Who would have guessed that Zombies would turn out to be such excellent brand advocates? Recently, Sears.com created an Avatar called “ZombieShopper” on Twitter to promote their Halloween social media campaign.  It was a great attempt at revitalizing their brand to speak to a younger audience.  They succeeded at creating a lot of buzz from the campaign.  Even though it was a short-lived campaign, the results seem strong enough to hint that there are opportunities to continue the dialogue – even if Halloween is over. The question remains – will Sears continue to innovate and build on the attention that they received?  Sears.com has a unique opportunity to continue to ride the success of the “Zombie Shopper” campaign as popularity for vampires dies out and zombie interest rises in pop culture – for example via the mega movie hit Zombieland and the new AMC TV show The Walking Dead.

Here’s a review of the campaign’s online buzz to date – plus suggestions for keeping it alive:

(1) The Avatar “zombieshopper” Twitter account received almost 1,000 followers in the month that the campaign ran in October.
Their actual reach was over 8,000 followers according to TweetReach: http://tweetreach.com/reach?q=zombieshopper. That’s pretty amazing to get such a quick surge of followers in such a short period of time for an unknown brand/Twitter username. No Tweets have been sent since Halloween – did the Zombie just die?  Why wouldn’t he continue to speak with us and live on? As I mentioned earlier, zombie TV shows like AMC’s The Walking Dead are gaining in popularity.  This is a huge opportunity for Sears to continue the conversation with ZombieShopper aficionados.

(2) According to Google Insights for Search, the campaign received a 525% higher search volume relative to the search volume for the shopping category overall on Google during the peak of the campaign – just before Halloween on October 25, 2010. But search volume died off, no pun intended, because Sears didn’t continue the dialogue after October 31st.

3)  Over 41,400 blogs and articles have been written about the campaign – based on recent search results for the term “Sears Zombie Shopper Campaign” on Google. Perhaps “ZombieShopper” should also have a blog to talk about what happened on Halloween night and where he went afterwards?

(4) Their uploaded YouTube viral videos received almost 200,000 views to date via their YouTube channel. Could they continue the videos to show what happened to the fitness instructor?  Where did the zombies go after Halloween?

I am aware that some of my suggestions are purely selfish as I am already missing the Tweets from @ZombieShopper. Hopefully, his Tweets will be resurrected and we can continue our Twitter relationship. Please share your thoughts and insights about this campaign.

Here’s a link to my favourite viral video for the Sears.com “Zombie Shopper” campaign: