Red House Furniture goes viral
Store gains fame via YouTube commercials
Heath Combs -- Furniture Today, May 26, 2010
HIGH POINT — Anyone doubting the clout of viral marketing should talk to Steve Patalano, vice president of Red House Furniture, a single-store retailer here.
Since it introduced a quirky YouTube commercial in April 2009 that featured Red House as the place "Where Black and White People Buy Furniture," the spot has drawn more 2.5 million views and generated more than 8,300 comments.
 Red House Furniture employee Richard Pina (a.k.a. “Big Head”) lies on a sofa in the store’s “Where Black and White People Buy Furniture” YouTube commercial, which has drawn more than 2.5 million views. |
While it still is a ways behind the currently most popular YouTube video, Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" with more than 202.5 million views, the Red House spot's viral marketing success is almost unheard of for a furniture retailer.
Viral marketing — a technique that uses word of mouth (in the form of electronic referrals) rather than traditional marketing campaigns to spread a message — is part of a communications revolution taking place.
Many marketers try to go viral but few are as successful as Red House. Slate.com Writer Chris Wilson tracked 10,000 videos hatched on YouTube last July and found that in a month only 250 got more than 1,000 views and just 25 cracked 10,000. YouTube hasn't said how many hit 2.5 million, but it must be a tiny fraction.
The Red House video depicts two employees of the store, Richard "Big Head" Pina and Johnny "Ten Gauge" Hill, hopping on furniture as they wax philosophic on the furniture's appeal to all races - and Hispanic people too.
Patalano said the store was chosen by MicrobBilt, a reseller of credit reports, which wanted to make YouTube commercials for some of its clients. MicroBilt sent comedy duo Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal, who own a video production company in Fuquay-Varina, N.C., to do the spot. They have created Web videos for McDonald's, Alka-Seltzer and other big brands.
Rhett and Link met with Red House officials at the beginning of a month, when many of the store's in-house financing customers were dropping by to make payments, Patalano said.
"They got the idea to do the commercial off the diversity of customers coming into the store," he said.
Soon after it came out in April 2009, the spot was picked up as a feature for a local Fox TV affiliate. Soon celebrity gossip site TMZ, CNN and MSNBC also picked it up.
Initially, much of the national exposure focused on whether the commercial was racist. Its creators said it wasn't - it was simply racial, having to do with race in an off-the-wall way.
Patalano said that for months afterward the store's phones rang constantly with calls from viewers across the country who had seen the video, the vast majority of whom liked it. He also got a blitz of e-mails from a diverse audience talking about their racial experiences.
"It kind of confused me about how when people saw that commercial it affected them to that point to where they would want to go into detail about their ethnic upbringing... I still have a hard time understanding it," he said.
That a simple, inexpensive message could attract such attention shows that the world is in the midst of a communications revolution, says David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of "The New Rules of Marketing and PR."
Scott said a video goes viral when there is an element of shock and humor - like the Red House video, which many people sent him - or is outrageous or has valuable information.
He said vast audiences can be reached without spending huge amounts of money on advertising or on public relations to convince the traditional media to cover products and services. (Producers Rhett and Link said the Red House spot cost in the "hundreds of dollars.")
"There is a tremendous opportunity right now to reach buyers in a better way: by publishing great content online, content people want to consume and that they are eager to share with their friends, family and colleagues," Scott said.
One side benefit to Red House is that because of all the YouTube hits, the retailer ranks high on search engines, Scott added. A search of Red House furniture on Google fills the page with content about the store or the commercial.
Viral marketing can spread exponentially - like a virus, said Ed Tashjian, chief marketing officer for furniture source Home Meridian International, parent company of Pulaski and SLF.
"Viral marketing really is word of mouth on steroids," he said. "You tell two people. I tell two people. They tell two people and before long, it's a lot of darn people."
Tashjian said furniture has always had creative personalities, but they haven't been widely known because there are few national furniture chains. Now the tools have changed to reach a national or global audience, he said.
"What's happened with these viral media is that anyone with a simple camera can make their own video and post it on YouTube," Tashjian said, adding, "It gives every citizen a big megaphone to tell their story."
But that democratization of media also has boundaries: What is funny to some can be offensive to others, he said.
One reason the Red House video was so widely seen was that media organizations focused on the controversial aspect of bluntly giving a racial endorsement of the store.
But controversy doesn't always work. Leggett & Platt recently suspended its new "Virgin Mattress" social media campaign and video, which sparked strong reactions, although it may be reintroduced later. The video series portrayed an engaged couple's search for a "virgin" mattress that hasn't been used by another couple.
Ellen Gefen, whose video production company, Gefen Productions, produces thehome.com and "High Point Market Live," said companies must understand that the new media will put them under a microscope for analysis by customers. They must make sure they are comfortable with how they are portrayed, know what audiences they are playing to, and be ready for a backlash, she said.
"The boundaries are being defined as to what your customers will take from you as appropriate," Gefen said. "Be careful of what light you're put in."
A video might succeed in grabbing attention, she said, but can miss the mark if it doesn't place a business in a good light and result in sales.
Back in High Point, Red House sold box after box of store T-Shirts after the commercial came out. Consumers stopped by to have pictures taken under its sign or with video stars Pina and Hill, who were often asked to autograph T-shirts.
As Patalno said, "Who would have ever thought, we've been in business 50 years, that we'd be selling Red House shirts all over the country?"
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Red House goes viral
May 24, 2010
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