Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Zyrtec Goes Viral with YouTube
















Zyrtec is doing something unprecedented in pharmaceutical marketing. They've gone viral.

Harnessing the power and entertainment of social media, Zyrtec has created quite a campaign for this fall allergy season. What's even more interesting is that they've used YouTube as their primary outlet for launching a social media game.

Zyrtec worked with a New York ad agency called JWT to launch the YouTube game, Parks Unleashed, last month. Even though allergy medicine and the gaming world are a new couple, the game is modeled on 30 year-old text-based games that present users with various scenarios where they have to make a choice. The premise of the game is that dogs have stolen their owners' tablets, and hid them all over the park. You must find them by choosing different answers, each leading down a different path. In the end, users have a chance to win an actual Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Tim Nolan, creative director at JWT comments on the decision to use YouTube as the main platform,
“We took this approach to talk to our consumers using media that they already engage in, at a destination they spend their time, leveraging behaviors we know they love.”
And their efforts are paying off. The Zyrtec YouTube Channel now has 2.2 million total views, almost all of which were drawn by the game. The average player spent more than seven minutes playing the game, and some returning players were on for 30 minutes or more.

The campaign was also integrated throughout other brand sites, including an online ad campaign promoting the game, a Yahoo Mail takeover and Facebook display ads. The brand also tagged a TV spot with a prompt to visit their YouTube page, which ran for about a week.

Zyrtec is undoubtedly an innovator in the pharmaceutical social media sphere. They have also proven the often overlooked power of YouTube for gaming. It won't be long now until other pharmaceutical brands jump in.