What Drives Video Viral ?

This post first appeared in MENG Blend:

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Wouldn’t we all love to have “the viral video” on our brand? Case in point:  Evian’s “skating babies,” a classic of viral earned media, has been viewed over 16 million times on YouTube.

Evian Babies -- What Drove it Viral ?

It’s every CMO’s dream:  low to no cost video that extends reach beyond paid advertising, stirs emotions, and in some cases, even drives sales. It’s a tool that should be in every CMO’s toolkit.

Viral Video Success Formula:  There’s No There There

Alas, the viral video success toolkit looks empty. Why? Unfortunately, there seems to be no success formula for creating successful viral video content. What we do know from the dynamics of viral marketing is that most viral efforts of any kind tend to quickly lose steam and gradually peter out before having any kind of brand impact.

What makes videos go viral beyond the obvious fact that people share them? Who knows. We know plenty about what makes successful advertising—breakthrough, branding, persuasion, etc. But viral video? To paraphrase a famous feminist: there’s just no there there.

Evidence Based Marketing:  Measuring Viral Video

Stage right:  enter evidence based Marketing. A recent study by Ehrenberg-Bass examines the why behind successful (or not) viral video and draws some highly practical and relevant conclusions.

Ehrenberg-Bass studied 400 user-generated videos shared on Facebook. They asked consumers to score each video on different positive (e.g. astonishment, surprise, etc.) and negative (e.g. shock, discomfort, etc.) emotional states. Positive and negative emotional states were scaled as either high arousal (e.g. astonishment, shock, etc.) or low arousal (e.g. surprise, discomfort, etc.). In total, they tested 16 different positive/negative high/low emotional reactions.

The emotional reaction scores for each of the 400 videos were then matched up against the viral success of each of the videos to understand what emotions cause people to share videos.

Viral Video – Key Learnings

1. “Amusing” and “boring” are the most commonly elicited consumer emotions.  Note that these were just the most commonly elicited emotions when consumers were exposed to the videos, and had nothing to do with the propensity for consumers to share the videos.
2. More videos elicited low arousal states than high arousal states.  This makes logical sense; you would not expect most videos to elicit extreme emotional responses, and the data supports this.  “Amusement,” “happiness,” and “boredom” are all examples of non-extreme low arousal states.
3. High arousal state videos are more likely to be shared than low ones. Said differently, the videos that had the most sharing were ones that elicited a more extreme emotional reaction, like “hilarity,” “exhilaration” and “anger.” Low arousal states such as “boredom” and “calmness” spelled bad news for viral video.
4. Positive emotions are better than negative ones.  On average, consumers are more likely to share videos that make them feel positively (e.g. hilarity, exhilaration). However, there are exceptions. While not the norm, negative emotions such as “anger” and “sadness” drive sharing about as well as positive emotions.

Ehrenberg-Bass sums up their findings with the pithy “make em laugh, make em cry.” But most of all, don’t just amuse or bore them !

What To Do ?

Traditional copy testing metrics are insufficient to this new age Marketing tool. And, there are no standard testing services which purport to predict the likelihood of a video going viral to my knowledge. That said, CMO’s can continue to live in the dark or begin thinking about metrics that are predictive of success for video viral sharing.

We need a data based approach to measuring the likely virality of video, along with defined success criteria. Looking for videos that elicit high levels of very strong positive or negative emotions is a good starting point.

Evian Babies -- Making People Happy Drives Videos Viral

Now, back to those skating Evian babies. I don’t know about you, but I find them hilarious and amusing, and most of all, they just make me happy. And that’s why I shared them with you :>).

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Challenging Marketing Orthodoxy: “How Brands Grow” Book Review

Pop quiz !!   Please answer the following questions True or False:

 

True    False

_____  _____   Differentiating our brand is a vital marketing task

_____  _____   Who we compete with depends on the positioning

of our brand image

_____  _____   Mass marketing is dead and is no longer competitive

Seeking Marketing Truth

How did you do? If you answered true to most of these statements, you would be like most Marketers — and be wrong. At least that’s the provocative point of view taken by Professor Byron Sharp, Director of the Ehrenberg–Bass Institute of Marketing Science at The University of South Australia.

