New report: The State of Creative Effectiveness
GET IT NOWWhy your 2025 campaign isn’t going viral (yet)
Every brand wants to go viral.
Low ad spend, maximum reach and potential cult status.
In the past, going viral happened almost at random — brands would just get lucky. But with AI and predictive analytics, consumer research, the ability to track several metrics, alongside strong omnichannel marketing strategies, virality has become a data-informed, creatively-engineered strategy.
But what’s the formula for viral content?
Once relying on “shock tactics,” diverse marketing and a strong product, viral content looks different in 2025.
In 2012, the average attention span on a screen was 75 seconds. In the last five years, it's been reduced to 40 seconds. Brands need to rethink what “viral” means in the attention economy. This means targeting niche communities with hyper-relevant content, going all in on humor-driven content (think memes and witty TikTok shorts), short-form video and other easy-to-digest content formats and using emotion more skillfully to encourage engagement and shares.
In 2025, viral content often starts in small, niche online micro-communities. Consumers are shaping much of their identity online — from talking about their favorite bands on Reddit to finding new shades of lip oil on TikTok. Brands are using user-generated content, niche influencers that target specific audiences and small online communities across channels like Reddit and Discord to help their content go viral.
Over the last few years, brands have also found new ways to personalize content and segment their audiences — increasing their possibility of going viral. By using AI to analyze who consumers are, the platforms they’re on, the content they engage with, and when they do so, AI has helped take viral content from a “mystery” to something that can be studied and optimized for.
In this post, I’ll explore the anatomy of viral online campaigns and show you some of the best marketing campaigns in 2025.
The State of Creative Effectiveness report
Want more content on how to create better ads? Download our latest State of Creative Effectiveness report.
How do you know when a piece of content has gone viral? There are some essential “metrics of momentum” that you can use to assess the virality of your content.
View count trajectories: The essence of viral content always comes with a sudden, impressive spike in views, signifying high cumulative views and widespread sharing across platforms.
Comment-to-like ratios: It takes seconds for someone to hit like on a piece of content online. And for many people, likes are on auto-pilot. But a comment requires more thought, more care and more attention. That's why your comment-to-like ratio is a strong measure of deeper engagement. As social media consultant Brooke B. Sellas says: "Likes are cute, but comments pay the bills," with social media algorithms weighing comments at nearly 10x the value of a like when it comes to feed ranking.
Click-through rates (CTRs): If your content requires users to click on it, such as a video thumbnail, your CTRs are another essential metric you need to measure the virality of your content. A high CTR suggests high relevancy and engagement, leading it to be shared with more users.
Beyond the numbers, it’s also important to track and understand the key behavioral drivers behind your content. This means understanding emotional triggers, psychological triggers and cultural content and values.
"Content that evokes strong emotions – whether positive or negative – tends to be shared far more than neutral or mundane material. Research has shown that content that sparks high-arousal emotions such as awe, anger, amusement, or fear is significantly more likely to go viral."
- Simon Kingsnorth, Marketing Consultant
Collecting direct consumer insights via surveys, interviews and online polls are all essential for understanding the deeper emotions driving consumers’ engagement, their unique psychologies and cultural identities. Great content starts and finishes with your audience. The content with the best chance of going viral is typically built on data-based consumer insights — rather than gut instincts or guesswork. And with advancements in AI capabilities, you can also use tools (like Zappi) to measure and analyze consumer sentiment.
Viral content also hits at the right time. It often ties into cultural events, trending topics or seasonal moments. Many brands strategically use trendjacking — jumping on cultural moments, like popular memes, viral challenges, social media trends or recent events to improve visibility and engagement with their audiences.
Trendjacking requires fast action from brands and the ability to put a twist on a popular or emerging trend (not forcing engagement). Authentic participation endears brands to consumers, while forced participation gives Amy Poehler’s “cool mom” energy that can undermine your brand reputation.
