What's the key to creating a viral marketing campaign? Meet Delbert Ty, CMO at Coffee Meets Bagel, a popular dating app that sets itself apart by courting only those interested in serious relationships.
Before joining CmB, Delbert worked as Head of Marketing at Circles.Life - a Singaporean telco - where he grew revenue to 9 figures in 5 years.
And even before that he worked at Procter & Gamble, where he was responsible for such well-known brands as Duracell, Tide & Pantene.
During his time at these companies Delbert has pulled off quite a few hilarious creative marketing campaigns.
Some of them failed, but others brought lots of new customers and tons of brand awareness.
In our interview, we discussed quite a few of Delbert's viral campaigns and tried to deconstruct what made them successful and how you could replicate that success.
In this episode:
(0:00) Intro
(02:17) Three biggest marketing campaigns
(06:44) Vandalizing a billboard
(11:10) Buying out telco contracts (failed)
(13:10) Coffee Meets Bagel tells users to leave
(16:30) "Free money" from a vending machine
(25:01) The cost (not in $$$) of viral campaigns
(30:10) Courage in viral marketing
(35:43) Setting objectives for viral campaigns
(41:13) Measuring the impact of viral campaigns
(47:20) When bad ideas are actually good ideas
(55:23) Structural elements of a viral campaign
(01:15:07) Physical vs digital creative marketing
(1:22:20) Split between creative marketing and other tasks
(1:24:01) Is viral marketing only for consumer brands?
(1:28:10) Why certain campaigns fail
(1:38:00) The difference between celebrity and brand
(1:47:25) Using AI for creative marketing
(01:51:42) Outro
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Ahrefs Podcast! As always, be sure to like and subscribe (and tell a friend).
Where to find Delbert:
LinkedIn
Website
Where to find Tim:
LinkedIn
X
Website
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Referenced:
Coffee Meets Bagel @CoffeeMBagel
Circles.life @circleslifesg
Calm app @calm
Kanye Super Bowl ad
Coinbase Super Bowl ad
Old Spice @oldspice
Drake "God's Plan" music video
Lenny’s Podcast with Lulu Cheng Meservey
Lulu Cheng Meservey
Supermensch
Shep Gordon
Data is Beautiful subreddit
WePay/PayPal stunt
Dan Price/Gravity Payments wages
Coffeezilla: @Coffeezilla
Paris Hilton for SodaStream
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Ahrefs Podcast
Host: Tim Soulo
Podcast Producer: Michelle Lindner
Intro Storyboard: Michelle Lindner & Tim Soulo
Intro Video Lead: George Dolgikh
Intro Video Animations: Ilya Yakymchuk
Filmed at: Poddster Studios (Singapore)