For experienced publicists and marketers, creating a viral brand moment isn’t a matter of luck or random TikTok happenstance — it’s about planning and strategy.
“There’s absolutely a strategy,” Liza Suloti, co-founder and chief communications officer of Shadow, tells Fashionista. Even if clients don’t state they want a viral moment, “they’re thinking it,” she notes.
Shadow is a full-service creative marketing and communications agency whose clients include E.l.f. Cosmetics, Keys Soulcare, American Eagle, Aerie, Esteé Lauder, Tatcha and Bread Beauty Supply. Since launching in 2007, it has cracked the code on what it takes to make a brand go viral. Suloti — who has nearly two decades of marketing and PR experience — credits this to the agency’s understanding of how “to use [storytelling] as a tool.” It helps that Shadow offers in-house integrated services such as media training, influencer relations, experiential marketing and content development, which allows the agency to take a holistic approach to achieving virality.
This is especially true for its beauty division: Most notably, Shadow has guided E.l.f. Cosmetics into cultural relevance via buzzy campaigns with top talent, Super Bowl commercial spots, product placements in “Mean Girls” (2024) and a 16-soundtrack music album. Esteé Lauder’s campaign with Nicole Richie, Tatcha’s “Moisture Matchup” social campaign and K18 Hair’s partnership with Simone Biles are also among Shadow’s most impactful projects. And as the overseer of the beauty division, Suloti has a personal hand in making these digitally significant moments happen.
The real question is: How? What’s the secret to making a brand go viral? As Suloti tells it, “It’s both an art and a science.”
Photo: Courtesy of Esteé Lauder
Strategy and Planning
There are a couple of important baselines to keep in mind when pursuing virality: Firstly, there’s not one exact recipe: What worked for one brand won’t necessarily work for another; likewise, the fact that something worked in the past doesn’t mean it will land again. Secondly, virality — even when well thought-out — is never guaranteed.
“Anyone who promises virality is not being totally honest with you because there is so much of the secret sauce that has so many nuances to it that’s specific to the moment, to the brand and to the talent,” Suloti says. “You have to really look at it uniquely every single time.”
That said, there are a few characteristics needed to make crafted virality probable for clients. Suloti lists “embracing speed,” “having conviction” and “not overthinking it” as non-negotiable qualities every marketer should prioritize — “otherwise, the moment passes you by.”
That helps inform PR experts on their next important step: Understanding the creative. This doesn’t necessarily mean casting a roster of A-list talent. It can help, but without a clear intention of what the project’s takeaway should be, even a campaign filled with the buzziest entertainers can fall flat.
Photo: Courtesy of K18 Hair
“Of course, we all have to love the creative, but as you’re building it, you have to be intentional about all of the amplifiers and elements in the mix that are going to fuel this moment for a brand,” Suloti explains. As the creative is being built, questions to consider are: how the press will respond, what’s fresh about the project, what’s exciting about the talent and will the campaign or product reach both niche and mass audiences?
“All of those things go into building […] a hugely successful campaign and piece of work,” she continues.
Creative decisions also depend on the brand size: For large-scale brands, there are higher risks, meaning marketers have to be more calculated with their approaches. “You have a bigger audience and it’s really easy to criticize a big brand,” Suloti shares. “People are looking for missteps.” For emerging and smaller brands, however, communication professionals are allowed to “try on a few different hats” and take riskier approaches.
“An important thing for emerging brands to be willing to do is not to think that they need to follow the playbook of the brand that made it,” Suloti says. “At the heart of all of it is that same energy around wanting to catch people off guard a little, creating things they aren’t expecting and are going to break through. You should also know if this is something only this brand could uniquely do, or could any brand do this? That’s always the question you have to ask.”
Photo: Courtesy of E.l.f.
Executing a Viral Moment
Despite the complexities that go into the planning process, campaigns and brand projects must be palatable, fun and easy to understand if they hope to land with consumers. If done right, this can lay the groundwork for larger — but equally engaging — virality. E.l.f. Cosmetics is a prime example of this: When Shadow first started working with E.l.f. seven years ago, the cosmetic company had little to no positioning in the cultural zeitgeist — its 2019 #EyesLipsFace campaign changed this. The project held a number-one spot on TikTok (a new platform at the time) and garnered over 7 billion views.
Its 2022 “Glow Storm” campaign featuring Meghan Trainor and made in partnership with The Weather Channel, further cemented the label’s pivot into cultural relevancy. The following year, E.l.f. landed its first Super Bowl ad spot, featuring Jennifer Coolidge.
