This is how viral marketing really works | Delbert Ty (Coffee Meets Bagel)

What's the key to creating a viral marketing campaign? Meet Delbert Ty, CMO at Coffee Meets Bagel, a popular dating app that sets itself apart by courting only those interested in serious relationships.

Before joining CmB, Delbert worked as Head of Marketing at Circles.Life - a Singaporean telco - where he grew revenue to 9 figures in 5 years.

And even before that he worked at Procter & Gamble, where he was responsible for such well-known brands as Duracell, Tide & Pantene.

During his time at these companies Delbert has pulled off quite a few hilarious creative marketing campaigns.

Some of them failed, but others brought lots of new customers and tons of brand awareness.

In our interview, we discussed quite a few of Delbert's viral campaigns and tried to deconstruct what made them successful and how you could replicate that success.

In this episode:

(0:00) Intro

(02:17) Three biggest marketing campaigns


(06:44) Vandalizing a billboard

(11:10) Buying out telco contracts (failed)

(13:10) Coffee Meets Bagel tells users to leave

(16:30) "Free money" from a vending machine

(25:01) The cost (not in $$$) of viral campaigns

(30:10) Courage in viral marketing

(35:43) Setting objectives for viral campaigns

(41:13) Measuring the impact of viral campaigns


(47:20) When bad ideas are actually good ideas

(55:23) Structural elements of a viral campaign

(01:15:07) Physical vs digital creative marketing

(1:22:20) Split between creative marketing and other tasks

(1:24:01) Is viral marketing only for consumer brands?

(1:28:10) Why certain campaigns fail

(1:38:00) The difference between celebrity and brand


(1:47:25) Using AI for creative marketing

(01:51:42) Outro

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Ahrefs Podcast! As always, be sure to like and subscribe (and tell a friend).

Where to find Delbert:

LinkedIn

Website

Where to find Tim:

LinkedIn

X

Website

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Referenced:

Coffee Meets Bagel  @CoffeeMBagel 

Circles.life  @circleslifesg 

Calm app  @calm 

Kanye Super Bowl ad

Coinbase Super Bowl ad

Old Spice  @oldspice 

Drake "God's Plan" music video

Lenny’s Podcast with Lulu Cheng Meservey

Lulu Cheng Meservey

Supermensch

Shep Gordon

Data is Beautiful subreddit

WePay/PayPal stunt

Dan Price/Gravity Payments wages

Coffeezilla:  @Coffeezilla 

Paris Hilton for SodaStream

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Ahrefs Podcast

Host: Tim Soulo

Podcast Producer: Michelle Lindner

Intro Storyboard: Michelle Lindner & Tim Soulo

Intro Video Lead: George Dolgikh

Intro Video Animations: Ilya Yakymchuk

Filmed at: Poddster Studios (Singapore)