14 DAY TRIAL // Kim Kardashian and Paper Magazine set a very high goal for the cover of the issue in which she unveiled her famous (and now-oily) curvaceous figure: #BreakTheInternet. They came very close to that too, but they were no match for Justin Bieber and his latest endorsement deal, with Calvin Klein underwear.
Justin Bieber, once everybody’s favorite cutie pop star, is now a man – and his transition to adulthood has been handled wonderfully with this campaign, in which he became the face and body of Calvin Klein.
If there ever was any doubt that he pretty much rules the Internet, as compared to his fellow celebrities, the success of the campaign should put it to rest.
Justin Bieber and CK killed it online
Women’s Wear Daily has the figures that show the massive impact Justin Bieber’s CK ads had on social media, but suffice it to say that they generated more attention than any other celebrity endorsement in a very long time.
#BreakTheInternet was huge when the Paper cover with Kim came out, but Justin’s #MyCalvins was mentioned 5 times more: on Twitter alone, it got about 1.6 million mentions in just 48 hours. To this day, thanks to the recent hilarious spoof of the ad on Saturday Night Live, that hashtag is still very popular.
“As of Friday, the campaign’s various posts elicited 4.4 million interactions on Twitter, averaging 74,200 interactions per post, according to the brand. On the afternoon of Jan. 9, the campaign became the top Facebook trend — no small feat, considering the social network has 865 million active daily users,” WWD says.
The Calvin Klein social media accounts have now a combined 3.6 million followers more thanks to the campaign, but the accounts of model Lara Stone (who was featured with Bieber in some of the ads) and photographers Alas and Piggott also received a considerable boost in follow-ship after the unveiling.
A recipe for guaranteed success
WWD notes that it’s not that surprising that the campaign was a hit online, even though the figures tallied are jaw-dropping: the marketing was top notch, and everything was planned very carefully.
Justin Bieber has one of the biggest followings online, so the teasers and hints dropped on social media struck a chord with them, helping to build interest for the actual announcement. When that came, the Beliebers did the rest of the work, because they had already been worked up into a frenzy.
Controversy also helped drive awareness for the campaign: shortly after the big unveiling, a photo purporting to be from before Photoshop “leaked” online, hinting that Calvin Klein had drawn most of Bieber’s body in post-production, from the size of his crotch to the definition of his muscles.
Again, the Beliebers did the heavy lifting with nay-sayers, trying to convince them that this was not the case, but CK and Bieber too stepped up to deny the allegations. The “before” photo was eventually proved to be a fake.
With other celebrities, like Ellen DeGeneres and Miley Cyrus, chiming in on the controversy and the actual campaign, thus spreading the word on it to their millions of followers, and the SNL spoof, the only way Justin’s partnership could not have been a smashing hit is if the Internet actually broke and there was no one around to fix it.