Someone actually paid realestate.com.au (Australia’s largest real estate listings website) real money to put this ad up! It suggests Borat has moved to Australia and is looking for a female roommate… err cow-milker… err sex slave… actually, it’s anyone’s guess what he wants to do with her.
Here’s a preview of the page (click it to visit the actually page):
I was alerted to this a couple of hours ago when my sister-in-law emailed me a simple email that read:
Borat in Brisvegas!
Check this out - before the administrators at realestate.com.au get word of it!!!!!!
http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=9031441&f=10&p=10&t=
Now, that’s very “viral” text, right there. I don’t think my sister-in-law made it up… I assume she just forwarded it like everyone else. But look at the doozie of a hook: “before the administrators at realestate.com.au get word of it”. That’s great copy 
I emailed an acquaintance at realestate.com.au who forwarded an item of internal mail from today, that said in part:
It seems Borat is on his way to fame on REA.
You’ll see from the stats below that show the daily visits to the Borat Share ad that it’s really spiked in the last 2 days.
Yesterday the ad had over 17,000 visits. Today (as at lunchtime) it’s already had over 30,000.
Total visits is now up to 65,000. A fabulous example of a viral campaign.
(I bet this has the crew at REA wondering how they can do something like this themselves next time!)
The internally circulated email included this chart, which shows dramatically how the “virus” hit its tipping point yesterday:
Who knows how far this will go! Who knows when it will die out. I hope the advertiser keeps paying for his ad as long as the traffic comes in.
But a question…
Who is behind this ad and why? Is it just someone having fun? It probably is.
I guess as a marketer I find it strange that there is no clear link from the share ad on realestate.com.au to something else… it seems like a huge missed opportunity.
If, hypothetically the DVD distributor is behind this, and it’s designed to revive interest in the movie in time for a DVD release, then things are getting hot in the frying-pan a little too soon; the DVD doesn’t hit the video store shelves in Australia until mid-March.
So for now, this remains just an example of how a very simply worded email with a killer hook in it (the old “hurry before it’s gone” hook combined with the “before the fun-police find out” hook) can drive masses of traffic (unqualified, of course) to your website.
What are your favourite examples of viral emails? Which ones actually had a for-real commercial entity behind them, and were actually trying to sell something?