Creator partnerships have also become one of the biggest drivers of viral content. 69% of consumers say they trust influencer recommendations. Across platforms, influencers see higher engagement rates than brands — 3.6% on average compared to 0.9% for brand-created content. In particular, niche creators and nano and micro-influencers typically have the highest engagement rates and levels of trust with consumers, with micro-influencers showing 60% increased trust compared to macro influencers.
For instance, Chipotle recruited Gen Z influencers to help their #The ChipotleLidFlip challenge go viral. In just the first six days of the campaign, the brand saw 110,000 video submissions and 104 million video views.
Find out how much brands should appeal to emotion in advertising in our past post.
Over the last few years, there’s been a rise in viral short-form video — think YouTube Shorts, TikTok videos and Instagram Reels. Delivering product reviews, bite-sized advice and brand stories, short-from videos are easy to consume and easy to share.
47% of marketers say that short-form videos are more likely to go viral than long-form content. While short-form videos typically get 2.5 times more engagement than long-form videos. Short-form video is expected to dominate 90% of internet traffic by the end of 2025.
And 73% of consumers say they'd rather learn about a product or service through video ads over any other type of content.
Short-form videos also perform well across channels, with 91% of Instagram users watching videos on the platform each week. While the average TikTok user spends 1 hour and 27 mins a day watching short-video content on that platform — that's close to a movie's worth of TikTok every day.
In 2025, we’ve also seen the unexpected virality on B2B and professional platforms like LinkedIn. A post on LinkedIn is typically considered viral if it gets over 100,000 impressions and over 500 likes. With a focus on thought leadership, opinionated “professional” hot takes and niche expertise — B2B platforms are becoming the new creators’ platforms for professionals.
Micro-platforms and community hubs such as Discord, Geneva and Reddit are also on the rise — digital hangouts to groups of people with shared interests, hobbies and beliefs.
"These days, there’s a significant user shift towards smaller, more private groups known as micro-communities, which add a new dimension to the internet-as-a-city analogy. They’re the secluded alleyways and hidden speakeasies of the web, offering a respite from the noise of mainstream social experiences."
- Taylor Peterson, Martech
While microcommunities are often more about depth than reach, connecting with communities of highly-engaged consumers in topics related to their interests typically gives users far more incentive to engage with and share content than the average social media user.
Take a look at this post from the reddit r/PraiseTheCameraMan, titled: "Cameraman tracks a cat that ran into the stands at a baseball stadium perfectly by judging the crowd’s reactions to it running by their feet." The post has over 76k likes.
GenAI tools have also allowed for real-time content remixing, with both brands and consumers taking original content and altering it, from images to songs and videos.
“Advertisement songs (aka jingles) and videos are transformed into something entirely new and unexpected. This process provides a sense of empowerment to the consumer. By engaging with advertising content in this way, they actively participate in shaping popular culture rather than passively consuming it. These creations have the potential to go viral, reaching millions of viewers worldwide.”
Let’s take a look at 10 of the best viral campaigns of 2025.
Hellmann’s: When Sally met Hellmann’s
In February 2025, Hellmann’s tapped into the lasting cultural impact of the cult classic “When Harry Met Sally” in their Super Bowl Campaign with VML. Tapping into nostalgia while bringing a touch of the new with features from Meg Ryan, Billy Crystal,and Gen Z icon Sydney Sweeney.
The duo reenacted the infamous restaurant scene from the movie in Katz’s Delicatessen, where the scene was originally shot — elevating Hellman's mayonnaise with a cinematic ambiance and the endearing wit of a classic romantic comedy. Sweeney looks up from her menu at a neighboring table and says to her waiter, “I’ll have what she’s having.”
The ad is a great example of nostalgia marketing. Nostalgia marketing refers to the use of happy past memories and experiences and connecting them to the present, deepening consumers’ positive associations with brand and product.
To create more excitement and tap into the community of When Harry Met Sally fans, Hellmann's worked with Katz's Deli to bring the sandwiches featured in the ad to consumers with their limited-edition, 'What She's Having' Sandwich Package which includes the main sandwich ingredients and a recipe card that showed them how to make Sally's turkey sandwich order (complete with Hellmann's mayo) and Harry's pastrami sandwich. By creating a sense of exclusivity and urgency, limited-edition products can help content go viral.
