Can Your Supply Chain Survive a Viral Marketing Campaign?

Ryan McCarthy,
SVP, Global Business

Michael Ellgass,
EVP, Global Media, CPG and Retail

If you work in marketing or, really, anywhere in corporate America, chances are good that you’ve found yourself in at least one meeting where someone has said “Let’s make this go viral!” This is usually said in jest; wise marketers know truly viral moments are almost entirely unpredictable and unplanned. Savvy marketers also know their organizations need to be prepared if their marketing plans are effective, especially if there’s a viral marketing component. That requires careful collaboration with their supply chain colleagues.

Why pursue viral marketing in the first place?

In today’s increasingly fragmented advertising and marketing landscape, where the impact of advertising is less predictable, marketers need to use as many channels as they can to reach consumers, especially if they’re after Gen Z. For many brands, influencer marketing – with a focus on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and other social media platforms – is an essential part of their strategy. And it’s easy to understand why so many CPG marketing plans include pursuit of a viral moment, either intentional or unplanned: The outcome is often a net positive.

Ocean Spray experienced 11% sales growth for its Cran x Raspberry juice drink and quadrupled its number of social media followers after a video of Nathan Apodaca lip syncing Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” went viral on TikTok in 2020. But for the parts of the supply chain that are implicated when viral recipes take off, like the one for baked feta pasta, virality can be a blessing and a curse for retailers and CPGs, because they can make key ingredients suddenly hard to find. 

Marketing and supply chain collaboration

To successfully navigate a situation in which a marketing campaign yields intense demand for a product, marketers and their supply chain colleagues need to integrate their efforts to make the best decisions around the “4 Ps” of retail – price, promotions, product, and place – and they need to do it quickly. 

Success means both parties need access to detailed, granular, daily data about a product’s on-shelf availability. If a product sells out within a day or over a weekend, weekly or monthly reports are not sufficient for the dynamic nature of supply chains affected by marketing campaigns. Investing in a fast, flexible supply chain system that marketers can access will pay for itself.

Having visibility into what’s in and out of stock gives a manufacturer flexibility to make decisions about substitutions and assortment planning for different products that could fulfill a need. For example, if an influencer in Dallas with a huge local following creates a viral recipe around poppy seed bagels, causing supplies to sell out, manufacturers should be sure to align with their category planners or other retailer partners. It’s possible there are extra units of onion or sesame seed bagels that can be shipped to stores in the geographic area where demand is shooting up.

Speed is the name of the game when it comes to responding to viral marketing success. Acting quickly is only possible with access to timely topline indicators based on market data. Marketer and supply chain integration around these tools is crucial for avoiding wasted marketing spend and ensuring customer satisfaction.