Can brand content go viral? You betcha socks it can.

I remember the moment distinctly. I’d just finished a pre-work gym session and my mother called my phone.

“Martin. Alan. Wanless,” she said, in that stilted and emphatic way only a mother can. 

“What is all of this I am reading about you and frozen condoms?” 

My first thought was WTF? My second was that it was definitely time to call the men in white coats to cart her off. 

Yet she persisted. “It’s all over the Daily Mail website.” 

She sent me a link and, as it turned out, it was. She was right. Call off the men in white coats. 

And it wasn’t just the Daily Mail. 

It was The Independent and The Sun in England. Here in Australia it was covered by Essential Baby, Kidspot,  and it was picked up by Fox News, Huffington Post, Yahoo, Cosmopolitan in the US. 

The list went on and on, and – over the next 48 hours – continued to grow and grow and grow over the next few days. (An interesting insight into how every type of news website gets its stories, by the way.) 

All of a sudden – much to the amusement of my mates back home in England, I’d become ‘the bloke who invented vagina popsicles (copyright Huffington Post). Yeah. Thanks for that Arriana.

So… how? And why? 

At the time I was head of content at Sydney agency Mahlab, and we’d worked with health fund HBF on a content marketing initiative called Direct Advice For Dads - pregnancy-related content for men. (It was – and still is – a great example of pivoting a topic to create a unique angle.)

As a relatively new dad, I was keen to write for the site from my own experiences. So, around six months earlier, I’d put fingers to keyboard to write a series of articles based on personal experience. 

I’d knocked up crafted a beautiful, heartfelt piece on the experience of our first child arriving seven weeks early, and composed a very practical piece on things not to ignore. But no. It was the ‘four things you need to stock up on’ article (one of which, of course, was frozen condoms) that went nuts. 

And, for a branded content play that had been in existence for six months, that was gold. 

If it had been on a heavily-branded HBF site, I doubt it would have been picked up at all. But as we’d created a new (almost) standalone brand - Direct Advice For Dads – it was. 

The awareness of this new brand skyrocketed, and some quality backlinks were established. 

In essence, we went viral – not a word to say too loudly at present. 

But why? 

Well, it certainly wasn’t planned, however that story – and the others on the site – were very, very, real. They hadn’t been told before. They were raw. In some cases funny. In others deadly serious. 

They were unique. And that’s what makes great content – a story to tell, and experience to share. 

There was no product push, no sales call. Just hitting that bullseye that lies where your business’s expertise and your potential customers’ needs cross over. 

And if that means being known as the inventor of the vagina popsicle, then so be it.