Monday, December 04, 2006

Thresher's Viral Voucher Could Cost Big Money this Christmas

UK wine merchant Thresher allowed their vouchers to go “wild”. The 40% discount voucher, which was seeded on the website of South African wine company Stormhoek and was downloaded more than 800,000 times prior to it hitting the mainstream news.

The offer was originally intended for Thresher’s suppliers and staff, according to one BBC report but proliferated virally by email, and blogging.

The influx of visitors brought their server crashing to its knees and the story was immediately covered by mainstream UK media. The media coverage appears to have been a disaster recovery strategy as they appear to be in fear of their bottom line profitability. While the raised brand awareness will be most welcome, its uncertain how much this will cost Thresher’s in lost revenue, due to the seasonal offer of 40% discounted drinks.

Ah well…. millions of pounds worth of free media publicity, just before Christmas is quite a result, especially given it all appears to have happened without the help of a viral advertising agency.

Let this be a reminder of the power of really simple viral marketing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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