Fingerskilz

Background

HP wanted to use viral marketing to encourage people, especially young people, to take another look at HP Personal Computers.

Idea

This division of HP had never tried viral before and were keen to see if it would help them reach a young audience. So McCann WorldGroup created a whole new sport to rival the action of the World Cup. They created fingerball. The activity was launched with a one minute film, produced by the Viral Factory, showing off the amazing skills of the hero, Dave B. His fingers were seemingly able to do things with a rolled up Post It note that only the best footballers could do with their feet. This was backed up with a blog (initially unbranded) at www.fingerskilz.tv that gave instructions on how to get started yourself. Over the next six weeks McCann WorldGroup continued to release films and add entries to the blog.

Results

There have been more than 6.3 million hits and 180,000 unique visitors to the Fingerskilz site since launch with an average visit duration of 5.45 minutes. During the campaign a search on Google returned over 17,000 results on the keyword ‘fingerskilz’ – all entries from the number one position were relevant to the fingerskilz clip and related blog. It featured on MSNBC’s ‘the Most’ and was listed on the MSNBC website. Fingerskilz is due to feature in a viral comedy series called ‘totally viral’ by Spun Gold TV Ltd. The viral was mentioned on ‘pop bitch’ and featured on several newspaper websites including: The Guardian (UK), The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), Corriere Della Sera (Italy). 68 posts about Fingerskilz have appeared on Technorati and it has been discussed on hundreds of independent blogs around the world. It also featured heavily on You Tube and Google Video with imitation clips being uploaded to You Tube.

Target Audience

Young, cool individuals who live a lot of their lives online

Size

Global viral