In the year 2013, mysterious Viral campaigns have become a strong trend for many companies. One company that goes by SocialVEVO, is not your average joe. SocialVEVO was behind various viral campaigns including “Brian’s Announcement”, Remember The 13th”, Rockstar Announcement”, “231134421 Video” and “Operation Blackout”. Up until recently, SocialVEVO has been caught in a social media scandal regarding the YouTube “Fake Views” business from 2012. Last year, Major Record Labels took a big hit as Billions of YouTube views were wiped out by YouTube as a procedure to ensure no violation of their terms of service. Labels including SONY Music, Universal Music, Simco Ltd…etc. Have all took a big hit from the loss of views. Buying YouTube views has become more common since YouTube was created, and has become more of a problem now. Many music stars are getting spotlight recognition due to increase of popularity utilizing social media numbers like: Views, Likes, Followers. Speaking with a former SocialVEVO employee, He claimed that after the 2012 fake view scandal, many ‘Black hat’ botters were scrambling after the view business took a hit. Musicians who used to depend on views for big promotion would now take serious caution before they would buy youtube views. Purchasing views is as easy as purchasing a bottle of water, claimed the ex-employee.
In 2013, YouTube have fixed plenty of exploits, holes and have patched up it’s views counting system. Botting YouTube views have become more rare as only a few botters is capable of delivering views without deletion or red flag detection. Due to these hostile changes made by YouTube, SocialVEVO found a new way to increase legit views without getting caught. In September of 2013, A Grand Theft Auto 5 website surfaced all over gaming forums (IGN, Gamespot, 4chan, Game faqs) and SocialVEVO’s first ‘official’ viral campaign was launched. The site was covered by a few gaming news outlets including, Cinema Blend & Softonic. An ex-SocialVEVO employee says this is the first official campaign from them that went sort of “viral”. “People were sharing and the word was getting out fast!”, says the ex-employee. But before this campaign, SocialVEVO launched a small campaign called “Operation Blackout” that reached news in ZDNET, and Vocativ. The website opblackout.com was quickly being discussed on conspiracy forums and a video made for the campaign was revealed on The Daily Dot but was later confirmed as a hoax. The video was sent through messages on tumblr and was getting more recognition. In a matter of days, Opblackout website was shut down by the FBI due to complaints from tumblr users. Thereafter, The viral campaign died.
On September 30th, 2013, SocialVEVO employees was brainstorming for a possible future viral campaign. While coming up with new ideas, Breaking news came in that NASA has been shut down due to government funding problems. And On October 1st, 2013, a notorious viral campaign was born! SocialVEVO employees quickly rushed to find a perfect-looking template for their next campaign and went to work right away. Within hours, The domain name which would make Internet Hoaxing history, was registered. www.rememberthe13th.com was registered late October 1st, just before midnight. The website featured a NASA Logo, A rocket ship, an earth image, a ticket style countdown timer, a catchy & attractive headline, and a cartoonish style design. The website was kept under wraps for 2 days, Until October 3rd, when SocialVEVO launched the campaign and started spreading Within hours, the viral campaign was an instant success. The campaign had flooded conspiracy, political, entertainment, science forums all over the internet. 4chan & reddit users tried to decipher the website to see if there’s any sign of a hoax. For up to 12 hours, News media was reporting the “mysterious” NASA website as a possible real site. The website read: “The Biggest Discovery That will shake the earth, It will never be the same again.” It attracted plenty of international news coverage including: International Business Times AU, Slate Magazine, Go Outside Magazine, Gazeta, The Daily Dot, Chosun (Korea), Elite Daily…etc. The website was also talked about in a large number of YouTube user upload videos. On October 5th, at 11 p.m, The website changed it’s date to October 6th at 11 p.m, The change in date raised legitimacy but a large portion of viewers were still curious to see if it was really NASA. On October 6th, 2013, The big discovery’ was revealed. A button replaced the countdown timer which took all viewers to a YouTube video of a singer’s music video titled “Purple Ninja“. The YouTube quickly went viral and the comment section looked like a chat room at times. The video gained over 24k total likes/dislikes and close to 6k comments. The view count was the most impressive, over 2.3 million views. The singer made headlines around the world, including most news coverage happening in Brazil & South Korea. The singer known as Beeki Vendi hit international newspaper coverage and was featured in 2 magazines and 3 newspaper issues. The music video hoax was featured on Alex Boses’s Museum of Hoaxes and is considered the greatest NASA hoax to date. The hoax got attention from various NASA staff employees, including a former NASA astronaut who commented about the site during the time it was going viral, saying the site was a hoax and to not spread it. After all that success, A company specializing in social media and viral marketing is only at the beginning of making a names for themselves.
