When she was in college, Aliyah Marandiz began making sugaring paste—a traditional Middle Eastern hair removal product—in her dorm room. Then her ASMR videos and live demos of herself using the paste went viral on social media, prompting her to launch Sugardoh. Today, her dorm room hobby has grown into a full-blown grooming company, selling products in Ulta Beauty and Urban Outfitters.
While it is difficult to control the reaction to your content, viral marketing can lead to major results for your business, as Aliyah’s story proves. Read on to learn more about what viral marketing entails and how it can benefit your company, plus real-life viral marketing examples to help inspire ideas of your own.
What is viral marketing?
Viral marketing is a strategy in which a business develops marketing content designed to be shared widely and quickly—so it spreads like a “virus” across the internet. Viral campaigns create buzz and get people talking about a brand. To accomplish this, companies frequently center their viral marketing campaigns around engaging content or events that are likely to attract views and inspire a dialogue across multiple platforms.
While there is no guaranteed formula behind successful viral marketing campaigns, there are approaches that can help you encourage virality with your ads and posts.
Common qualities of successful viral marketing campaigns
Developing marketing campaigns with the right combination of viral marketing tactics can help your business expand its reach by giving people something to react to and something worth sharing. Viral marketing techniques that can contribute to a campaign’s success, either independently or in combination, include the following:
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Humor. People love to laugh and to share their laughter with others, so when you create content that is funny, you give viewers something worth sharing. Some of the best viral marketing campaigns have been rooted in humor.
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Emotional appeal. When you create marketing campaigns that raise awareness of meaningful causes or otherwise speak to an audience’s emotions, potential customers feel connected to your brand and may be more inclined to spread the word.
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Reversal of assumptions. Showcasing a product in an exceptionally unique way or by demonstrating its radically new solution to an old problem can also contribute to a viral marketing campaign.
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Collaboration. By collaborating with influencers or other brands that your target audience already trusts, you can expand your reach across social media platforms, tapping into new audiences that can help spread your marketing message.
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A clear understanding of the target audience. Leverage marketing data to compile a clear picture of your ideal consumer. This will help your marketing team make decisions around the elements listed above:
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What sense of humor should your campaign lean into?
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Which emotions should your messaging elicit?
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How should you present a new take on a known product in a way that will resonate?
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Which collaborations will be most meaningful?
Benefits of viral marketing
If you are able to create a successful viral marketing campaign, your brand could enjoy several benefits. A viral marketing campaign could help you do the following:
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Generate traffic to your website or store. A viral campaign attracts interest from prospective customers, casting a wider net for potential conversions.
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Increase sales. More eyes on marketing materials and products will ideally translate to higher sales figures, if shoppers like what they see.
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Grow brand awareness. Going viral can increase the number of followers on your brand’s social media channels, helping you reach a broader audience.
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Increase consumer engagement. Successful campaigns tend to encourage people to share the ads or social media posts, leave comments online, or interact with the viral content in other ways, boosting engagement metrics and further fueling the buzz.
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Provide consumer data. As online users engage with viral content, analytics software can collect this data and prepare reports, uncovering trends and other valuable insights about your consumer base that can be used to develop future content.
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Develop a community. Some of the best viral marketing campaigns have featured events that bring people together virtually or physically through a shared interest in a brand, product, lifestyle, or hobby.
10 viral marketing examples
- Waterboy
- Flexin In My Complexion
- Graza
- Dieux Skin
- Rocco Fridge
- Fishwife and Fly By Jing
- Togethxr
- Transformer Table
- Heyday Canning Co.
- Literie Candle
While there is no proven method for developing a viral marketing campaign, it can be helpful to pull inspiration from what has worked for other businesses in the past. Here are 10 viral marketing campaign examples, plus the tactics the brands relied on when creating engaging content.
1. Waterboy
In this viral TikTok from hydration brand Waterboy, the company discusses its superiority to Pedialyte as a hangover treatment. The caption is meant to hook the brand’s target audience: “If you drink #pedialyte for your hangovers, then watch this!” Waterboy’s goal was to present audience members with an alternative solution to a common problem for a younger demographic.
In the video, Waterboy claims its product contains the same level of electrolytes as Pedialyte while also being sugar-free, less expensive, and rich in ginger extract and L-theanine to address specific hangover symptoms. By demonstrating its novel approach to hangover relief, Waterboy presents itself as a modern solution.
This simple social media ad—which has earned more than 340,000 likes and nearly 16,000 shares—is an example of how viral content can penetrate a large market for minimal cost.
2. Flexin’ In My Complexion
When she was just 10 years old, founder Kheris Rogers faced frequent bullying at school because of her dark skin color. After her sister Taylor posted pictures of her on Instagram with the hashtag #flexininmycomplexion, many other people of color began using the hashtag, and a viral trend unfolded.
Kheris immediately began selling t-shirts with the catchy slogan printed on them. After seeing massive success and steady demand, she decided to found her clothing line: Flexin’ In My Complexion. After Kheris gained online attention from Snoop Dogg and Lupita Nyong’o and Alicia Keys were seen in the brand’s designs, the business grew exponentially, selling out multiple times.
Kheris unwittingly kicked off a viral marketing campaign before she even had a brand or product in place. Yet her story proves that a brand with an empowering message can resonate with people on a large scale, opening doors and building a community.
3. Graza
While going viral can be a useful way to draw new followers to your brand, it can also speak to and engage your established audience. This Instagram reel from olive oil maker Graza is one example of this. In it, the brand announces that its signature product is now offered in glass bottles instead of plastic ones. Employees are shown celebrating beneath the caption: “How it feels knowing we’ll never see another ‘but it’s in plastic’ comment again.” With more than one million views, it’s one of Graza’s most successful social media videos ever.