Challenging Marketing Orthodoxy

Sometimes a book comes along which challenges many of our most fundamental beliefs about a topic. Such a book is “How Brands Grow” by Dr. Sharp. If you’re familiar with Ehrenberg-Bass, then you know that they’re heavily focused on research and proving with data and analytics how marketing actually works–or doesn’t.  That’s why they have “Science” in their name.

How Brands Grow: Challenging Marketing Orthodoxy

In this new book, Dr. Sharp takes aim at how brands grow–and tries to debunk some of the most cherished beliefs in marketing. These challenges to Marketing Orthodoxy should be taken seriously because they’re based on facts and data—not opinion.

Marketing Truths (or Not)

Let’s examine the above statements in more depth:

1. Differentiating our brand is a vital Marketing task – Dr. Sharp argues that differentiation is much less important than most Marketers think. Why?

• User Bases — First, Dr. Sharp argues that the data shows, fairly convincingly, that user bases are usually not very different. That is, users of one brand are generally similar to users of another brand across most dimensions. If users are similar, then why segment or differentiate?

• Attitudinal Formation — Second, consumer attitudes toward brands are more reflective of buyer behavior and loyalty than position driven Marketing. Brand usage drives consumer attitudes and not vice versa. His analogy: everyone loves mothers, but you love your mother more than others.

2.  Who we compete with depends on the positioning of our brand – Not so, according to Dr. Sharp and his colleagues. Beyond the fact that brands user bases are generally very similar, purchase panel data demonstrates that a brand’s customer base overlaps with competitors in direct proportion to market share.

Dr. Byron Sharp -- Professor of Marketing Science

That is, for any given brand, more of its consumers will come from big brands than small ones. For example, if Brand A competes with Brands B and C, and Brand B has a market leading 50% share while Brand C has only 25% share, chances are high that Brand A will share more buyers with Brand B than C, simply because Brand B is bigger and there are more chances that it’s buyers will also buy Brand A.

This proportional distribution of a brands buyer overlap strongly suggests that consumers are not buying competitive brands because they are similar. Rather, it says that your brand is more likely to source buyers from big brands than small brands, simply because big brands have many more buyers to draw from who have many more chances to buy your brand.

Now, before you jump out of your seat and disagree, Dr. Sharp acknowledges that market partitions are real–e.g. soda drinkers vs. fruit juice drinkers, etc. It is these natural market partitions and not similar brand images, which drive consumers to switch among a given set of brands. Within any given market partition, switching behavior is driven more by brand size than brand image.

3.  Mass Marketing is Dead and No Longer Competitive – One of my favorites. Big brands have big shares because they have more people buying them and the people that buy them are also buying more of them. This fact based observation is usually called “double jeopardy” for obvious reasons.

However, what it also suggests is that, with few exceptions, there is no such thing as small “niche” brands with highly loyal consumers. Small share brands are small because they not only have fewer buyers, but these buyers are less loyal.

An important point here is that big brands tend to have a larger proportion of light category buyers. These light category buyers buy the category less frequently, but when they buy, they are more likely to buy big brands. Why? Because big brands tend to be more available (better distribution) and have higher awareness (often driven by larger advertising).

Mental and Physical Availability – The Holy Grail for Marketers?

So, if some of our most basic beliefs may not be true, how do brands really grow? Dr. Sharp argues that it all boils down to two simple truths. The biggest brands tend to have greater mental and physical availability.

• Physical Availability – In Marketing terms, this means distribution. Big brands tend to have big distribution. Marketers sometimes forget that if the product isn’t present, the consumer can’t buy it. Distribution–physical or digital—is key to growing your brand.

• Mental Availability – This means having brand salience and top of mind awareness. When consumers are in a buying situation, brands that have high mental availability tend to win out. This is not just awareness. It’s creating brand salience by linking your product to relevant strategic and executional equities that make it easy for consumers to think of your brand in buying situations.

What Next ?

