CNN had recently re-launched its website with lots more video content. As part of that effort, they unveiled the tagline “I just saw it on CNN.com.” in an attempt to draw attention to and help people uncover the newly reorganized and video-rich content on CNN.com. While the tagline was resonating, they were looking for a bit more oomph behind the marketing efforts. CNN needed to increase buzz, awareness and most importantly traffic to these new videos. They launched a search for an agency that could help them in their task. The Barbarians responded with just the kind of thinking they were looking for and were selected for the assignment.

The premise of our idea was simple. We wanted to add a t-shirt icon next to video-related headlines in the Latest News section of the front page of CNN.com. We made no real mention of the t-shirts other than adding this little icon. We knew that the massive amount of traffic would ensure that a good number of people would click on the icon out of pure curiosity.

We planned to play off of this curiosity two-fold. Once a regular CNN.com user was intrigued by the t-shirt icon they would be simultaneously informed about the videos. Clicking on the icon would lead them to a custom t-shirt shop, which we created in partnership with Spreadshirt. Here you could purchase a t-shirt with the headline on it. The shirts were emblazoned with the “I just saw it on CNN.com” tagline, along with the date and time of the headline. You could also seamlessly launch right into the video on CNN.com at any point in this experience.

Not only would this sort-of-unprecedented marketing effort be sure to get people talking, but it would also tap into a secondary viral marketing effect as people wore the shirts out and about and shared them with their friends or broadcasted their purchase on their Facebook News Feed. People could choose shirts with headlines they were happy about, appalled about, found surreal, or just whimsical.

The program rolled out in full on April 21, 2008 with minimal industry PR. In the next six weeks, we’ve had almost 2 million pageviews, and tons of blog mentions, including leaders such as TechCrunch, PSFK, and 37 Signals, as well as a write up in the New York Times. We’ve also sold a lot of shirts, weirdly, though that was never the real goal. The goal, as we said, was about awareness, and we’ve succeeded roundly on that front.