All publicity is not good publicity.

I’m sure when Peloton released what they thought was a cute, holiday oriented showcase of their aspirational fitness product, that they had nothing to look forward to but increased sales this holiday season. Unfortunately, they misread the tone of the commercial and made the viral ad joke of the holidays. Immediately, the ad was skewered across the social media landscape and Peloton’s stock price dropped over 9 percent. While most people found humor in the ad’s tone-deaf nature and conflicting emotional range in the acting, one company saw an opportunity to capitalize and generate easy viral marketing: Aviation Gin.

Stay ready so you don’t have to get ready.

While you can’t bank on opportunities such as this to come around all the time, if you have a clear brand voice and adaptable workflows, it’s easier to exploit marketing opportunities when they do drop in your lap. With Aviation Gin, they had all these factors in play. With access to the social capital, production expertise and real capital of investor Ryan Reynolds, they were able to reap invaluable marketing value and word-of-mouth for a fraction of its real value. In all, the spot cost them 100k for production and the overall time-frame between the release of Peloton’s ad and Aviation gin’s spot was 15 days. This 100k spot has put Aviation Gin’s name in the same convo with Peloton (an $8.1 billion company) and garnered them over 4M views on Youtube, their most-watched ad yet. That combined with the incalculable word-of-mouth and brand awareness makes the ROI of this move astronomical. But everyone doesn’t have the access to the resources of millionaires to capitalize on the mistakes of billionaires, so what can we learn from this for our growing businesses?

Define your brand.

A lot of people only think about a name, logo, and maybe brand colors when creating their business. I know it’s a lot starting up a business, especially when you are the only one doing all the work, but defining your branding is crucial for any effective marketing. If you aren’t sure of the message you’re presenting potential customers, you cannot expect them to receive your message in a way that makes them want to become a customer. Your brand voice must be on point at all times. This was key to Aviation Gin’s viral marketing. They already established an irreverent, humorous tone with their previous advertising, so it was right on brand for them to drop a quick-reaction spot poking fun at Peloton’s ad. If their brand voice was oriented differently, they would have had a try-hard flop on their hands. Defining your brand’s voice and message will make all aspects of your marketing journey easier.

Streamline your workflows.

Another key to being able to move fast in the marketplace is having clearly defined operating procedures for your business. Day-to day operations can be very time consuming so when it comes to other tasks there may be a mindset of “however it gets done”. But trust, documenting your workflows and having the proper resources at hand are extremely important. You may not have a full marketing agency at hand, but you can have a list of freelancers you can go to when you have a need outside your scope of skills. You may not have a full staff to own tasks, but you can outline your workflows and best practices (Google Docs is your friend) so that when opportunity strikes, you don’t have to think from square one. You can delegate and communicate with confidence and speed since you have everything documented already. Time is of the essence and you’ll be prepared to strike fast when your viral marketing opportunity (or any opportunity) hits.

Let me know how you plan on being prepared for opportunity in the comments or hit me up on twitter @recruitzero!