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A colleague sent me the below in an e-mail today…

“Dial this number and wait to hear option 3 – 1890 866 07″.

Pretty funny, livened up our days anyway (we are obviously easily entertained! – Ah, small pleasures!)… Turns out it is a marketing ploy for Perlico, an Irish Internet and Phone company.

The duck appears to have had the desired outcome anyway, people are spreading the word. But how successful is viral marketing such as this? There is a current post about this on boards.ie; http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055142608 . Some posters there believed that the Perlico phone line had been ‘hacked’ and were wondering if it would be possible to do the same to Eircom! Another poster thinks that this type of marketing is really unprofessional. Regardless of these people’s various opinions of the marketing ploy, has it proved to be a success?

If you go to the Perlico website, www.perlico.com, you can click on a “Hear the Duck” link at the top of the page. (*Editor’s note: Blog started on Friday 31st August 7pm, published Monday 3rd September, 8pm – Please note that the link on the Perlico website has now been replaced with ‘Hear the Perlico Duck – Get the Ringtone’.) Once you click on the link, you are brought into a page that gives a little bit more information about the campaign, suggesting that it could be “Ireland’s most successful ever viral marketing campaign”.

“This week, Perlico embarked on a new viral marketing campaign featuring the now famous “duck quacking” option on its Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system on 1890 88 66 07.”

It would seem that the marketing department at Perlico have certainly done a good job. Perlico COO, Mark Cleary commented that “Since this launch, based on the volumes of calls, the campaign has been a phenomenal success. In just over 3 days we have received over 70,000 calls and added a significant number of new customers as a result which make this one of the most successful viral campaigns in Ireland.”

Perlico have even released a press release on Business Wire to the same tune:
“Ireland’s Most Successful Ever Viral Marketing Campaign?”

Yes, the campaign certainly has had the desired effect. I was one of the 70,000 callers to ring within those 3 days and do indeed remember hearing about the Perlico services and savings offering for Irish consumers (I especially remember the direct comparison to Eircom!). However, this can’t exactly be described as a “new” viral marketing campaign and certainly isn’t unique to Perlico.

When was the “duck” born?

Back in August 2000, the New Jersey-based online brokerage company National Discount Brokers, adopted this interesting menu choice. COO, Chris McQuilkin, is credited with thinking up the quirky or should I say “quacky” campaign. But it wasn’t even designed as a campaign to begin with. Apparently, the brokerage firm decided to throw in the sound of a duck quacking as an option on their toll-free line as a joke at first.

One month later, NDB was getting nearly 500,000 calls and paying $10,000 a day in 1-800 charges. McQuilkan claimed the exposure was worth any costs and said the number of people signing up with NDB had gone up nearly 75 per cent. NDB didn’t spend any money in advertising the duck. Word spread about their voice mail on the Internet and over email.

So, why a duck?

Apparently, the duck first became the NDB’s mascot in 1994. The founder, Arthur Kontos, an immigrant from Greece began associating ducks with wealth when he would visit the homes of rich people and observe that they all seemed to have their walls adorned with pictures of ducks! From this, the NDB logo was born. In September 2000, one month after the duck viral marketing campaign was launched, Kontos sold NDB for $1 billion.

Six years later, Copywriter Michel Fortin posted a blog entry titled “All Your Base Are Belong to Us” on his website about viral marketing referencing this campaign (so it was still talked about 6 years later!)

No doubt, the people at Perlico heard about it somewhere along the way. So, could this be an example of viral marketing re-producing itself, or should I say re-infecting us? Cleary adds at the end of the Perlico website page to “look out for more antics from the duck in the near future.” … We will!

Additional Note: Slightly off the point but interesting nonetheless, Perlico also publish their daily Customer Service statistics, which provide statistics such as average wait time, number of calls answered in under 30 seconds and the initial call resolution times. Now, that’s something that Eircom definitely don’t do!

Related Links:

• Wikipaedia – Viral Marketing

• Perlico Website – www.perlico.com

• The 98FM Media Coverage of the Perlico Duck – http://www.perlico.com/DuckRecordings/98FMSnippetOfDuckQuacking.mp3

• PublicityInsider.com Article – The Public Relations Hall of Fame – “#5 ” href=”http://www.publicityinsider.com/HallOfFame.asp#5″ target=”_blank”>Viral Public Relations to Quack About“.

• ArticleBiz.com – “Humor in Customer Service and How It Can Help Your Business” Article.

• “E-mail Fuels Duck Quack Craze For Online Broker” – Company Business and Marketing

• Business Review Article – “Would you ask prospects to listen to a quacking duck?“

Other Notable examples of Viral Marketing: (from Wikipaedia)

• BusinessWeek (2001) described web-based campaigns for Hotmail (1996) and The Blair Witch Project (1999) as striking examples of viral marketing, but warned of some dangers for imitation marketers.
• Burger King’s The Subservient Chicken campaign was cited in Wired as a striking example of viral or word-of-mouth marketing.
• In 2000, Slate described TiVo’s unpublicized gambit of giving free TiVo’s to web-savvy enthusiasts to create “viral” word of mouth, pointing out that a viral campaign differs from a publicity stunt.
• One Six Right’s viral HD film marketing campaign, as chronicled by the Hollywood Reporter, led to sponsorships and support from many large media companies, including Apple Inc., Sony Electronics, Toshiba, Technicolor and Dolby.
• 2007 Boston Mooninite Scare
• 1-18-08
• The Dark Knight (film)
• Red Herring (2007) Buzz Kill – Are the new FTC regulations going to kill Viral Marketing
• Buy n Large (2007) to promote the movie WALL-E.

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 at 8:25 pm and is filed under Marketing & Advertising. You can keep updated on the conversation by subscribing to the comments feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.