Kaspersky campaign: a viral campaign, but not as you’d know it

As you know, we love stats. So when Kaspersky Lab (world’s fourth largest IT security company) turned to Earnest for its first ever global launch campaign – armed only with lots of statistics and a big launch target, we got pretty excited.

And, the stats are pretty interesting.

So, let’s start with some scary stuff:

• In the last year, there’s been a 33% increase in malware aimed specifically at Smartphone users
• 91% of businesses surveyed by B2B International in 2011 had been affected by some kind of IT security attack
• 17% of these had lost financial information
• And 9% had been targeted directly – in other words, far more sinister than just a random virus…

So far, so good? Not really. One thing the IT security industry does NOT need are more scary stats – we’re all kind of fed up with it and most IT folk also don’t really buy it. It’s marketing hype.

From fear and loathing to hope and optimism

So now, and more importantly, let’s look at some more positive things. The things that they do want to hear. The opportunities that our changing world brings us.

• Cloud services will be worth $44bn by end 2013.
• There are 1 billion mobile devices accessing the internet
• 21% of organisations are virtualising their front office environments

This gave us the eureka moment. IT teams across the world are under pressure – they’re being asked to perform small miracles every day – from “we need you to support 11,000 iPads next month” to “we’re moving our payroll system to the cloud – is that OK with you?” The key issue is clearly that it’s hard to know what’s round the corner: both opportunity and threat…

The concept then needed to bring this together. Kaspersky’s brand philosophy is ‘always ahead’ – they have experts all over the globe who tirelessly fight cyber crime, looking for new virus issues and in many cases stopping them before they start. It’s less of a ‘business objective’, more of a full on obsessive mission! We articulated this as ‘BE READY FOR WHAT’S NEXT’ – a positive rallying cry that could work well across multiple geographies, languages, cultures.

So, here’s what we launched with. A high impact campaign. Delivered in 8 languages, reaching over 200,000 IT decision-makers across 20 countries. Multi-lingual campaign microsite, direct marketing, email, online advertising, video, animation. A global campaign, created and managed from one place (12 Great Titchfield St), with our team connected up to Kaspersky marketing teams across the world.

Be Ready animation from Earnest on Vimeo.

And, it’s been a resounding success. The campaign’s ongoing, so results are changing every day – but the sales people are busy chasing up a heap of qualified leads

What do you mean, viral?

So, why the original title to this post then? Well, the model Kaspersky operates is one that many other global companies probably are familiar with. Core strategy and campaign themes are built centrally, but regions are given enough autonomy to ensure they’re doing the right thing for their local market. The age old global/local challenge.

So, when we launched this campaign, a number of the key regions (EMEA) signed up to the campaign, and the emerging markets focused instead on their existing activity. However, the campaign went so well, and theme resonated so strongly across the world, that now other regions outside our core remit have all taken the campaign on, given it their own unique twists and gone out to market. And there you have it, a campaign that went viral – inside Kaspersky.

The salient point here is that it’s hard to implement and embed a global campaign framework. The traditional ‘command and control’ approach tends to be used, and tends to end up with lots of disenfranchised marketers and ultimately a right mess.

The difference was that by creating something first, and allowing it to spread and be bought into by local marketers – we ended up with a global campaign platform, which people actually embraced as opposed to being forced into.

What do you think? What are the challenges and what works? We’d love to compare notes!