It’s a company that allows users to connect for free. Whether that connection is for business or pleasure, the company allows its users to connect with ease. Some of these connections were shown in a viral video campaign called “What Brand is It?” that garnered millions of views around the country and allowed people to guess which company would offer these services. The winners, who guessed correctly from a series of clues, would be given cash prizes. There was one hint that wasn’t in the videos, though; the company is based in Long Beach.
FreeConferenceCall.com, through a series of videos released over a span of 30 days that ended November 21, grabbed the attention of more than 100,000 participants, each trying to win the total grand prize of $50,000 by guessing which company the videos were representing. Of those participants 1,794 guessed correctly, and are now in a pool to be one of 50 randomly selected $50 winners, or a single $25,000 winner.
The purpose of the successful campaign was to engage audiences in a different kind of way, said FreeConferenceCall.com CEO Dave Erickson. The video encouraged people to pay attention to clues, which varied from subtle to more obvious, displayed on WhatBrandIsIt.com.
Clues included multiplication problems hidden on the screen that equated to the company’s phone number, sheet music for the company’s hold music and the company’s blue color throughout the videos.
“FreeConferenceCall.com’s brand awareness is very high,” Erickson said. “But nobody really knows what it stands for. They’re all aware of it and use it, but they really don’t care what other people are doing on it. We’re trying to get the brand equity up, so this was a way to say ‘This is the brand, this is what it stands for, this is who uses it, this is how it’s used but what brand is it?’ We worked it backwards to show what we stand for and make it interactive.”
Erickson said the campaign was more successful than he expected and gained more views than some of their other campaigns, including one that featured a “So You Think You Can Dance” dancer.
He said he believed the mysteriousness included in the campaign helped it become so effective.
“If I had my brand on that video, nobody would watch it,” he said. “The idea that the brand was a mystery and just a number of clues that were seeded in the video, it really made participants rack their brains on what this company was. I think that made it really fun.”
Winners for the videos will start to be announced online beginning December 8, Erickson said. The $25K winner will be announced last.