101 Times Brands Went Viral in 2018

Most news broadcasts celebrated the entrepreneur, others saw a funnier side to the story.

(Since the time of writing, the Tweet has been deleted.)

Removing best before dates proved popular as no other UK supermarket generated more visibility than this story.

Only one other bank appeared on this list, showing that sponsoring large arenas really does help with brand visibility.

The second crisis on the list features Schnatter resigning from the pizza chain he founded in 1984 after using the N-word during a conference call.

Mercedes-Benz SA apologized for offending customers with a mother’s day advert featuring only a white mother.

Audi’s most viral moment of the year came after its chief executive was arrested.

This impressive use of influencer marketing is AMEX’s most viral moment of 2018.

Mastercard’s goal to become the first payment card to allow Bitcoin propelled them into virality.

The power of social truly puts power in consumers hands. Virgin Media removed access to UKTV, thousands complained online and in less than 24 hours the channels were back.

State Farm pulled ads from TBS’s ‘Full Frontal’ show after host Samantha Bee made offensive remarks about Ivanka Trump

“Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon said, ‘your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.’ The problem – or opportunity – today is that brands are able to hear what you’re saying whether they’re in the room or not because of social media.

This list of the 101 Times Brands Went Viral in 2018 really proves the need for brands to pay attention to customer sentiment. A viral post on social media can be worth millions in ad spend, or negate millions in ad spend, so companies need to be super vigilant on what they’re saying and what’s being said. ” 

Eric Tung, Director at Go To Marketers 

Many brands have attempted to associate themselves with cultural events but none have been as successful as Guinness. The company generated 85,125 conversations on the day, more than every other beer firm combined.

GAP generated thousands of positive mentions online following this ad.

MetLife’s decision to cut ties with the NRA generated vast levels of visibility for the brand, most of which was positive.

In April, T-Mobile CEO John Legere took to Twitter to officially announce the merger, generating over 100,000 conversations online.

The bank’s decision to stop lending money to gun manufacturers that make military-inspired firearms for civilian use generated huge volumes of discussion online.

The $7.5 billion acquisition was the most talked about Microsoft event of the year.

Fans weren’t happy when Fox made the decision to cancel the show Lucifer. 130k people went online to direct their anger towards Fox and encourage other studios to take the show on. Incredibly, their efforts paid off. Just a month after the show was cut Netflix agreed to create a fourth season.

Virgil Abloh became Louis Vuitton’s first African-American artistic director, and one of the few black designers at the top of a global fashion brand.

After attempting to take Tesla private, Elon was told to step down as chairman.

One of the few politically-inspired ads during the Super Bowl actually generated the highest volume of conversations.

Realizing the popularity of K-pop, Adidas paid GOT7 to become Adidas influencers, release a range of clothes and even perform a music video in an Adidas tracksuit. Like with all thing K-pop, the event was instantly propelled into virality.

In a pretty novel move, Facebook turned to politics to hire its head of global affairs and communications team. Sir Clegg’s previous job was as deputy Prime Minister.

The most popular game of 2018, Fornite, unsurprisingly generated bucket-loads of conversations with its campaigns. The announcement that Samsung would be the first provider to offer access to the Fornite Android app created almost 200k conversations.

In one of the most successful press campaigns of the year, three airlines grouped together and said they wouldn’t fly migrant kids separated from their parents at the border. The project went against the “family separation process” implemented by the US government.

The first major tech launch of the list sees Samsung launching its new Galaxy S9. The smartly run campaign generated over 200k conversations for the tech company.

Some customers may feel like they’ve known this all along, but Apple revealed in late 2017 that it slowed down iPhones without users’ consent. To quell the complaints from long-time customers Apple offered cheap battery replacements for all customers. The conversation continued into the new year.

In March 2018 an experimental Uber vehicle, operating in autonomous mode, struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona—the first fatal accident of its kind.

Nothing is sacred in this fast-paced world, and brands are a click of a journalist’s finger away from a crisis. Uber found this out the hard way when a patent for AI that could detect drunk passengers was picked up by journalists, quickly going viral.

Yes, the MTV Video Music Awards still exists, and yes people still seem to love it. Over 400k people discussed this year’s awards, with most conversations centered around Cardi B.

The most viral moment for an airline this year happened in unfortunate circumstances. United Airlines accepted “full responsibility” for a dog’s in-flight death after a flight attendant put the pet in the overhead locker.

The largest retailer in the US raised the minimum age to purchase firearms to 21 after the massacre at a Florida high school. The event happened to be the most talked about Walmart moment of the year, garnering them thousands of positive mentions from gun law critics.

After the New York Times published an article about Google’s history of harassment, discrimination and support for abusers, thousands of Googlers protested.

You may be thinking ‘how did a fashion show create more chatter than the Super Bowl?’ Well, first of all fashion shows are world-renowned and extremely popular. And secondly, K-pop was part of it so obviously it’s more popular the pretty much anything else on the planet.