Hellmann’s ensured the campaign also encouraged virality by encouraging their audience to share their sandwich creations across social media with the hashtags #WhatShesHaving and #WhenSallyMetHellmanns.
Susan Golkin, executive creative director, VML, says, “If you are going to show that Hellmann’s makes a sandwich better, you may as well start with the best sandwich scene in movie history. And honour it. Same intro, same camera angles, same famous deli.”
Cadbury’s: Memory
Created with the agency VCCP, ‘Memory’ was created to celebrate the seventh year of Cadbury’s generosity brand platform, which has featured a series of emotion-and-connection-driven ads. The multi-award-winning campaign included past storytelling-driven commercials such as ‘Mum’s Birthday’, ‘Fence,’ and ‘Bus’ (which have won several awards in the U.K.) including awards from IPA, Marketing Week and The Marketing Society.
Elise Burditt, senior marketing director at Cadbury, said: “At Cadbury, we believe that generosity has the power to bring people closer together. ‘Memory’ illustrates how even a small gesture, like gifting a bar of chocolate, can hold deep meaning and connect us in unexpected ways. We’re incredibly proud to continue to work with Alzheimer’s Research UK to support their vitally important work.”
The film follows a daughter who brings her father with dementia, who lives in a care home, a bar of Cadbury Wholenut chocolate. Her father smiles as she shows him the bar — recognizing it as a gift she has given him since she was young.
The emotion-driven storytelling is an essential element of the ad’s appeal with emotion-based ads showing 2.6 times the likelihood of going viral.
Lia says: "If you want people to care, you have to make them feel something. Emotions are the driving force behind any memorable story - whether it’s the joy of a childhood moment, the nostalgia of a shared experience, or the thrill of discovery. Think back to the last ad that truly moved you. Chances are, it wasn’t the product specs you remember, but the feeling it evoked."
Pringles: The call of the mustaches
Pringles’ 2025 Super Bowl ad blends Adam Brody’s star draw with a quirky-creative campaign concept. The ad features Brody at a party who realizes they've run out of Pringles. He grabs a Pringles’ can and calls for help. This brings flying mustaches straight from the faces of American football coach Andy Reid, Parks and Rec’ actor Nick Offerman and Mr. Potatohead as the backing track sings, “Moustaaaache,” to the theme of the 1960s "Batman" TV show.
Cultural icons paired with imaginative creative and a playful backing track all added to the vitality of the ad.
Why is out-of-the-box creativity more likely to go viral? Like many of the ads on our list, it comes back to emotion. Creative content is more likely to create activating emotions like feelings of awe. This makes audiences more likely to engage with and share the content.
Paul Hiebert, Adweek's deputy editor of special projects, says that Pringle's lack of self-consciousness and willingness to look stupid helped the ad stand out:
“The commercial is silly, stupid, and, at times, uncomfortable to watch. This combination makes it likely to stick out among other Big Game advertisers too sensible to depict a sky full of flying mustaches.”
Research also shows that marketing that features celebrities or includes celeb endorsements get a boost in vitality as a result of the “meaning transfer model.” This type of marketing transfers the cultural meaning of the celebrity to the product, which benefits from their attractiveness, coolness, or credibility.
Colgate: Smile Fight
VML France’s new Colgate campaign “Smile Fight,” shows parents struggling to get their tantruming, resistant kids to brush their teeth. The tagline follows: “Not all smiles start with a smile."
While Colgate typically leans into showing positive emotions, aspirational lifestyles and whiter-than-white smiles, the success of this ad lies in creatives' willingness to take a different approach by showing the chaotic raw emotion and struggle of much of parenthood. It's a campaign rooted heavily in empathy — impactfully helping parents feel seen and heard. It artfully highlights how parenthood, and particularly getting kids to brush their teeth, can be tough.
Dimitri Guerassimov, chief creative officer, VML France, Paris, told Contagious, "This is the kind of campaign where people feel seen and understood in their everyday struggle. Brands capable of leveraging these kinds of essential insights are the ones who connect on a deeper emotional level with their audience, and ultimately, customers."
