• by Gail Belsky , March 2, 2012

When something makes you smile, you immediately want to share it with someone else. When the Serenading Unicorn makes you smile, the marketers at Juicy Fruit want you to share
it with everyone else.

In 2011, the Wrigley brand’s viral video campaign was all about the sharing — and digital agency Evolution Bureau made sure that its star, a one-horned, lip-synching puppet, was as social as a mythical figure could be. evb faced an enviable challenge with the campaign’s second iteration: continuing its early success without being repetitive. The new round of videos had to be different and diverse. They had to gain more media attention, greater brand awareness and, most importantly, more fans.

The campaign had strong momentum going into year two: By the end of 2010, the unicorn had 300,000 fans/likes. One year and a new hairdo later, that number had doubled. Not bad for a brand that was having trouble attracting any fans just two years ago.

In 2009, the oldest brand in the Wrigley family was flagging. Juicy Fruit marketers asked EVB for a breakthrough digital concept that would breathe new life into the 117-year-old product. The agency had created the brand’s “Sweet Talk” app that lets users take on different personas by wearing their lips, so it understood the client’s idea of "breakthrough."

“Juicy Fruit is the ‘funner’ Wrigley brand; they’re really into these zany ideas,” says EVB’s director of technology and innovation Aaron McGuire.

The agency came back with a truly bizarre one — a unicorn puppet with a bad perm that would parody soppy ballads by Michael Bolton, Boyz II Men and Culture Club in short music videos uploaded to a viral Web site. They would fit right into the brand’s “Gotta Have Sweet” campaign.

Juicy Fruit put its entire 2010 online budget behind it.

EVB hired Jim Henson’s Creature Shop to create the puppet and Partizan Entertainment to produce the videos. They were an immediate success, particularly in the buzz department. But it was clear to both client and agency that the campaign’s next wave had to be more social and viral. “People were sharing the site itself, and we wanted them to share the serenades,” says McGuire.

Timed for the 2011 launch of Juicy Secret sugar-free gum, the agency created a Facebook app allowing users to “Sweeten a Friend’s Day” with customized Wallpost Serenades. (They could also send videos via Twitter and email.) To make it easier for users to decide which friends they wanted to share the serenades with, evb developed a custom friend selector that tracked who users had the most Facebook contact with, and showed a list with those friends on top. “Now Facebook gives you that access, but at the time it was our secret sauce,” says McGuire.

The agency created more shareable content, too — producing new videos with original songs geared toward specific events, such as “Congrats On Removing Your Braces,” “I’m Sorry You Lost Your Phone” and “I See that You’re Single Again.” For extra buzz, evb produced three full-fledged dramatic music videos pairing the puppet with celebrities to upload to Juicy Fruit’s Serenading Unicorn YouTube channel.

The first featured the Unicorn singing Devo’s “Whip It” with YouTube lip-synch sensation Keenan Cahill. (Yes, both wore an Energy Dome, and yes, the Unicorn’s had a hole for his horn.) The second video had him dripping bling alongside actors David Koechner and Affion Crockett in a parody of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise.” But the real showstopper was a wrenching love story costarring comedian Sarah Silverman and featuring Aerosmith’s “Angel.” There’s nothing like the sight of a giant puppet in an open-mouthed kiss to get people talking.

The Serenading Unicorn gained 300,000 new fans/likes with the new content and technology. Along with Google Analytics, evb used Facebook Insights to measure its success. “It showed more of what happened to the content after it was out there,” says McGuire. “The thing that’s impressive is how many people shared it out to their friends and how many friends shared it out.”

It doesn’t get more social than that.