BTS (yep, they’re another K-pop band) actually have a fan base so large that they literally refer to themselves as an army. But, this army isn’t used for brutal destruction toward one nation’s gain. Instead, they tried to raise money for Unicef (pretty cool). In fact, they’ve raised over $1 million with their latest campaign.

The award for the worst executed spin of the year has to go to Walmart. The largest U.S. private employer with more than 1 million workers, said it plans to raise minimum wages from $9 to $11 an hour and hand out employee bonuses ranging from $200 to $1,000, only to later announce it was closing 63 stores.

Another feel-good story came early on in the year. Stranger Things star David Harbour encouraged his fans to give him 200k retweets, so he could join Greenpeace’s expedition. His tweet smashed the target, drawing 376k RTs and he joined the expedition a few months later. The random Twitter joke created incredible awareness for Greenpeace and the issues animals in Antarctica face due to global warming.

Gamers are a talkative bunch online. But, Nintendo gamers talk more than the rest. And of all the things those gamers talk about, the most popular topic is Super Smash Bros. When Nintendo announced that Smash Bros would be available for Nintendo Switch, 600k gamers started chatting publically about it online.

Harry and Meghan’s wedding generated a huge amount of coverage from across the globe. The BBC, being the main broadcaster of the wedding, generated huge amounts of visibility. Over 700k people mentioned the broadcaster during the event.

The data scandal was a major political event in early 2018 when it was revealed Cambridge Analytica had harvested the personal data of millions of people’s Facebook profiles without their consent and used it for political purposes.

“It’s impossible to predict when news will go viral, but hopefully brands can learn from Brandwatch’s epic AI-infused report as to the elements of what might make their campaign a social media sensation. Negative news travels far, but so does good news, such as influencer tie-ups with popular celebrities such as LeBron James, Ariana Grande, and BTS.

Instead of trying to be too creative, brands might want to think about aligning themselves in the marketplace with those that their audience trust. That’s why I continue to be bullish about influencer marketing in 2019 and beyond.”

Neal Schaffer – Author, Educator and Keynote Speaker

IHOP’s name change campaign should be recognized as one of the greatest brand awareness campaigns of all time. The firm was introducing something pretty simple (a range of burgers), yet the virality they generated was greater than any other fast food joint. They generated more conversation McDonald’s, Burger King and even kings of social media Wendy’s with a simple trick that captured the world’s attention.

Oh, and don’t forget the campaign quadrupled its sales. Major kudos IHOP.

If you learn just one thing from this report, I hope it’s to never underestimate the power of K-pop again. These guys are huge. Kai, a member of K-pop group Exo, appeared at a Gucci fashion show. As you can expect, it went viral.

“Little posts with huge and sudden reach. Small moments captured then critiqued by thousands. It’s all here on display. Brands holding on to what they can control and holding their breath when things explode.

There is a lot to learn from the winners on this list, but maybe the more important lesson is to have a crisis plan in place.”

Andy Crestodina – Co-Founder / Chief Marketing Officer at Orbit Media

By far and away the most talked about campaign of 2018 was Nike’s Kaepernick advert. The ad generated 8.2 million conversations online. Not all of the conversation was positive, with thousands of abuse directed at the brand for supporting the athlete.

In 2016, the football star refused to stand for the US national anthem in protest at police brutality and racism. The US president called players who “disrespect” the US flag “sons of bitches” and called for them to be sacked. Several thousands of people shared Trump’s sentiment, burning and destroying Nike goods in protest of the ad. But, the largest campaign of the year ultimately proved fruitful for Nike with sales growing by 31%.

Expert Conclusions

“A good proportion of the brand virality events were caused by colossal screw-ups.

If all publicity is good publicity, this is surely the shortest way to brand awareness.

If not… ouch.” +++ “There seems to be a new opportunity for brands to be brave. To stand up for their convictions even though it will alienate a big chunk of potential customers. Nike’s Colin Kaepernick ad, Bank of America stopping lending to gun manufacturers, and MetLife cutting ties with the NRA are just three examples.”

Doug Kessler – Creative Director & Co-founder at Velocity

“In sales and marketing today, we need access to data and fast. Gone are the days where we can use guesswork; we are just too human to sift through the quantities of data.

Brandwatch Iris allows you to access and analyze big chunks of data faster, allowing you to draw more accurate conclusions”

Tim Hughes – CEO & Co-Founder of Digital Leadership Associates 

“The first takeaway I had from reviewing the results was that any notion that good, old-fashioned public relations are dead or dying just flew right out the window! How many of these are PR crises your brand would need a seasoned PR pro to handle? How many are also PR outreach to get creative concepts in front of influencers or media so they do get coverage?

While certainly creative community management and content like Wendy’s and creative campaigns like IHOP rank well, PR is alive and well in marketing today.”

Jason Falls – Digital Lead at Team Cornett and Influencer for IBM Watson

“With the birth of Iris, the question will no longer be ‘did it go viral’, but, ‘how viral did it go.’ This is the kind of innovation that literally rewrites everything we know about mining the internet for important insights”

Dennis Wakabayashi – V.P. Digital and Commerce Integration at The Integer Group