Unless you have been living under a rock for the past week, you should all be familiar with ‘The Dress’. Last week the internet blew up, with people from all corners of social media turning into a state of frenzy about a certain dress’ colour. Is it white and gold, or blue and black? Apologies to a certain Kardashian, but this social media storm really did break the internet. The world’s social media was divided, and even celebrities such as Taylor Swift, Kanye West and Ellen Degeneres joined in on the debate. People everywhere were intrigued over the ‘phenomenon’, causing twitter rants and Facebook arguments across the world.

The Buzzfeed post which caused a stir has gained over 38 million views, with the original Tumblr photo it was picked up from racking up a
staggering 73 million views. However, from a marketing perspective what is more interesting is that the Roman Originals dress sold out in less than half an hour.

Brands need to understand the nature of viral trends and be ready to react quickly in order to optimise in on the social media buzz and monetise on their 30 seconds of fame before the world moves on to the next internet sensation. Taking advantage of the hype is ultimately to increase sales, but more importantly to raise brand awareness.

Speaking to Marketing Magazine, Adrian Addison, head of ecommerce for Roman Originals, explained: “We did see an increase in sales but we also wanted to capitalise on this from a brand engagement perspective in particular. The visits to our site increased significantly to 1.2million,”

He continued, “We certainly weren’t expecting it and it’s almost impossible to create an advertising campaign that would spread that quickly, so the key for us was being to react in a timely and effective manner”.

In order to react imminently, Roman Originals turned to social media and ran off the back end of Twitter and Facebook to engage in the conversation.

“We made sure that we updated all of the creative to reflect this opportunity. Onsite we changed the homepage to promote the dress added ‘#TheDress’ to the product title and ran a competition to win #TheDress to increase subscribers,” said Addison.

It was Roman Original’s ability to quickly react, and their access to real-time data via Quantcast, which allows them to find out more about how and where the conversation was happening around their product. This enabled the team to create advertisements that were better targeted and more relevant. According to CNN Money, the dress saw a sales increase of a huge 347% on the Friday.

Speaking to CNN Money in an interview, Addison explained; “We saw an increase in product detail views of over 3000% on the day. That is massive exposure for our brand that we were able to capitalise on because we could see the data in real time. These days I think it’s incredibly important that brands have access to that data as it happens or it would be really easy to either miss these opportunities or fail to understand what effect it was having on your brand”.

Roman Original’s reaction to ‘The Dress’ was speedy, responsive and exactly what was needed in response to the social media storm. However, they were not the only organisation to capitalise on the hype.

Exactly a week after the debate, the South African branch of The Salvation Army tweeted an image featuring a model wearing the Roman Originals garment in white and gold stating:

“Why is it so hard to see Black and Blue? The only illusion is if you think it was her choice. One in 6 women are victims of abuse. Stop abuse against women.” Capitalising on such a media storm was a genius way to achieve viral content regarding an important message their campaign is an adaptable and refreshing way charities can target their information.

The original photo was retweeted and according to a spokesperson from the Salvation Army, the advert has reached over 15 million people. Even though The Dress was arguably an insignificant issue in comparison to more important news around the world, the Salvation Army’s tactic of turning social shares into activism is something social justice professionals can learn from.