Going viral or “How to end a stag in style”

May 03 2012 10:08
Category: Masterclass

An example of the power of social media

Barney Stephens, Design Team Head

A few weeks back I was celebrating my stag do in Yorkshire with a range of country pursuits and activity sports.
On our return to London on the train I thought I would try and order a pizza to be delivered to our train at the next stop in Lancaster.
Dominos’ response was positive – give us your card details and we will give it a go!!

As the train rolled into Lancaster station sure enough waiting for me on the platform was the lovely delivery driver with a couple of large pepperoni pizzas – perfect for a group of hungover stags feeling a bit sorry for themselves.

One of the party decided to film the pizza collection on his phone. Back at his desk on Monday morning with a strong coffee the video was uploaded to YouTube and shared amongst our group as a bit of a laugh.

What happened next shows the power of social media.

I decided to tweet it at Dominos and Virgin Trains to say well done and thank you for the great service.
Within minutes of receiving the tweet, Dominos UK had retweeted it to their 22,000 followers some of whom in turn retweeted it to their followers.

Dominos UK then posted the YouTube video onto their facebook page, which their 543,000 fans saw on their wall.
Within hours they had hundreds of ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares’ - including Virgin Trains.
Their 59,000 fans then saw it on their wall, many of which shared it on.
And so it grew.

By the next morning the YouTube video had had 5,000 views, by the following day 15,000.
All from 1 tweet.

PG  note: Barney is still currently trying to trace the delivery driver so that he can send her a tip!