Viral popularity doesn’t necessarily translate into commercial success
7 Comments Published July 16th, 2007 in E-PRI was sorry to read that Funda Ireland shut its doors after only six months in operation. The property website was promoted through an excellent viral marketing campaign when it launched. Here’s the YouTube video which garnered a lot of online and media attention:
While the demise of the website can be put down to the future insecurity of the Irish property, its closure does make you pause for thought. There’s a lot of hype today around getting consumers talking about your brand. It’s worth noting though that sometimes talk doesn’t translate into money.
Technorati Tags: Funda, Piaras Kelly, Viral Marketing, YouTube
Search
Subscribe by Email
Recent Tweets
There are no recent tweets.
Categories
- Books (4)
- Buzz (3)
- E-PR (142)
- General (491)
- Ideas (7)
- Personal (77)
- PR in Ireland (87)
- Resources (5)
- Technology & PR (6)
Archives
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
I wouldn’t say that it was an excellent viral marketing campaign. Media Nerds like myself knew about the company but most people I’ve recently talked to (many of them househunters) didn’t know what Funda was. This included one person who e-mailed me the link to the above video when it first came out!!!
You’ve hit the nail on the head Sean. Just because you have a popular video out there, it might not necessarily be hitting your target audience. Pretty hard to compete with established sites like Daft or MyHome.ie or if one of your other main competitors is flinging money at advertising.
I guess 82k views isn’t really that big in the grand scheme of things. Interestingly enough YouTube now has stats for the Irish market, here is link to the most popular videos this month in Ireland http://ie.youtube.com/browse?s=mp&t=m&c=0&l= . As far as I know they calculate these based on user settings.
You can’t call it an “excellent” viral campaign if it didn’t work out for the company, Piaras!
It did work out for the company though, they raised awareness about Funda’s launch and got plenty of hits and articles about it. In terms of the KPIs they set for themselves I;d say they met all of them.
There is a big difference between a successful launch in terms of publicity and commercial objectives. There’s been a number of high profile launches over the last couple of years which garnered plenty of column inches, but didn’t necessarily translate into sales.
I’m sure one of the “the KPIs they set for themselves” was being in business for more than 6 months.
Yeah a bit of research might have shown them that. You’ll never find me saying though that an article in the paper is going to equal X amount of sales.