Häagen-Dazs: Not So Fast, Not So Furious
Häagen-Dazs also tapped into the power of nostalgia this year with their nod to the Fast & Furious franchise in their Super Bowl ad for the brand's Vanilla Milk Chocolate Almond ice cream bars. The ad was created by New York-based indie agency nice&frank and directed by Park Pictures' Lance Acord.
In the commercial, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) speed along in a vintage convertible. Then Letty pulls out an ice cream bar and the ad rapidly slows down. Smokey Robinson's "Cruisin'" is playing in the background as the duo talk, laugh and enjoy the view as they drive.
Tej (Ludacris) then rolls up next to them to remind them to, “Speed up,” to which they reply with a cool, “Not today.” Then the tagline: “Not so fast, not so furious,” pops up on the screen.
Speaking to LBB, nice&frank’s creative director Nicole LeLacheur, said, “They really wanted to kick off this new strategic platform and own ‘slowing down and savouring the moment’ and really sparking what we call ‘the slow rebellion.’ We were super excited to sink our teeth into interesting ways of slowing down the Super Bowl. It's such a chaotic, fast-paced, hectic creative arena, and they really wanted to do something that felt unexpected and different in that space.”
Part of what makes the ad so impactful and shareable is the surprise element of the ad. As LeLacheur notes, The Fast & Furious duo are the last two people you’d expect to slow down and savor the moment.
Scott Reddick, Head of Strategy at Heat Advertising, says that surprise is “The most powerful marketing tool of all," — arguing that the intense emotion is addictive, cheap, and frequently drives consumer behavior.
He says: "Surprise is addictive. Surprise is like a crack for your brain. Scientists at Emory and Baylor used MRIs to measure changes in human brain activity in response to a sequence of pleasurable stimuli, using fruit juice and water. The patterns of juice and water squirts were either predictable or completely unpredictable. Contrary to the researchers’ expectations, the reward pathways in the brain responded most strongly to the unpredictable sequence of squirts."
Take a look at our rundown of snack food and predictions at the Super Bowl LIX in 2025. Did we guess right?
Dove: Unready for Anything
Dove’s global campaign, “Unready for Anything,” features Dove's iconic Beauty Bar. Created by Ogilvy New York and Ogilvy UK, the campaign celebrates copywriting icon David Ogilvy’s original ads for the Beauty Bar, following its 1957 launch, as well as the agency's decades-long partnership with the brand.
The campaign features a series of out-of-home ads across digital, social media and print channels that show the suds-up Dove Beauty Bar on a bathroom tile surrounded by glitter, feathers, and confetti connected to different seasonal holidays — including St. Patrick’s Day, Cinco de Mayo and Pride Month.
The ads are a playful nod to the often-viral, "Get ready with me," videos featured across TikTok and YouTube. Rather than celebrate the ritual of getting glammed up to go out, Olgilvy and Dove celebrate the comfort and joy in the wind down, the end-of-night self-care ritual, and enjoying the warm afterglow of an evening out with friends.
Chris Kelly, writing for Marketing Dive, says:
"’Get ready with me,’ videos have become a social media staple and a frequent tactic of marketers spanning cosmetics, grooming and fashion brands, including the likes of E.l.f., True Religion and Dr. Squatch. But what about the night after getting ready, when the makeup goes down the drain, the clothes go in the laundry and all that’s left are memories of the evening?"
Across socials, Dove has helped push the campaign to go viral by encouraging consumers to share user-generated content featuring their own, “Unready for Anything,” moments.
Liquid Death: Safe for Work
Liquid Death is known for its edgy branding and marketing. The brand’s subversive Super Bowl ad highlights how their carbonated drinks are "Safe for Work" by featuring a series of professionals drinking their beverages while on the job. Their lineup of professionals includes a selection of high-risk, high-responsibility professions including surgeons, pilots, judges, referees, police officers and school bus drivers.
The backing track sings: “Drink on the job, everyone’s drinking on the job,” emulating the style of a 90s beer commercial.
