Social Files by Tommy Clark
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🗃 Antimetal’s Viral Marketing Playbook (2M+ views in 24 hours)

🗃 Antimetal’s Viral Marketing Playbook (2M+ views in 24 hours)

How to make a startup launch go so viral you break your demo booking page

Tommy Clark
April 08, 2024

Hey!

Welcome to Social Files—your no-BS guide to generating demand for your B2B product using social & content.

I’m going to spare the long-winded intro today. I just want you to get into today’s deep dive—it’s my favorite piece I’ve written this year.

It details the story of how Antimetal executed a launch that went so viral it broke their demo booking page.

Lot of gems for you to save from this one. Let’s dive in.

🔎 DEEP DIVE

Antimetal’s Viral Marketing Playbook

How to make a startup launch go so viral you break your demo booking page

Ever see a marketing campaign so good you wish you’d thought of it?

I haven’t felt that way in a while. Especially in B2B. That changed last week.

Antimetal—an AI-powered command and control system for AWS—had its official launch last week. And it took over the X timeline.

They generated millions of impressions for the product launch. Even crazier? They literally broke their demo booking page because the launch drove so much traffic.

There’s a lot for startup marketers to learn from this execution. So I dove deep over the past weekend to lay it all out for you in a savable format that you can refer back to when mapping out your own social launches.

A few topics I’ll run you through today:

Why startups are ditching brand accounts and opting for founder-led launches
The importance of crafting an A+ primary launch asset for your social campaign (and how Antimetal nailed it)
How Antimetal created an echo chamber in their corner of the internet using pizza, Tech Twitter influencers, & inside jokes

Oh. And at the end, I’ll give you a cheat sheet that you can use the next time your company has a big launch coming up.

Shall we?

Some quick context.

What even is Antimetal?

According to their X bio, Antimetal is an AI-powered command and control system for AWS. The TLDR is that it’s a SaaS that helps companies save time and money managing their AWS infrastructure.

They officially launched the product and unveiled a new site last week, on April 4th. The launch did numbers on social. What kind of numbers, you ask?

As of Sunday, April 7, the official launch tweets have a combined 1.54M views. The exact numbers have likely gone up since then. Point stays the same—the launch popped off.

On top of that, another 2M+ views were generated using a genius influencer motion (more on that in a few paragraphs).

I kid you not. I couldn’t go more than a few scrolls at a time on launch day without running into a tweet from the founder, an influencer, or someone talking about the launch.

So… what can we learn?

Founder-led launches are the future.

I noticed something interesting when I was doing research for this essay.

All of the company comms for the launch were routed through the founder’s X account.

Antimetal didn’t post a single, native piece of content from its company account during launch day. They did use the company account to repost related content & drop a few replies, but that’s about it.

Founder-led launches aren’t a new idea. All of Airbnb’s launch comms come from Brian Chesky’s account. OpenAI leans heavily on Sam Altman during their launches (like the recent Sora launch).

Tech companies, whether unicorn or early-stage startup, are coming to the realization that going direct through the founder for comms works better.

The lesson for you: if you have a launch coming up, focus your energy on founder content.

And a corollary: start building your founder’s social presence before you need it for a launch.

Nail the primary launch asset.

Every launch should have a pillar piece of content.

For Antimetal, this was their launch video. I’d recommend taking the 46 seconds to go watch it, here.

A few attributes to consider:

I. Founder-led.

Not going to belabor this point. But notice how the primary asset for the launch was posted from Matt’s account, not the company’s.

II. Social native.

So many tech companies ruin launches and major announcements (like a fundraise) by making the primary launch asset a link to a Tech Crunch article. Links kill reach on social. They go against user behavior. Antimetal’s launch post was done in a way that allowed the audience to understand everything needed without clicking off platform.

III. Strong visual.

The launch video is A+. It uses familiar footage from pop culture.

It has quick cuts to keep a social audience engaged. And most importantly, it’s clear what the value prop of Antimetal is. The product saves you time and money managing AWS.

VI. Clear and concise copywriting.

The post lets the video do most of the talking. But again, the copy clearly highlights the problem, the solution, and how Antimetal’s solution is unique (”We’re solving this with AI”).

Creating an echo chamber with influencers.

Consumer brands with physical products will create hype for a launch by sending their product to popular influencers in their niche.

Wouldn’t it be cool to run the same playbook for SaaS?

Yeah. But how do you “gift” a product that isn’t tangible? You can’t package software in an aesthetic box and ask an influencer to include it in a GRWM video.

Some tech companies send users physical awards for hitting milestones on the product. YouTube sends you a golden play button for hitting 100K subscribers. Shopify sends you an award for hitting 100,000 orders.

Great idea. But also not on the table for this particular product.

Antimetal’s solution was insane. And it was genius.

Alongside the launch, they ran a guerrilla marketing campaign and delivered 1000+ boxes of pizza to startups & VCs in San Fransisco and New York.

The boxes where branded with the name “Antimetal Pizza Co.” My personal favorite part?

The tagline—”Slices as a Service.” A play on “software as a service.” Like I said, so good I wish I came up with it.

