How we got 75,000 people to watch ice cream melt (and what it meant for content strategy).
2016. Facebook Live had just launched. I was running social at Norton Security.
It was a scorching hot day, so naturally, I grabbed a Cornetto, a Calippo, and whatever else was melting in the office fridge. I then lined them up outside, hit ‘Go Live’ and asked the most ridiculous question imaginable:
‘Which one’s going to collapse first?’
Yep, it had absolutely nothing to do with antivirus software, but 75,000 people still watched live. Peak concurrent viewers hit about 10,000. People were second-screening it for hours, just leaving it running on their computers.
Turns out, I’d accidentally created the perfect curiosity gap. Your brain hates unresolved questions, so once you’re invested in finding out which ice cream dies first, you’re trapped until you get the answer.
Add social proof (seeing thousands of others equally invested in this absurd experiment) and suddenly watching dairy products deteriorate becomes a legitimate use of your Tuesday afternoon.
The modern application isn’t ‘go viral with random stuff.’ It’s understanding that curiosity beats clever every time. Make people wonder what happens next. Then actually show them.
The ice cream content sold more Norton licenses that week than our previous month of ‘educational’ security posts combined.
Sometimes the best content strategy is just admitting you have no idea what’s going to happen either.
