Background
With the travel sector struggling due to the credit crunch, Expedia made the decision to launch an ambitious viral project, codenamed 'Project Dawnstar'.
The objective of Project Dawnstar was to drive eyeballs to the Expedia.com (and lesser extent co.uk) website and attract inbound links which could then pushed to pages to enhance Google Rankings, while showing it was still possible to have fun during otherwise gloomy times.
Further, with 2 other agencies and working with Expedia's internal team helped plan their 'Flights to Mars for $99' April fool for launch on April 1st.
Aside from helping in the planning and execution of the viral, Further would help make the campaign go viral using the networks Digg.com, Reddit.com and StumbleUpon, as well as cross-promoting a faux-advert produced by Expedia in house.
Results
• Main Page (http://www.expedia.com/daily/mars/about-mars/default.asp) went into 'popular' category on Digg.com
• YouTube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVZJPy_zpJE) went 'hot' on Digg, making the front page
• Main story hit front page on Reddit.com
• Viral pushed estimated over 100,000 visitors to Expedia.com
• Expedia.com gained over 400 links from this viral, allowing them to utilise on-page link equity to increase rankings of other hotels pages on the site
We'd love your organisation to become our next successful case study. If you are interested in what Further could do for your search marketing,
contact sales@further.co.uk