Does all this mean that we should throw out all that we’ve learned about consumer understanding, segmentation, differentiating our brand, etc. ? Far from it. Rather, it simply underscores the fact that the most important drivers of brand growth are the simple notions of mental and physical availability.

So, whenever your boss or someone in the organization asks the question: “what do we have to do to grow volume and share next year?” you now know the answer. And it’s a lot simpler than most people think. At least that’s what Dr. Sharp and the data say.

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5 Keys to Marketing Success in Developing Markets

Almost 20 years ago, I first set foot in developing China, and into the early boom years of that country’s remarkable transformation. As the first Marketing Director for Procter & Gamble China, over the next 3 years I saw the incredible vibrancy, growth and opportunity of a developing market firsthand.

Since then, I’ve led organizations with businesses in virtually every major developing market around the world. While no two markets are precisely the same, they share many important features when it comes to Marketing success or lack thereof.

So, it’s natural to reflect: what have I learned as a Marketer from those experiences?

5 Learnings from Developing Markets

1.  Walk the Street – When I got to China in 1994, it was like landing blindfolded in an emerging market. There were no TV ratings or market share data beyond Guangzhou, Beijing, and Shanghai—which collectively accounted for <5% of the Chinese population. What to do?

Walk the street. Once a month, we would get on a plane and travel to a secondary provincial city and walk the streets, visiting 15-20 stores a day, talking to the merchants about what sold, what didn’t, and why.

Walking the Street to see Tide in China

Sometimes the best market research is simply getting out and talking to lots and lots of real people. That’s how we learned that sachets, or small 5-10g bags of detergent for once a week use, would never work like they did in shampoo.

2.  Go Local – Expanding global brands into local markets can be daunting. Stories of branding disasters fill the chapters of International Marketing books as lessons on what not to do. Yet localizing your brand is crucial to success, and this goes beyond the name and advertising.

P&G’s early China success was driven by deep distribution. In the top 200 cities, they divided each city into a checkerboard and assigned a salesperson with a 3-wheel bicycle to cover each square. In rural areas, they hired college students for the summer to ride motorcycles to rural villages to give away free samples and educate retailers on the location of the nearest wholesale market.

At American Express, we learned that Russian consumers used U.S. dollar Traveler Cheques not for travel, but to hold cash safely at home—because they didn’t trust either the local banks or the ruble. Presto: we created American Express Secure Funds Cheques, and grew sales to almost $1B within 3 years.

3.  Expect the Unexpected – Of all my learnings, this is the most difficult to explain to people who’ve only worked in developed markets. Why? Because the things that happen in developing markets are often so far beyond the bounds of what you would experience in a developed market it’s just hard to imagine them ever happening. Sometimes a story is the only way to make the point.

Crest in China -- Even the Advertising was Counterfeited

Waiting for a flight in the Kunming, China airport, I once saw a TV ad for the Chinese Crest toothpaste. The only problem was that when the product “reveal” came in the ad, the brand wasn’t Crest, but rather a local brand which had stolen the Crest advertising and spliced in their own brand to the ad !

In developing markets, you have to be ready to overcome whatever obstacle comes your way—including fake Crest ads–which is why we had a saying in P&G China: “yo bon fa” or “it can be done.”

4.  Partner Wisely – In many developing markets, it is foolhardy, if not illegal, to enter the market without a local joint venture partner. Partners often have important government connections and relationships that are essential for the outsider to understand the local market regulations, etc.

I’ve seen both good and bad partners. Good ones can help get distribution for your brand, find marketing suppliers, help identify competitive threats and generally speaking, get things done.

Counterfeit Tide in China

Bad ones can damage your brand. For example, one Chinese joint venture partner sold our Tide packaging to counterfeiters—damaging not only our top line revenue, but also our brand experience with consumers–who after washing, only got a bunch of still dirty clothes.

5.  Stay the Course – Developing markets are, by definition, developing. This means that +10-15% growth on a small base is, well, still small. Sometimes, people will ask:  is all of this hassle really worth it? Well, as any mathematician knows, compounding adds up fast.

P&G started up in China in 1988 – 8/8/88 to be precise – a very good day in a culture that reveres lucky 8’s. By the time I left China in 1997, almost 10 years after entry, P&G sales were just south of $1B—of the almost $36B of total company sales—big in the absolute but small as a percentage of company revenue.