Here Liquid Death carefully walks the tightrope between one of our favorite viral ad elements — surprise — and shock. Writing for HBR, Thales S. Teixeira says:
"Getting time-crunched viewers to watch a 60-second ad is no small feat, but it won’t necessarily make the ad go viral. Experiments I conducted on my own demonstrate that even though people may enjoy an ad themselves, they won’t always send it to others. In particular, I found that although shock may get people to watch an ad privately, it often works against their desire to share the spot. The solution: surprise, not shock."
The ad ends with the tagline:
“Don’t be scared — it’s just water and iced tea.”
Taco Bell: Big Game Ad
For their 2025 Super Bowl ad, Taco Bell took user-generated content to a whole new level with a celebration of fans — featuring user-generated content snapped in photobooths across their drive-thrus.
As one of the most popular marketing campaigns of the year, the campaign inspired more than 3,000 Taco Bell fans to snap photos using the Live Más Drive-Thru Cams for Taco Bell's 2025 Super Bowl ad. Fans went all out with taco-themed costumes, playful poses, and pet features to try to get their photos featured in Taco Bell’s Big Game commercial.
The ad features a couple attempting to take a photo at a drive-thru, only for Doja Cat to pop up in the background. In response, a Taco Bell employee tells her, "For the last time, no famous people," a playful call to Taco Bell customers to get involved in their Super Bowl ads.
Like many of the commercials on this list, Taco Bell leans into wit, humor and surprise — playfully calling out the celeb-heavy content that dominates the Super Bowl and making customers feel appreciated by noting that the best ads always celebrate fans first.
The strong community the brand has built is a key part of the brand’s successful ad strategy with loyal customers getting involved to generate content, share ads and indirectly stir up brand loyalty and engagement in the run up to the ad’s release.
KFC UK: All Hail Gravy
Gravy is a go-to culinary sauce option in the U.K. with many U.K. KFC customers regularly drenching their chicken and “chips” in the sauce.
As an irreverent love letter to Brits’ gravy love, the ad has over 1,734,246 views online. On their YouTube channel, KFC goes all in on playful irony (Brits’ fave kind of humor) and writes:
“Do you find yourself lost in the woods of modern life?
Fear not, for salvation in sauce is near.
Trust in the thumping sound of the golden egg.
Trust in the liquid gold elixir.
Trust in the divine dunk.
And whisper the sacred words ‘All Hail Gravy’.
Because there’s some things we can still believe in.
Believe In Chicken."
KFC shows a man wandering through a forest, he's then met by a group of cult-like figures who elevate gravy to the level of divine substance. The man is subsequently "baptized" in a lake of gravy — which he rises from as a human-sized chicken nugget.
Playful. Quirky. Self-deprecating. The ad hits all the right notes — the light-heartedly mocking undertones of UK consumers’ love of the sauce stops the ad from moving into the “too obscure,” territory, encouraging engagement and shares.
The Ordinary: Ordinary Eggs
Out-of-the-box campaign concepts are one of the best ways to go viral.
And popular skincare brand The Ordinary did just that by selling, "Ordinarily priced eggs." The ads popped up in their stores in New York City following a shortage of eggs after a bird flu outbreak.
Following the outbreak, delis were selling eggs for a dollar each. The U.S. Department of Agriculture predicted that egg prices could increase by more than 40% throughout the year. In response, The brand jumped on Instagram and wrote “We heard NYC needed eggs,” sharing a photo of a carton of eggs branded with its logo.
True to their brand identity, built on making high-quality skincare ingredients like retinol and AHA affordable to the “ordinary” consumer — the brand delighted consumers with an original campaign idea that mirrored their brand values. Campaign ideas that blend creativity and deliver a sense of surprise and delight with the comforting familiarity of a brand’s core values is one of the most predictable ways to go viral.
While some consumers felt the brand’s move was a poorly-thought-out stunt. Others celebrated the brand’s creativity. For better or worse, the controversy and conflict in consumers’ perceptions further added to its virality.
