Intuit is a traditionally conservative, 25-year old financial services company with market-leading products like TurboTax, Quicken, and Quickbooks. How many companies like that launch viral campaigns? Not many. Even still, when the idea of launching a viral marketing campaign arose, rather than dip our toes in the water we decided to jump head first into launching our first campaign - the TaxRap. After all, what goes together better than tax software and rap? No one is better equipped to answer that time-honored question (and get people talking about TurboTax during tax season) than Vanilla Ice!

In January 2007 the TurboTax team launched the “TaxRap” contest. To participate, contestants submitted homemade rap videos about doing their taxes with TurboTax. What was at stake? A grand prize of $25,000 “real chedda,” plus prizes for 1st and 2nd place and “TurboTax Bling” for the top five “Viewer’s Choice” awards. What were the results? Over 500 submitted videos (the top 30 would make any agency green with envy), 3M+ views, 900+ incoming links, 700 blog mentions, 950+ MySpace Friends, 20+ features on TV, increased shelf space for universal search, and an ROI positive campaign.
Link to the TaxRap microsite: http://turbotax.intuit.com/taxrap/

Client: Intuit/TurboTax
Agency: Dailey Interactive
Budget: $250k
Date of Campaign: 1/12/2007
Case Study URL: http://members.cox.net/sethgreenberg/OMMA/turbotax.html

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