The Day Indigo Went Viral “Stay on Your Feet”

Stay on your feet. On its own an innocuous enough phrase and a sound bit of advice to toddlers from any discerning parent. However  used with the frequency of  ‘and/the/it’  from the mouth of Ray Wilkins during commentary of an internationally televised Champions League football encounter it has transformed into an international phenomenon.  The third biggest topic trending globally on the night of the match. The talk of the town and easily overshadowing the 4-0 loss Spurs suffered at the hands of Real Madrid.

For us at Indigo it didn’t really have any significance initially. A couple of us had watched the match the night before, had noted Wilkins’ commentary, Adam even turned the sound off. No biggie, bit of office banter.

Then the trigger event happened.

We got a tip from a friend of Jo’s that Vernon K was looking for a t-shirt printing company on twitter. After further ‘investigation’ it turned out he was a massive advocate of #stayonyourfeet, as was Robbie Savage and the initial instigator himself, Rio Ferdinand. However Vernon, on hearing about us, tweeted us directly asking if we could help him out. This then set off an unforgettable couple of hours for Indigo Clothing.

We got our graphic designer Adam onto the case straight away, a ‘Stay on Your Feet’ design was mocked up within the hour and we suddenly realized the nature of the internet phenomenon we were dealing with. It seemed no one could utter a single phrase on twitter without mentioning the catchphrase. We setup a web address and I wrote a blog about stay on your feet t-shirts. This was precisely what our new ‘Indigo2Go’ service was built for, printing reactionary t-shirts for the latest trends. We had been looking for a way to launch it with enough buzz, and without meaning to we had found it. And so had thousands of others.

As soon as the design was up on the website we tweeted Vernon K who said he would love one and, one phone call later, they were on their way. However with 300,000 followers on twitter it was inevitable that this news would snowball, and we weren’t about to stop the momentum. With the number of hits on the Indigo2Go website going through the roof we knew we had a ‘monster’ (as they say in Hollywood) on our hands. So we started tweeting every celebrity who we knew would find it right down their street (perhaps not quite down Lord Sugar’s) and really discovered what it feels like to be writing the crest of a twitter wave. Cue whoops and cheesy jokes in the office about ‘going viral’ and operating in ‘real time’.

Whilst thrilled with the traffic it was bringing through we felt this story had legs beyond just the digital sphere and started approaching various national press publications to see if there was any interest. It wasn’t exactly headline setting news but there was definitely interest stemming from the celebrity associations of the story. Details were noted down and we waited for the following morning.

That night was also the second round of matches in the Champions League with Rio ‘stay on your feet’ Ferdinand facing up to the Chelsea strike forces. Two incidences occurred that night that we knew would help our cause. The first was an incident late in the match where Torres went down far too easy in the box, £50m transfer flop or no he really should have just stayed on his feet. And judging from Rio’s reaction, he agreed. However things went one better for #stayonyour feet when in the post match interview Ferdinand slipped in the phrase without missing a beat or cracking into even a hint of a smile.

Cue pandemonium Rio worship on twitter.

As if things couldn’t get better, Jo then sent a text round saying that we had made the Metro newspaper the next morning. Incredibly I was actually excited for a sweaty 45 minute commute for the first (and I suspect last) time in my life.

The next morning I quickly grabbed a paper and flicked through to the sports section. Never has a 10cmx10cm square of press clipping given so much joy (and everyone around me on the tube oblivious to it).

In less than 24 hours we had grabbed a story, printed a t-shirt, had celebrity endorsement AND were now being featured in national press. THIS must be what it means to go viral.

Getting into the office I was then notified that Robbie Savage had purchased one of our t-shirts overnight, but such was the nature of the past 24 hours that this already felt like normal news. What didn’t feel so normal was the fact that Alex had sent one of our t-shirts to sport.co.uk who said they would try and get the man himself, Ray Wilkins, to sign it. As if.

Things began to slip into some semblance of normality for a couple of hours (well apart from mid-morning exclamations for every retweet) to the extent that even the previous day started to feel a bit surreal.  However just when we thought the momentum might be sliding a little sport.co.uk tweeted us saying Ray had both found the t-shirt funny and had signed it. Wow. I imagine the feeling we experienced were the equivalent of a Belieber being able to pin up a strand of Bieber’s own hair to their bedroom poster. But better.

And in a way there was no further we could take #stayonyourfeet personally, it has taken on a life of its own with everyone now trying to slip it into office meetings, class lessons and radio broadcasts. For Indigo it has been quite a wave to ride, hopefully the first of many. For just 24 hours it felt good to be part of something global, launch our Indigo2Go service and tweet Vernon K.

Thanks Ray, we’re definitely staying on our feet.

Related posts:

1. Win “Stay On Your Feet” T-Shirt Signed by Ray Wilkins