“She was the stickiest person in culture at the time,” Suloti reflects. “We knew that we wanted to create this exciting moment for E.l.f.’s primer and beauty was not a big conversation at the Super Bowl. That was what excited us about it, and we knew that it was a massive stage…It really showed that beauty belongs everywhere. We were so happy to see that so many other beauty brands came to the Super Bowl this year and we were like, ‘Oh my God, it worked.’ That wasn’t just about creating virality for the sake of virality, but we actually made a big impact.”
That successful campaign also led to future projects with Coolidge and another Super Bowl commercial titled “Judge Beauty.” The latter starred Judge Judy Sheindlin plus a courtroom cast including Gina Torres, Rick Hoffman, Sarah Rafferty, Benito Skinner and Ronald Gladden. It received more than 100 billion media impressions and fueled a 50% increase in sales and a 148% increase in website traffic for the brand.
“E.l.f. is an entertainment brand,” Suloti says. “We’re not just here to serve beauty looks. There’s been this build and evolution and now the brand today is so part of the culture and very much a mirror of what’s happening in culture because it’s built with and by community.”
Amid a decline in sales, Esteé Lauder is trying to make up ground through its campaigns: In August, the brand presented its “Night Night Club” campaign starring Nicole Richie. (Shadow oversaw casting, scripting, production, social media rollout and press.) The project drove a 90% year-over-year increase in earned media value and earned over four billion media impressions.
“That creative was so effective and went viral because of the combination of the talent and the creative,” she shares. “Because it was Nicole, it made so much sense. It was so funny and people loved it and it was unexpected.”
Establishing Metrics for Success
According to Suloti, in order to measure virality, agencies first must know if the project made an impact: “Are you breaking the internet? Are you creating a shift in the way people think about things, look at things, love things, discover things — what’s the impact that you’re creating?”
However, there is quantitative data to help determine this. Social engagement, for example, is a big factor: Brands like to assess likes, views and shares across their social channel; earned media value; and also what comments were left and if the tone was positive or negative.
“Did people love it?” Suloti says. “Did they talk about it? Did they share it? Were they excited about it? Did it make them feel a certain way? Because that’s certainly an objective and absolutely something that we look at.”
Tatcha’s sport-focused “Moisturizer Matchup” campaign, for example, — which strategically launched during the 2024 Paris Olympics — garnered over 12 million views on TikTok, 1.5 million views from talent partners and over 100,000 new Instagram followers.
Of course, press coverage also speaks to how well-executed a campaign is. It’s not only the amount of press, but what the tone and content is. Suloti will analyze if the coverage makes people think or shapes perceptions of the brand based on the moves Shadow made.
Photo: Courtesy of Tatcha
“When measuring what makes campaigns hugely successful, there are grades of virality,” she explains. “You could say, ‘Well, that one [piece of] hero content went viral,’ but then we see our press really eating up the behind-the-scenes and that achieves a totally other goal. If we know like, ‘Oh my God, I literally couldn’t talk to a single person who didn’t see it,’ and you also have the data behind it, then okay, we’ve effectively done our jobs where we’ve told the story to all the various audiences. It’s well received, but it’s also widely consumed. If you have all of those things working hand in hand, then you have an effectively viral moment.”
Optimization and Moving Forward
How long can you sustain a viral moment? There’s no perfect answer to that question — it’s completely dependent on consumer reception, and how well a marketer “stretched the runway of the launch.”
“People can sometimes assume that if something is a buzzy moment that it comes and goes and it’s over,” Suloti explains. “But is there an opportunity to grow it? For example, we don’t just think about the asset, we will also think about: What are the other supporting pulses and moments? What’s the tease? What is the behind the scenes? What are all these surround-sound moments that give it a whole other user experience where you’re seeing the content and then you’re like, ‘Oh my God, I need more of it?’ It creates a very different impact than just having a hero content and letting that do the work for you.”
This approach is also informed by the brand’s goals. For emerging labels, virality strategies tend to aim for increased visibility and brand awareness. Established brands will likely target product conversion and sales boosts.
“One viral moment is going to actually move the needle tremendously for a smaller brand that’s never had a moment like that, where all of a sudden people are saying, ‘No matter where I look, I see this product, it must be something I have to try,'” Suloti says. “Or it could be a brand you know and love and it’s just a hysterical content piece that continues your loyalty and love for that brand. So [the growth models] can look very, very different.”
With established brands especially, there are the added challenges of finding and optimizing new ways to storytell. For Suloti, “taking cues” from the target community is a big help. Shadow will read consumers’ comments on what they want to see more of, and propose how a viral moment can connect to future projects.
“Virality doesn’t always have to have the same path and recipe to success,” Suloti says. “I think you’re always challenged to know, when should you just let it be what it was and move on to the next thing. Or is there space to continue to fuel that fire so it gets even louder and grows even stronger?”
Source: Fashionista.com