Terminix is the world's largest pest-control company, but like many category leaders with broad footprints, it sometimes struggles to stand out due to rivals who've aggressively staked themselves to narrower slices of pest control, like "science" or "death." To counter that, the brand wanted to raise its profile by engaging consumers nationwide in a compelling and culturally relevant way that reinforced key services. Of particular importance was elevating its relatively young mosquito business, which had lower awareness than other services.
We pursued a strategy of "exterminating pop culture," making Terminix the hero in the fight against pests in the sports and entertainment worlds. Thanks to insights gleaned from aggressive social listening and trend monitoring, we found a bunch, including Shia LaBeouf's rattail (we put out a $10,000 charitable offer for him to cut it off) and Boston Bruins goalie Tuuka Raask having a wasp species named after him (we offered exterminting services for life to the next player who scored on him).
But no opportunity was bigger than the social-media sensation that is SyFy's "Sharknado" franchise. The annual Sharknado films are a pulpy, social-media sensation. And their early summer run dates coincide with the start of mosquito season. So Terminix decided to jump in by creating a two-minute digital-video spoof called "Mosquitonado," which showed how mosquitoes, the world's deadliest animals, are actually scarier than sharks. We even cast Sharknado star Tara Reid for a cameo.
The video drove loads of earned-media coverage and conversation, putting Terminix –Terminix!!! – in outlets such as People, Huffington Post, Perez Hilton and Fast Company just in time for the start of summer mosquito season. In total, there were more than 40 placements totaling more than 150 million earned-media impressions.
And the film had legs in social media, where it drove an additional 14 million overwhelmingly positive social-media impressions. Despite zero paid-media support, "Mosquitonado" was viewed more than 80,000 times online, and the attention it received raised awareness of the company's two-year-old mosquito-control business to the same level of its legacy services like termite removal.
Most importantly, the sustained reach and awareness from these efforts helped Terminix sales grow 5.1% during the first nine months of 2015, significantly outpacing the 3.7% growth in the year-earlier period.
