Christmas and the ABCs of Social Media Advertising Sandra Gionas - The Agenda
go to original December 3, 2012

It all began in 2010 as an online Christmas card, a way to say thank you to Facebook fans and customers. When Jennifer Blakeley arranged for a community choir to flash mob the Seaway Mall food court in Welland, Ontario, she never expected anything more than a charming Christmas carol video to upload to her photography business website.

But the Christmas Food Court Flash Mob went viral and the Hallelujahs rang out beyond Alphabet Photography's homepage:



“Our website went from 4,000 hits a day to 60,000 hits,” said Blakeley, owner of the letter art-inspired online business. “It was pandemonium. It brought our website down for the first few hours."

At 39 million hits and counting, Christmas Food Court Flash Mob remains the most-watched flash mob online. So how do you top that?

“This year, I was looking to do something different. Flash mobs are over and not newsworthy anymore,” said Blakeley. She was at home when she got her next idea.

“I walked around the workshop the next day and started hitting things, just common objects to get a sense of the sounds we could create.” In eight weeks, Blakeley and her husband Sam, Alphabet Photography’s webmaster, created this:



The original flash mob video led to interviews and mentions on every major media outlet in North America. “A few days ago, I was on CNN for the second time,” she gushes. “It’s so rewarding to have it happen again. Everyone thought the first time, it was a fluke, a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It has been amazing.”

When you are an online business, you live and die by links and clicks.

“I don’t think you need a big budget to have big success,” Blakeley says. When she set up her business in 2006, she advertised in a daily online newsletter and even took out a $15,000 ad for a business card-size space in Oprah's O Magazine. She also spent a lot of money on Google Ads.

Social media was a small part of the strategy back then, after a customer created a fan page for Alphabet Photography on Facebook.

Blakeley went on to hire an American public relations firm, which led to media appearances on CityLine and The Tyra Banks Show, among others. But the attention from the two viral videos has allowed her company to grow from just her, her husband, a camera, and a passport, to a company with a staff of 60 and $1.4 million in sales last year.

Not bad for the 33-year-old, who juggles her time between her young daughter and running the 3,500 square-foot warehouse in her hometown of Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Musical Interruption - Carol of the Bells is climbing close to 100,000 views in the 11 days it has been posted online. There are no plans for the next one - so far.

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