What makes this a great marketing campaign is that the video demonstrates Graza’s receptivity to criticism while also maintaining a sense of humor about it. By following through on customer feedback, the brand fostered brand loyalty. By doing it in a funny way, it also made a piece of content that was both newsworthy and easily shareable.
4. Dieux Skin
One of the best ways to encourage virality for a post is to directly invite your followers to engage with it. This Instagram post by beauty brand Dieux encouraged users to participate in its caption contest, ultimately gaining the viral content over 2,000 likes.
The image is an unusual one, featuring a skateboard balanced across a bathtub, with a candle, a book, and a Dieux Forever Eye Mask resting on it. Its peculiarity makes users stop scrolling and want to read the caption, which informs them that the best caption writer will win a Forever Eye Mask. This type of post encourages engagement from current followers and incentivizes them to share the post with their own network.
5. Rocco Fridge
Going viral can often be the reward for presenting a new take on a well-known product. This Instagram reel from Rocco, maker of a smart refrigerator, went viral during the brand’s launch in November 2023. It demonstrates Rocco’s unique space-saving solutions and modern design features. It also reflects the brand’s mission to address the market’s lack of aesthetically pleasing beverage fridges. The post has received nearly 200,000 views.
According to the video, the Rocco fridge is “so simple it should have already existed.” By playing up the fact that other brands have failed to meet this demand, Rocco confidently serves up a fresh take on refrigeration, earning plenty of attention in the process.
6. Fishwife and Fly By Jing
In this Instagram reel, tinned fish brand Fishwife collaborates with private chef Sara Tane (who has more than 214,000 followers), and chili sauce purveyor Fly By Jing. In the short video, Sara demonstrates how to make a quick meal using Fishwife’s smoked salmon packed in a tin with Fly By Jing’s Sichuan chili crisp sauce.
To promote the new product, Fishwife could have easily published a static post or traditional video. But by working with Sara and Fly By Jing—and leveraging the highly shareable recipe video format—Fishwife was able to produce its first video to reach more than 50,000 views. This demonstrates that even a tight budget can produce big results.
7. Togethxr
Togethxr is a media company specializing exclusively in women’s sports. Co-founded by athletes Jessica Roberston, Sue Bird, Simone Manuel, and Chloe Kim, Togethxr aims to disprove gender stereotypes and the myth that the general public is disinterested in women’s sports. They actively elevate the sports stories that traditional media outlets often ignore. Their slogan—“Everyone Watches Women’s Sports”—has gained the brand a lot of attention and contributed to more than $6 million in sales.
Each time one of the founders or another celebrity has worn a Togethxr shirt to a high-profile event, the images have gone viral. Such was the case when basketball star Sue wore one of the shirts on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. University of South Carolina basketball coach Dawn Staley and Ted Lasso star Jason Sudeikis have also been spotted rocking the attire. This demonstrates how a wearable product with a strong message behind it (a celebrity endorsement doesn’t hurt, either) can become its own viral marketing campaign.
8. Transformer Table
After initially going viral on Facebook, the team behind the Transformer Table saw an opportunity for their contractable tables to reach a larger market after noticing some web traffic from the Middle East. They reached out to luxury influencer Rasha Abdel Reda, who had a strong Middle Eastern following, and invited her to publish a promotional post in exchange for one of their tables. She agreed, and the video went viral, reaching five million views.
Rasha’s video was a straightforward demonstration of expanding and contracting the Transformer Table to suit different numbers of guests. Yet, it created social proof of the product’s value and was highly successful at introducing the table to a previously untapped market.
9. Heyday Canning Co.
Perhaps one of the most creative viral marketing campaigns in recent years was the brainchild of Heyday Canning Co. In November 2023, the brand opened a pop-up store where customers could trade cans of beans (later donated to City Harvest, a local food pantry) in exchange for Heyday beans and bean-related merch. In fact, customers were unable to purchase items with money at all.
A TikTok video announcing the event soon resulted in long lines out the door and more than 50,000 cans to be donated. The viral campaign not only built a community around a physical communal experience, it also increased brand awareness and helped feed people in need. Ultimately, the campaign generated more than 230,000 views on Heyday’s TikTok page and is proof that big marketing risks can sometimes produce big gains.
10. Literie Candle
Sometimes the key to a viral post is to promote a product that shouldn’t exist at all. This April Fool’s post from New York–based Literie Candle featured a “new” candle called “Summer in the Subway.” Since New York is hot and humid in the summer, and the subway is often crowded and stuffy, this is an absurd scent for anyone to want to purchase—but that was the joke.
Humorously promoting a candle with such a putrid scent gave viewers something to react to, which drew attention to Literie’s social media account and website. It didn’t matter that the product wasn’t real; the shock value and fun factor made the post go viral, bringing in web traffic.
Viral marketing examples FAQ
What is viral marketing, and an example?
Viral marketing is advertising content that generates a surge in attention for a business or product. An example of a viral marketing campaign is the promotion of the Rhode Skin phone case that can hold a tube of the brand’s lip gloss. It created buzz and increased people’s interest in the skin care brand.
How can I make a viral campaign?
While there is no guaranteed method for creating a viral marketing campaign, there are elements that viral campaigns tend to have in common. Humor, emotional appeal, problem solving, collaboration, and shock value are some that successful viral marketing campaigns have used. Appealing to a specific target audience while leveraging one or more of these elements can also increase the likelihood of going viral.
Is viral marketing effective?
Viral marketing can be very effective at increasing brand awareness and driving sales. For example, media and commerce company Togethxr has generated $6 million in sales as a result of the virality of its Everyone Watches Women’s Sports marketing campaign and merch.
