One guarantee with the Internet is that you have no guarantee any campaign will take off. Knowing whether something will become a success, let alone a viral sensation, is even harder. In fact, the best ones aren't always planned. And that was precisely the case for Texts From Hillary.
When conceived over drinks one night after work, the idea behind the site was to create something genuinely funny for our friends. We didn't know it would take off like it did, but once we realized it was happening we took the following four steps to make sure it took off in the right direction.
1. Keep it simple
The Internet loves simple ideas. The best memes boil a concept down to the lowest and most-approachable common denominator that allows any consumer to easily get in on the joke and share it with others.
Texts From Hillary was built around the concept of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's responding to texts messages from various politicians and celebrities. That was the extent of the meme. We left everything else open to interpretation. Adding any additional context would have left people out or turned others off.
2. Encourage participation
Because the idea was simple, it was approachable enough for people to contribute and participate in their own way. We opened the site up to submissions and posted our favorite user-created fictional texts, but we also encouraged people to run with their own ideas.
Facebook and Twitter quickly become the hubs for people who wanted to get in on the joke and offer their interpretation of the meme. We didn't care about people stealing our idea. We cared more about people feeling as though they were part of the joke.
Even President Barack Obama got in on the act during a Rolling Stone interview and again at the White House Correspondents' dinner.
3. Kindle the fire
To say we didn't want the site to take off would be lying. We are both communications professionals (Stacy works as an editor at BuzzFeed and formerly worked at the Rosslyn, VA-based cleantech PR firm Tigercomm; Adam at the DC-based Public Campaign Action Fund), and we have built networks across several social media platforms. Once we saw the initial reaction to the site, we knew we should take ownership of it and pass it around.
We created a Twitter account to help feed traffic to the Tumblr site and started sending notes to friendly reporters with a simple message: This is a light-hearted joke created over drinks and meant for a laugh. That is a basic form of attention generation specialty at Tigercomm.
4. Don't be afraid to stop
Mainly out of necessity, but also to preserve our brand, we knew the site needed to come to an end. It was hard to walk away from more than 83,000 shares on Facebook, 8,400 followers on Twitter, and more than 47,000 followers on Tumblr... but we had to.
Luckily, we were handed the perfect set-up when Secretary Hillary Clinton reached out to us with her own submission. From that point, we devised an exit strategy, and stuck to it. The people who run the best campaigns recognize when they've reached their goal(s). Our goal was to have fun—and texting with Hillary was the highlight!
* * *
Though we are the first to admit this is somewhat of an extreme example, the four steps in this article can easily be applied to any communications or marketing campaign. The key is to recognize the nature of the Internet. Things explode one day, and quickly die out the next. However, maximizing the time while you have it is what counts.
Consumers are quick to recognize when ideas are forced, but they do respond to genuine ideas. Whether its advocacy or B2B, the Internet affords everyone the room to create buzz and attention.