Developing Markets: Long Term Focus Pays Big Dividends

But now, 20+ years on, P&G routinely reports China double digit sales growth as a key driver of their global sales. Developing markets take time to develop, but when they do, they have real impact.

Developing Market Lessons Learned

The fundamentals of Marketing in developing markets are no different than developed markets: understanding consumers, developing a superior value proposition, and communicating it with consumers in a relevant and highly persuasive manner.

What’s different is “how” you do these things, and how many non-Marketing factors like joint venture partner selection, lack of data, and unexpected actions by regulators or others can disrupt your best laid plans.

But for me, there’s nothing that compares with the buzz of launching a great brand in a developing market, and seeing it grow into an iconic and lasting part of the commercial landscape. Which is why the next time in China, you can bet I’ll be looking for Tide in the local stores.

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Facebook Insights Every Marketer Should Know

Social media defies all manner of definition and understanding for many Marketers. For many, it’s like the proverbial blind men touching the elephant of social media:

• It’s for listening
• It’s about “likes”
• It’s the fans that count
• It’s an engagement platform
• It’s Facebook
• It’s YouTube
• It’s an advertising platform…

The list goes on and on…

Facebook Insights Every Marketer Should Know

What Do I Need to Know?

Sometimes, we just need some basic truths or insights about a topic that simplify it into manageable and understandable chunks that are easily digestible. And actionable.

At a recent Marketing conference, Facebook executives talked about what Facebook is and what it isn’t. Some of their points were simple, yet compelling. Facebook doesn’t equal social media, but it surely is the most important social media platform in the marketing world of today.

So what did they say and what should you know?

Five Facebook Insights

• Value isn’t just about the like button.  Consumers who “like” a brand or become fans on Facebook almost certainly are already fans of the brand in their non-digital life. Diet Coke has 1.1 million fans. And they’re just expressing their loyalty and connection to a brand that already earned their trust in the marketplace. The brand already did the hard work. Facebook simply enabled liking with a button.

• Fans are only valuable because they have friends. Having a large number of likes is not an end in and of itself. The reason brands need fans: to influence their friends about your brand. For example, a brand with 500k Facebook fans could actually have a potential audience of 60M friends, should all of the fans choose to share something with their friends. So, it’s really the friends of fans that are of most value.

• Social graph influence comes from many fans doing a little, not a few doing a lot.  Said differently, the idea that only a few people have mass influence and can drive large word of mouth is generally not true. Oprah is Oprah but most of us don’t have that kind of influence. What really happens is that many fans influence a few friends each, versus a few influencers influencing many. Facebook has analyzed how brand content or messaging spreads across the Facebook social graph. And what they’ve discovered is that there is no Oprah effect—e.g. one person influencing many. The lesson: don’t just focus on the “influencers.”

• Fans and likes drive better ad performance. People clearly trust friends, so when ads are served with a layer of social content – e.g. Jim, Mary and 12 other of your friends are fans of Virgin America, the ads work better. And they work better the further down the funnel you go, with the largest impact on purchase intent. To read more about this phenomenon, read my earlier post How Social Context Drives Ad Effectiveness.

• Ads work best against light Facebook users. This was a new insight for me and one that invites the big “why?” question. Facebook says their data clearly shows that the same ad drives greater impact among light Facebook users versus heavy users. These light Facebook users also tend to be light TV viewers. So, Facebook is a good platform for extending reach against light viewers.

Word of Mouth at Scale

What Facebook has really done, to use the words of one Facebook executive, is create the potential for “word of mouth at scale.” Word of mouth at scale exists because consumers can “broadcast” their point of view—about brands, customer service issues, likes, etc. to all of their friends. And if hundreds of thousands or millions of fans do the same, you have word of mouth at scale. So, instead of your brand’s viral efforts petering out as most efforts do (see The Dynamics of Viral Marketing post), you can really scale word of mouth.