Later that month, On October 27th, 2013, SocialVEVO had received failure from 2 campaigns that didn’t take off and start work on a new campaign. One SocialVEVO employee stumbles upon a video template of a man in a suit moving through a projection screen of images using his hand, in a future video template. The company quickly went to work on building their dream viral video to use on their next viral campaign. Within hours, Another viral campaign had been born. Employees came up with an illuminati symbolic number to use as the name for their campaign. 231134421 was the title and it standed for “Pool of Blood”, a famous illuminati masonic code. On October 28th, The video and website was launched and started spreading. Both the website and video failed to exceed expectations at launch. Days later, the video picked up steam and was starting to get covered by Independent news and radio stations across the US. The video became a big YouTube hit as over 5 pages of user uploads referencing the and talking about the viral trend 231134421 had aroused. 2 news stations discussed the website both On Air and through their official site. LITE 98.7 Radio was the main radio station discussing the viral video. The video was uploaded by Planet staff at Alex Jones’s news website Info Wars. The video took over many conspiracy forums and the viral idea was even stolen by a lip balm company called ‘Jam Lip Balm’ which took credit for the video but then later claimed they don’t own the video. Days later, 231134421 was officially confirmed as hoax by ATS (AboveTopSecret) members who discovered the source of the video.
Weeks have passed by and SocialVEVO have been experimenting with ideas. One rainy night, On November 25th, 2013 at 8 p.m EST, one ex-SocialVEVO employee was chatting with the founder of SocialVEVO regarding a future viral campaign. The ex-SocialVEVO Employee known as JUICE was browsing the internet and watching reruns of Xfinity shows. JUICE played the latest episode of Family Guy and after the episode concluded he started browsing Google News to research Brian Griffin’s death. The death was trending worldwide and had token over mainstream news. At 10:30 p.m, Ex-SocialVEVO employee JUICE came up with an idea to create a countdown website regarding brian’s death. JUICE quickly found a template and started designing and within minutes designed a website called “Brian’s Announcement”. The website featured a countdown timer and a picture of a car exiting Quahog. JUICE said he had a good feeling regarding the potential of the website. That same night, SocialVEVO employees started spreading the website and it reached only a small amount of attention and died. The next day, On November 26th, 2013, in the morning hours, The website’s visitors started increasing little by little, until at exactly 10:42 a.m EST, The website traffic went from 32 to 1500 in a matter of seconds and to 3000 in seconds as well. The website was first picked up by Deadline, Hollywood Life, and many blogs. In a matter of minutes following that spike of traffic, History was made. The website quickly went viral and gained mainstream news coverage at the same rate as Kony 2012, Chinese Food Music Video, Miley Cyrus Scandal…etc. The site received over 25 news articles per minute, including the following news stations: Fox News, CNN (US, MEXICO), Rolling Stone (US, UK, ARGENTINA), Huffington Post (US, UK), People’s Magazine, Gawker, Digital Spy (US, UK), IbTimes (US, UK, AU), TIME, Latin Times, Xfinity Comcast News, imdB News, WSJ (Wall Street Journal), LA Times, Comic Book, Cinema Blend, TV Line, MSN TV, Yahoo TV, Mstarz, Examiner, Daily Globe, Vocativ, The Hollywood 5, Contact Music, TV Week, ET Canada, Bustle, Star Pulse, FOX Local News (14 Cities in US), Over 43 Major Radio Station Sites from US, Australian Creative News, Europa Press, and more. The website garnished significant viral attention in a short amount of time that the confirmation of the site being a hoax which was confirmed by FOX producers, took 12 hours to get across. The amount of articles being written and fans sharing the site made things worse for Family Guy producers. The next day, On November 27th, the website redirected to a page from SocialVEVO, titled “/Savebrian”. A new petition and movement was created to help bring the dog back to life. Brian’s Announcement gained over 1 million social signatures, and over 3 million visitors. The website was featured on various magazine issues including, Rolling Stone, Complex, People’s, TIME…etc. The site was widely discussed on many radio stations On Air as well. The petition site was tweeted thousands of times per hour and was reportedly getting huge number of shares on Facebook at it’s peak. The viral campaign is considered one of the biggest hoaxes of all time, having reached a ‘significantly’ high number of mainstream news coverage in the short time it was running. Some comments on Reddit and Facebook suggested that if FOX producers would’ve commented later and left the hoax running for days, Brian’s Announcement would’ve reached record news coverage.
Brian’s Announcement was SocialVEVO’s last viral campaign, officially. Some tips suggested that they operate viral campaigns under the table too. On December 6th, The Daily Dot published an article regarding SocialVEVO’s campaigns and connection with the notorious YouTube black market. Many notable social media marketers have warned that VEVO and major record label companies work closely with companies like SocialVEVO to inflate their artist’s image. An ex-SocialVEVO employee told The Daily Dot reporter that SocialVEVO uses viral campaigns to keep botted YouTube videos running safe. So far, SocialVEVO has made a name for itself and has hit a majority of news stations from all across the world. It’s uncertain what their next campaign will be like. Viral marketing campaigns are quickly becoming a big option for companies like Samsung, Apple, Microsoft, as it increases sales, awareness and traffic. SocialVEVO might just be gurus of Viral Marketing Campaigns in the near future.