To maximize the impact of community engagement, Wiz offers tangible, status-enhancing rewards. After completing a difficult hacking challenge, users receive a custom-made certificate of excellence. This praises their skill and gives them a professionally valuable artifact to share, turning a single engagement into widespread, user-driven promotion.
Related Insights
Marketers should create temporary, high-energy events rather than long-term, low-engagement communities. A time-bound "24-hour vault unlock" or a 30-day pop-up group generates urgency and a fear of missing out, driving significant participation that permanent online spaces often fail to sustain, even in "boring" industries.
A repeatable framework for creating viral stunts is to take a familiar concept—like a toy store, meditation app, or musical—and create the "world's first" version specifically for your target audience. The inherent absurdity of a "meditation app for CISOs" or a "dating app for accountants" generates curiosity and makes the campaign highly shareable.
The key to Robinhood's viral referral loop wasn't just offering variable stock rewards. Conversion skyrocketed only after they added a step requiring new users to affirmatively 'claim' their free stock, turning a passive reward into an active first engagement and driving user activation.
To amplify word-of-mouth, Duolingo identified existing sharing behavior by temporarily tracking user screenshots. They found hotspots like streak milestones and funny challenges, then invested in designers to make these moments even more shareable.
To uncover the "secretly-held beliefs" for their humor campaigns, Wiz's marketing team actively monitors niche online communities where their audience speaks freely. By identifying recurring pain points and in-jokes on Reddit, they source authentic insights that fuel a content strategy that deeply resonates with their target CISOs.
Instead of vanity usage metrics, Wiz focuses on a core customer outcome: helping customers resolve all critical risks. They gamified this by creating the 'Zero Criticals Club.' This metric proves the product is driving real organizational change, a key indicator of value and stickiness that is hard to replace.
Gamma's AI launch succeeded not just because of the product, but because they intentionally crafted a "spicy" and provocative tweet designed to spark debate. This drew engagement from influential figures like Paul Graham, massively amplifying their reach beyond what a standard announcement could achieve.
When launching creative campaigns, Wiz uses unique domains (e.g., Cisotopia.com) rather than company subdomains. This makes the project feel like an independent, fun creation, not a direct marketing play. The intentional disconnect from the corporate brand piques interest and makes people more willing to engage and share.
Modern marketers often add friction (QR codes, redemptions) to track data or cut costs. This is a fatal flaw in collectible campaigns. The value is in the tangible, immediate reward. Embedding the physical item directly into the product experience is crucial for success and avoids user drop-off.