“The fact that it takes a beauty brand to provide affordable groceries is sad. But I'm sure a lot of people are thankful & happy! Hopefully, people purchase them that truly cannot afford the inflation cost and don't end up just an aesthetic piece from already wealthy influencers (sic),” said Justin Spracklin (@maximumskin) on Instagram.
An Instagram user with the handle @pollatkathryn said: “This is amazing marketing. I had to check if it was April 1st for a second. It’s not which makes me love this even more. On brand with your price point business model. Well done. We like creativity (sic).”
Viral moments present great opportunities for CPG and QSR brands to translate a large hit of brand awareness and engagement into sales and long-term brand lift. But to do so effectively, brands need to have a strong strategy for turning their organic reach into sales.
The most obvious benefit of a viral moment is the huge increase in brand awareness and reach that viral content can deliver — bringing your brand to millions of new prospects.
In certain cases, viral content can directly impact your sales. Say you’re a QSR brand and you include a limited-time offer alongside a QR code with your content. The buzz around your content and featured product can directly translate into sales that you can track.
Take Chili's viral Triple Dipper TikTok trend which racked up over 200 million views across the platform. From October to December of the same year, the bar and grill chain experienced a 31% same-store sales growth.
The franchise expertly capitalized on sales further by bringing out a seasonal, limited-edition Chili's Triple Dipper product line — which featured a range of consumer goods like bedding, socks and eye masks that ranged from $10-$100.
But in many cases, the impact on your brand and sales won’t be as direct and easy to measure. Much of the power of viral content lies in its ability to unconsciously or consciously influence consumers to choose your products over your competitors’.
To build a strategy that turns viral moments into tangible brand lift and sales, you need to integrate virality into a wider omnichannel strategy that strategically uses content to support and push the customer journey forward at every touchpoint.
Take these hits of brand awareness and use them as accelerators, repurpose your viral content across channels and connect them to the next step in your customer journey. Bake viral moments into your strategy and audit your most successful content to see how you can tie it into driving brand loyalty and sales. Whether that means repurposing your viral content into memes, encouraging user generated content with unique hashtags, launching a limited-edition product line à la Chilly's, or making sure your viral content is optimized with CTAs.
Brand safety is another one of the main issues with viral content you need to account for. When your content goes viral, you lose control of what happens next. Maybe your content will be misinterpreted and remixed. You also run the risk of negative virality — unintentionally going viral for bad marketing, doing something offensive or damaging user-generated content.
As a QSR or CPG brand, you need to carefully monitor brand mentions and consumer sentiment and manage consumer perceptions after your content goes live. It’s also important to develop a detailed crisis management plan that covers stakeholder responsibilities, escalation procedures and potential legal action in the case of negative virality or loss of content control.
Chasing variality for virality’s sake can undermine your brand in the long run. Take the use of "diverse," or “provocative,” marketing that often drives virality. Public Library of Science says:
“Notably, posts that reached a very wide audience—went viral—more quickly were more likely to be associated with negative or controversial reactions among users, regardless of topic. Furthermore, posts with audiences that grew more slowly were associated with more positive reactions.”
Marketing decisions must be tied into your wider brand values and brand identity. Long-term growth, customer engagement and loyalty also needs to be considered equal to or over instant, viral success and temporary brand reach.
"Ben & Jerry’s often goes viral for its unflinching use [of its] brand and global reach to champion causes” — and earned a record $450 million in revenue last year because, unlike other businesses that take political stances to appeal to their target audience, the (mostly) independent ice cream brand has proven that its primary priority is social justice and not productivity or profits."
While controversy and shock value used to make a lot of content viral, audiences now find common shock tactics boring simply because they’re used to seeing these moves from brands. As we can see from our list, much of what makes an ad go viral is its ability to connect with emotion — whether that’s humor, surprise or awe.
Ultimately, viral content is all about creating original content with an authentic voice. Social media algorithms and content moderation policies limit the reach and visibility or content it views as inauthentic, promotional, overly branded or too commercial. In the words of D4 Music Marketing, we’ve been conditioned to tune out any content that looks like an ad — and social media algorithms are now taking on the mental load for us.