As the boxes were delivered, the posts started hitting the timeline.

The pizza was a smart play because it was both high-volume and high-creativity.

These founders and VCs weren’t expecting to get a pizza delivered to their doorstep. Classic surprise and delight (unless you're lactose intolerant, like me).

The branding on the box was also thoughtfully done, and something “worth” taking a photo of for social.

But each individual pizza isn’t expensive. This allowed Antimetal to run this influencer motion with a high volume of recipients—increasing the amount of posts that hit the timeline.

High-creativity → people want to post about it because it’s unique

High-volume → each individual gift unit is cheap enough give away enough to trigger tons of social posts

The flurry of pizza posts going live all had a trail leading back to Matt’s pillar post (the video). The entire motion looks something like this (we love a good Miro board):

One stat stood out to me: the “Antimetal Pizza Co.” announcement post netted ~2X the impressions of the launch video post alone.

Marketing is a game of attention. Savvy consumer companies get this. Red Bull is a marketing company that happens to sell energy drinks. You know the deal.

Too many B2B tech companies box themselves into what “makes sense” for their product.

Imagine if Antimetal would have launched with a webinar series on AWS cost savings. That would “make sense,” right?

Yeah. I’d also rather watch paint dry.

My point is, B2B doesn’t have to be boring. And don’t come at me with the whole “but what about business results??” angle.

The launch drove so much traffic to their calendar link that the booking page crashed.

So yeah, I’d say the viral launch drove business results.

It’s the little things.

The best social campaigns require a healthy dose of perfectionism.

The little things—the obscure references, the inside jokes, the minor copy tweaks—can be the difference between a certified banger and a total flop.

Antimetal nailed the “little things.”

Exhibit A.

The handwritten note that came with the pizza sent to tech Twitter creator, Alex Cohen, read:

“Sorry to hear you were laid off from so many companies recently. We wanted to throw you a pizza party to cheer you up. Here’s one pizza for every company that’s laid you off (OpenAI, Twitter, Lyft, Google, Twitter again, and Wendy’s)”.

The note alluded to shitposts like this one, and this one, and this one from Alex, where he pretended to be laid off from big tech companies for instituting absurd features.

Exhibit B.

Soren Iverson is a content creator who posts hilarious concepts of software features that don’t exist but should.

During the Antimetal launch, he posted this concept of a “DoorDash option to upsell B2B SaaS at checkout.”

I don’t know if this was a planned partnership. If it was, smart play. If it wasn’t, honestly good for them.

Exhibit C.

On the notes that were paired with pizzas delivered to VCs, the PS line of the copy reads: “P.S. - This is basically a bribe for introductions to your portfolio companies: [email protected].”

Why I love this:

A) Adds a touch of contextual humor to the note.

B) Well-executed shameless plug that could land Antimetal a few net new intros.

C) The note gets posted all over social along with the email address, netting them both more launch impressions and potential inbound leads.

These 3 examples nailing the “little things” show how a deep understanding of the corner of social media your company operates in can set your social content apart.

Along with founder-led comms, this helps strengthen the connection between company and community on social. Your startup feels embedded into the community, not like it’s talking at the community. Big difference.

Executing this is hard. It doesn’t “scale.” And that’s the point.

The creativity of the pizza activation was the 80%. The subtle references and attention to detail within the activation carried it the last 20%.

Your cheat sheet.

So, you skimmed to the end of the article. I won’t judge. I do it too. Here’s a quick-and-dirty list of the actionable stuff you can use in your next launch:

Plan for your launch comms to come from your founder. Still, have something go out from your company account, but you will get more distribution from your founder.
Take the time to craft a primary asset for the launch. In most cases, a launch video will suffice. Give your marketing team time to coordinate production. Make this social native—users should be able to understand everything about the launch without needing to click off-platform to “learn more.”
Plan an adjacent social campaign that’s crafted with the intention of maximizing eyeballs. Keep it relevant enough that the attention is high-quality, but don’t constrain your creativity to what SaaS companies “normally” do. I’m not going to tell you to launch your own pizza shop, because you shouldn’t. But get creative, okay?
For this adjacent campaign, consider how you can tap influencers in your corner of the internet. Make it easy for them to post about the launch (think about the branded pizza boxes, handwritten notes, etc.).
Allocate extra attention to detail to planning your influencer motion and your core social content. How can you refine the hook? How can you make the content even more shareable?

I’m not going to promise you’ll net millions of impressions using this. You probably won’t. But I am confident that these pillars can me your next product launch more effective.

The simple act of taking more than a single, 45-minute meeting on the day before launch to plan a social campaign with intention sets you apart from 95% of SaaS companies (source: trust me).

Okay. I hope this was helpful. I’d save this piece to refer back to whenever you need inspiration for a launch campaign on social.

Also, just want to give a huge shout to Matt and the Antimetal team for nailing this launch. It’s always exciting to see B2B companies willing to take risks with their marketing. I suspect we’ll see more of this in the years to come.

B2B doesn’t have to be boring.