How a Small Art Event Went Viral & Became a Local Sensation

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Intro

In the book Make It Stick, brothers Chip and Dan Heath tell the story of Hoover Adams, the longtime editor of the Daily Record in Dunn, North Carolina.

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Dunn is small town with a population of 14,000 people, mostly blue collar workers. The Daily Record is read by 114% of local households (many houses buy 2 copies), and has survived multiple crises in the printing industry.

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If you ask Adams why his paper has been so successful he’ll give you a deceptively simple answer:

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“It’s because of three things: Names, names names."

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Viral Success

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Adams goes on to explain that his paper is popular in the local community because he mentions local people and prints pictures of them at local events.

If the story doesn’t involve someone from the local community then it isn’t printed in the Daily Record.

He even jokes that he could reprint the local phone directory and his readership would go up!

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People like to see and read things that relate to their daily live (and especially their communities, local or online).

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If you look at event pages with high engagement on Facebook you’ll notice something that all of them have in common: Faces, faces, faces.

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Let’s take an updated example from the world of social media. Niki Gamboa is a local artist from Sacramento who teaches weekly art classes at local wineries and breweries.

Her classes are part of the 'paint and sip' phenomena that has become a big business in the last few years. She provides the canvases, materials and wine or beer, guest pay for the class and any refills.

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It is new trend but there are already franchises hosting events and the market is getting crowded. Gamboa needed a way to make her events stand out and become the staple ‘paint and sip’ class in the affluent suburbs of Sacramento (a huge market for these events).

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Gamboa guessed that social media would be a good way to engage her local audience and sell tickets online. 

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She didn’t need to go viral in the way we usually think of (1 billion views on YouTube) but on a micro-scale in small local subset of stay-at-moms, retired women and young female professionals looking for an after work activity.

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She didn’t need to go viral in the way we usually think of (1 billion views on YouTube) but on a micro-scale in small local subset of stay-at-moms, retired women and young female professionals looking for an after work activity.

Like her!

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At the end of each event Gamboa would line up all the new artists and their paintings for a group shot, as well as individual shots of every artist and their work, and groups of friends.

She’s then upload all of the pictures on her personal and business Facebook Page.

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She tags as many of the pictures as possible, and encourages other to tag the pictures too.

Tagged pictures showed up on attendees friends' News Feeds.

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Resulting in thousands of free impressions on what was essentially an ad for the class (actually it was an ad for the experience, which is why it was effective).

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This started a conversation, which Gamboa monitored and joined in on.

Attendees would comment on their picture saying how much fun they’d had, leading to dozens of trustworthy testimonials, and recommend the event to their friends.

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Gamboa’s business has seen explosive growth because of her Facebook marketing, and in less than a year it has turned into a full-time job teaching weekly art classes and moving into private classes for parties.

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She was able to achieve what big brands and companies spend millions of dollars on - targeting a relevant market, engaging them organically, and translating that engagement into sales.

Without any marketing or social media experience and 0 dollars spent on advertising!

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Adams and Gamboa both implicitly understood people and the platforms they used to connect with them, they focused on Names and Faces in their local area and achieved big success.

You can use these examples as inspiration for your next social media campaign and focus on the people and the experience, not the event. 

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