The Real Challenge: Igniting Fan Conversations and Sharing

Which begs the question:  how does your brand ignite fans to talk about your brand with their friends to create word of mouth at scale? Facebook doesn’t claim to have the answer to this question, but this is the real hard work of building brands. But, that’s for another post.

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TV vs. Mobile — Which is the Future of Advertising ?

Unlike many conferences, the recent Spencer Stuart CMO Summit in New York featured a panel discussion of “protagonists” – people charged with being provocative and, well, protagonistic.

On the one side were the “Mobile is the Future” crowd. Included in this groups were representatives of Google, social media agencies and various change the world digital start ups.

Is the Future Mobile ?

On the other side were the TV is still the Future Luddites (me). I’m usually agnostic when it comes to media platforms–I only care about what works and why–but was charged with TV advocacy for this forum.

Mobile is the Future

Let’s let the Mobile crowd go first. They argued that Mobile is the future of advertising and marketing. Why?

1. Mobile is Locational – Having the web at your fingertips at the 1^st moment of truth will change everything. Transparency and knowledge will rule brands in the future. Want to know if there are lower prices on your item? Scan the UPC via Red Laser and find out prices in your area. Want to know if your car repair estimate is reasonable? Check out the RepairPal app.

2. Mobile is Umbilical – Mobile phones have one really unique characteristic—they’ve virtually attached to their owners (except when they’re lost—but there’s an app for that too). This means that Marketers will have the ability to access consumers virtually anytime, anywhere—and most helpfully, when they’re engaged in activities most relevant to the Marketer.

3. Mobile is Global – Forget the PC. In developing markets, consumers are moving directly from no web access to mobile web access. PC’s are old school. In India alone, there are already more than 500M consumers with mobile phones. The Mobile phone, and especially the Smart Phone, will be the direct route to global consumers in the future.

4. Mobile is Embryonic – The vast majority of web sites are not yet designed for mobile. This leads to a sub-optimal consumer experience for most web applications. Wireless speed and quality are continuing to improve. The mobile experience will only improve as web sites are optimized for mobile and network speed and quality improve.

5. Mobile is Closed Loop – The announcement of Google Wallet finally brings important players to the web payment space. The most interesting part of this story is that this will open up opportunities to connect “what people watch” and “what people buy” at the point of sale—a closed loop to prove marketing effectiveness at last.

It all sounds pretty compelling, doesn’t it? Until you realize that Mobile advertising today represents only ~1% of TV ad spend. Where’s all the demand?

TV Advertising -- (Still) the Future

TV is (Still) the Future

Marketers are clearly still voting for TV with their increasingly squeezed advertising dollars. Why ?

1. TV is Impact – Numerous market mix modeling studies show that TV advertising continues to work—average ROI’s are in-line with digital and higher than print, couponing and other promotional activities.

2. TV is Accountable – What do you buy when you buy mobile? Impressions—whatever that means. What did you get when you buy TV? Guaranteed audience, and if not, make goods. The fact of the matter is that TV is currently more accountable for audience delivery  than Mobile.

3. TV will be Social – People love to talk about their favorite TV shows. And they love social networks. Social will increasingly come to TV, and when it does, there will be a big opportunity for brands to leverage the TV/Social interface.
4. TV will be Targeted – The advent of “single-source” what people watch/what people buy panels and the ability to “fuse” psychographic and buyer behavior characteristics with TV consumption behavior is enabling TV advertisers to target on non-demographic variables in ways that were difficult before.

5. TV will be Responsive – TV advertisers can now use tools to do “response based targeting.” That is, they can identify groups of consumers who best respond to their advertising, and then target these consumers more effectively without wasting dollars on non-responsive consumers. TV ad performance isn’t static, in fact, it’s only going to get better.

TV vs. Mobile — Which Will Win ?

So what’s the answer—will TV or Mobile advertising rule the future? If you’ve been reading carefully, you probably know the answer by now–it’s a false choice, a trick question. They’re going to both be important.

It’s actually a Marketers dream: even more effective, more targeted TV advertising PLUS the geo-locational and immediacy advantages of Mobile. It’s the intersection of these mediums that will define the future.

And what protagonist CMO wouldn’t want a future like that?

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