Levi Adds Buzz to Buttocks

Levi’s has jumped on the viral marketing bandwagon and has launched a new campaign with viral marketing specialists Personiva. Using the latest techniques in the viral marketing textbook, the company offers consumers not only the chance to create their own advertisements online on a Levi website, but an incentive for doing so.

by Angelique van Engelen

Consumers, who create their own personal advertisements online on www.us.levi.com, are offered free shipping on purchased items of USD75 or more when their ad has been viewed by three people or more. The consumer is given the chance to email their creation to friends. The campaign, which has been created by Personiva, is a try out in offering consumers direct incentives for participating in advertising campaigns.

Personiva taps into the user’s mind but hands him the components that are readily available in a company’s established image. It first used the technique last summer, launching a Hewlett-Packard viral marketing campaign. The users are given available components of the company’s national ad campaign and can personalise these by inserting images of their own. The targeted result is a consumer created ad that is along the same lines as HP's national TV ad campaign. Levi’s is Personiva’s second blue chip campaign, and it uses Levi’s current TV ad which was created by Bartle Bogle Hegarty/New York.