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B2B viral now recognised as 'Best Channel Marketing Initiative'

Posted by: Mason Zimbler

Date added: Thu 10 Dec 2009

The B2B Marketing awards, November 2009, saw digital viral agency Rebel Virals walk away with the accolade for ‘Best Channel Marketing Initiative’ – proving once and for all that viral marketing has its place in the channel and b2b market place.

The award-winning viral campaign, produced for Microsoft and its Partner Community, used viral video content to alert and drive channel partners to the newly vamped Microsoft Partner Community site. Here they were prompted to sign up and join the network.

James Trezona, Rebel Viral’s joint managing director with Adam Etheridge, said: “The viral medium is really coming of age in the business-to-business environment; businesses can now see strong evidence of the power behind really good creative and strategic viral marketing.”

Adam added: “It’s a question of metrics. You can’t measure b2b campaigns in the way you would b2c campaigns, as you don’t get anywhere near the equivalent mass of views. But it isn’t size that matters here; it’s about getting the RIGHT people viewing your viral, tailoring content to a smaller audience of individuals with more commonalities. As proven by Camp Network, viral is extremely effective in achieving high penetration and engagement within niche audiences.”

Set at the fictitious ‘Camp Network’ obstacle course, the viral video spoofs a networking and team building exercise. Uninspired partners are cajoled into climbing the “profitability ladder”, leveraging “the power triangle” and building “the revenue raft”.

A huge hit with Microsoft partners, within a month the video attracted more than 15,000 new visitors to the Partner Community site - a social space for partners to discuss projects, make new contacts and support each other - and accounted for more than 1,300 new site registrations.

Clare Barclay, Director of Strategy and Programmes, Microsoft UK, said: “The Partner Community is a Web 2.0-rich service and we wanted the promotional drive to reflect that. It’s great we’ve been able to provide partners with a useful networking tool at the same time as entertain them!”

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