5 Celebrities Who Rock at Social Media Marketing

• Posted by Badi Jones on January 17th, 2008 - Comment on this Post »

Today on Digg, I saw a video on Digg => Will Ferrell Tries Viral Contest. Offers a Shark For Prize.

Will Ferrell is trying to get people to install a Funny or Die Facebook App to their facebook pages, and I’m thinking. Are you kidding? I mean, there was a session at Pubcon Vegas, which talked about how cutting edge facebook apps were, and here’s Will Ferrell, promoting one for Funny or die.
So Will Ferrell definitely makes my list of… Celebrities who definitely know a thing or two about social media and viral marketing.

1. Will Ferrell
I’d really be surprised if you haven’t seen “The Landlord”. It’s a short, home made video that pretty much put the website funnyordie.com on the map.
http://www.funnyordie.com/will_ferrell

2. Stephen Colbert
I’m a big fan of Stephen Colbert, not only because he is funny, but also because he is from my home town of Charleston, SC. It turns out that Colbert is also a bit of a viral marketing guru himself. Back before Google put a stop to the whole “Google Bombing” phenomenon, Colbert actually instigated a Google bomb of his own, urging some of his fans to link to his website using the anchor text, “greatest living American”. The result was documented here.

Here’s Stephen Colbert on Wikipedia Marketing.

 

3. Andy Samburg
First on my list is Andy Samburg, because he was definitely one of the first celebrities that I noticed getting really popular on Youtube. I fairly certain that he didn’t plan to have this video go viral on the internet, but the fact is, that it did. And even though NBC eventually pulled all of their content from youtube, I’m sure they are really grateful. On a viral scale of 1 to 10, the home made rap video that Samburg and Chris Parnel made, “Lazy Sunday” is a an 11.

I suppose the success of Samburg’s “Lazy Sunday” gave him a free pass to keep producing more and more hilarious videos.

 

 

 

 

4. JJ Abrams
All he gave was a date. No name, no actors. Just a date. But evidently, that was all it took. It was the lack of details, and the mystery of exactly what this preview was, that made it so viral.

5. Bob Dylan
I’m sure Bob Dylan didn’t come up with this one (Bob, if I’m wrong on this, then please drop a comment here), but he’s got some pretty great marketers working to promote his latest album.

 

Skittles
Ok. I know that Skittles isn’t a celebrity, but I just love them so much. Plus I think their latest commercials are great examples of viral marketing.

The commercial with the rabbit was my favorite.

Skittles Rabbit Commercial

Skittles Beard commercial

Skittles Slapping commercial

Skittles Sitting on a Rainbow commercial

Skittles Leak commercial

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