File this under: “Smart Businesses that Know How to Take Advantage of a Viral Trend.”
On Thursday, a conversation about a color of a dress sparked an Internet sensation. It started simply: A woman posted a picture of the dress to Reddit in which she asked people’s opinions about its color. Was it black and blue or white and gold?
Then…BuzzFeed got a hold of it.
In a press release late Thursday, BuzzFeed said, “The BuzzFeed post about THE DRESS is breaking the Internet and setting new traffic records for us. It drew more visitors to our site at one time than ever before. At one point tonight (ET) more than 670,000 people were on BuzzFeed.com simultaneously, 500K of those on mobile, and half of those people were reading the dress post. Over 10M people have read the post so far, and almost 900K have taken our poll.”
So a bunch of other smart companies jumped onto the bandwagon. Here are some of our favorites:
* Roman Originals: The British dress maker immediately took to Twitter and other social media to claim the dress. The company even renamed it on its website as #TheDress. And we’d guess they’re selling out of them and other styles because of this fast move.
* Lego: The children’s toys (hey, let’s be honest, we all play with them, regardless of age) jumped on the bandwagon in a fun way. The company posted a photo of two female minifigures in “the dress” with the comment: “White and gold… black and blue? We found a way around science – you can have both! #thedress #whiteandgold #blackandblue #dressgate
* Rachel Zoe: This fashion-forward stylist to the stars has a very smart social-media strategy that gets people to click on her links all of the time. She posted an update claiming that she “solved #TheDress dilemma” once and for all. So, of course people clicked. Score one for Zoe.
* Stella & Dot: The high-end jewelry company put out a photo as to how it would use its fashionable jewelry to style “the Dress.” The picture actually worked well because it highlighted how well its goods go with any outfit, whether it is a $77 dress or a pair of jeans.
