Position available; Director of Operations.

As Mother’s Day just passed, I thought a blog post on one of my all time favourite viral videos ‘World’s Toughest Job’ was highly appropriate. If you haven’t seen it yet – you must – but make sure you have tissues on hand because it’s a teary one.

The video was created for American Greetings Cardstore by a marketing communications agency called Mullen. The video was based around the concept of the ‘world’s toughest job’ with the title position of Director of Operations. Although the job was fake, they advertised it online and in newspaper and held real interviews with people who were genuinely interested. The position required absurd responsibilities such as constant mobility with no breaks, a degree in medicine, finance and culinary arts, full availability during the holiday season and offered no pay. By the end of the video, it was revealed that the position of ‘Director of Operations’ was just another name for mothers. The video ends with a message saying “This Mother’s Day, you might want to make her a card” and reveals the company associated with the video.

Photo courtesy of Veronica Padilla

Marketers often set themselves objectives when they release a campaign so they can measure whether or not it was effective. In this case, it was the total number of views and social shares. The video was deemed a huge success – it received 13.8 million total views and 1.6 million social shares in five days. But what defines success for a viral video? Eckler and Bolls said that the success of a viral video is determined by the number of views it receives – the more times it has been view, the more success it has generated. If you were to put a number on it, a video with one million views can be classified as a ‘viral’ video.

There’s no better feeling than the moment something we created earns the attention of the mass public and goes viral. It’s the best form of validation that the wonderful thing we slaved over was actually great and not just ‘effective’.

So here’s a tip for us future marketers and how we can use viral marketing to it’s full advantage. Pagemodo have stated that there are three steps required in making a campaign go viral:
1. Find a topic that reaches a wide range of people
2. Make it fun and heartwarming
3. Engage the audience and get them to join the conversation

This is exactly what Mullen and American Greetings Cardstore did:
1. People often only watch videos that they can relate to or that they enjoy. Because so many people can relate to the topic of mothers, the message being carried through the video was highly relatable to a wide range of people. Many, if not most, have some sort of association with the word ‘mum’ – whether they have a mum or a mum’s themselves.

2. There is a positive link between viral marketing and pleasant emotional cues – whether that is love or humour. The video began with an amusing start when the interviewer was going through all the responsibilities required for the job – as the interviewees sat there obliviously – and finished off with a heartfelt message about the amazing things mums do for their children.

3. One element that is important to viral marketing is the influence it has on an audience in order for them to pass the content along to others. The video had a corresponding hashtag of #worldstoughestjob which was used for social sharing and audience engagement. Also, a hyperlink to Cardstore was added on to the end of the video to encourage users to purchase a card for their mothers.

Let me know what you thought about the video. Did you like it? Did you know it was about mum’s or were you taken by surprise at the end? Are there any other viral videos you know of that are similar to this one?

Until next time,
Leavia