kids of ages 13-17 with specific interests/anxieties, so just like you shouldn't bring your personal biases when evaluating a landing page for that hot new Zwinky offer, don't make the same mistake here."
Spot on dude. I'd be one of the people hating on most branding campaigns, just based only how loosely they are point together and how there is never any accountability at the end. That's why this branding campaign is so unique, like you said the results are far more measurable. Haven't seen any branding campaign like it before.
I'm thinking the genius people are the ones that lay awake at night staring at the ceiling, brainstorming their….brain to death and getting Einstein attacks. I am one of those people. In fact I built an exact replica of the Milky Way Galaxy out of those little glowing star packs on the ceiling right above me, while I have been brainstorming. What does this have to do with anything? Not much really….just shows I am still creating and thinking of new ideas all the time, and that my ceiling glows with the power of 10k stars…and yours doesn't. You see kick ass campaigns and want to slit your wrists thinking "now why didn't I come up with this?" Think more people….get crazy, get creative. Our target audience gets exposed to the lame old shit all the time and soon the brain tends to ignore this (subconsciously 0_0 ) When you do something different, you grab that attention again, and it might just end a sparkly campaign. And by the way…..it's impossible to lose with boobs.
that is pretty damn smart, though you would have to really keep an eye out on your adwords campaign and delete it every day and make a new one which would take a shit load of time, though the idea is bloody brilliant.
The whole scavenger hunt / breaking the 4th wall idea is brilliant. Can this be applied to affiliate marketing and direct response? Maybe or maybe not. But the creativity that is shown here is amazing. Just more proof that when you do something out of the norm, there's a whole world of possibilities!
The branding part is interesting. Building a tool that automatically finds these trends and autobuilds your campaigns is even more interesting of an idea.
The google trends idea is something myself and several others have been doing since the email submit glory days in 06-07. AKA: Hillary vs Obama president campaign email submit. Very effective method for list building. It works even better on Bing because of the less strict quality score algorithm.
Great Post!
It is a great original idea. Turning Google into a 'game' is something I haven't seen been before. They are building a network of content and funneling the traffic into their branded site. From what I can see they've done it efficiently and effectively. I would agree that the real big spenders such as Groupon get some sort of preferential treatment. But Google like every other company on the planet will look after their most important customers. Is there really anything wrong with that? If I was spending seven digits a day I would expect more than just a Xmas card.
Love out of the box marketing. Best way to make a real name for yourselves plus it is a cheap way to advertise.
that is really a successful ppc campaign, the numers are schoking me! that is good work lorenzo. I have never tried ppc but this is tempting
Pretty amazing, but it would seem that the brand name of Converse just has a lot of good will. Big consumer savvy base out there wise to their products, and loyal too. Great demonstration of correctly leveraging an effective PPC campaign, wish I had a similar company
[...] “A Genius Adwords PPC Campaign“ – How did Converse turn learning how to kiss and a spelling bee into a highly successful PPC branding campaign? Find out! [...]
It's a great fusion of niche sites with PPC, a creative example of brand awareness and engagement that has certainly expanded my circle (and reminded me to keep thinking outside of it!). A cultural behemoth Google surely is.
I get slaughtered every time I do this but props to a giant like Converse that can pull this off
I seldom drop comments, but i did some searching and wound up here A Genius Adwords PPC Campaign – Mr Green. And I do have a couple of questions for you if it’s allright. Could it be just me or does it look like a few of these remarks look like written by brain dead individuals?
And, if you are writing on additional social sites, I would like to keep up with everything fresh you have to post. Could you list of all of all your social sites like your Facebook page, twitter feed, or linkedin profile?