Everybody loves a smile!
Posted on | January 27, 2010 | No Comments
If there is anything that is contagious to humans it’s a smile. If there is anything a company can do, totally free, to get more satisfied customers, it’s giving them a smile (NOT a faked one). And if there is anything Coca Cola has done right in this movie, it’s getting both the one’s participating in it, and the ones watching it, to smile! They have managed to create something that gets everybody on this american campus to talk about Coca Cola and the amazing machine, as well as giving millions of viewers online something to talk about and to pass on.
In classical “candid camera”-style they make something unexpected happen and record it. About 1.45 into the movie something happens that gives the movie an extra viral twist - you wonder how they managed to pull that off? Exactly how the machine is rigged I won’t say, and what is delivered 1.45 into the movie I won’t tell you either - a classical cliffhanger. Don’t miss it if you want a smile!
The movie has become a true viral success, and have been seen more than 1.172.000 times and has more than 4874 rankings.
A YouTube psychic?
Posted on | October 21, 2009 | 4 Comments
Oops, I’ve been had again. This is weird, but of course there’s some secret and logic behind it. Try it out yourself! Right now, it spreads virally in a lot of places, like on Facebook and blogs. It’s closing in on 2 million views right now.
Interesting to see how it has spread in the english speaking world (especially UK, where Richard Wiseman if from) and is relatively unseen in other parts of the world, except Scandinavia, where pretty much everybody is fluent in English too. To spread even more to a broad public, it has to be very easy to understand visually, or accessible in more languages.
And yes, I have started reading Richard Wisemans book, Quirkology, though I haven’t finished it yet. Too much to read! =)
Thanks Judith for the tip on Facebook!
The Funnyness Theory - an initiative to create change
Posted on | October 5, 2009 | No Comments
Here’s a funny campaign integrating guerilla marketing stunts with “how did we do it”-videos and even a “coming soon” video, that will be followed up by the shooting from the third guerrilla stunt. I can imagine quite a buzz was generated by the people actually trying the piano stairs in the first video.
Publishing these how did we do it-videos and the audience reactions is a smart way to get more bang for the buck.
The clips promote the site Rolighetsteorin (The Funnyness Theory), an initiative by Volkswagen that aims to make things funnier to create change.
The Piano Stairs - making it funnier to use the stairs
The Worlds Deepest Trash Can - making it more fun to throw trash where it should be thrown
The Empty Bottle Game - making it more fun to recycle - coming soon
My previous employer GoViral is behind the seeding of these campaign clips.
Viral amplification loops - the secret for virals?
Posted on | October 5, 2009 | No Comments
A viral campaign - everybody wants one. Few ever gets one.
I am the first to admit that it isn’t easy, but there are things you could to to better the odds of ever creating a campaign that goes viral. I prefer calling it “a campaign that goes viral” rather than “a viral campaign”, because, by definition, it can’t be a viral campaign until it has proven itself to actually go viral.
Then there is of course the distinction between campaigns that go viral on a larger scale and the ones that only go viral on a small scale, in very contextual environments. But, I am drifting away here, to topics that I didn’t intend to write about this time. The intention was to write about using an amplification loop as a way to increase potential for viral spread.
Viral expansion loops were discussed throroughly in a Fast Company article about a year and a half ago, in April 2008 - Ning’s Infinite Ambition.
The article tells us about Ning, a startup in Palo Alto, designed specifically to exploit viral loops. In the article, viral loops are said to have emerged as perhaps the most significant business accelerant to hit Silicon Valley since the search engine. But, we also learn that while viral advertising can’t be replicated; by definition, a viral loop must be.
About viral expansion loops from wikipedia:
“A viral expansion loop is similar to viral marketing with one notable difference: viral marketing can’t be replicated indefinitely, while a viral expansion loop must be in order for it to exist. When properly conceived and implemented, a viral loop almost guarantees self-replicating growth…
And a short quote from the article:
…Ning grows because each new user begets more users. Every time someone sets up a social network, he has no choice but to invite friends, family, colleagues, and like-minded strangers to sign on as well.”
Ning benefits from a “double viral loop,” which spreads two ways, because every network creator is a user, drawing in more users, and any new user can become a network creator.
Campaigns that go viral are usually not created in a way to permit something similar. But, there is something equally interesting - the viral retention loop - incentivizing users to come back to a service. This is very often used by Internet start-ups. One way of doing it is to send updates on what has happened on their account while not there.
I think we can expand this thinking and try to build campaigns that makes interaction with campaign material more than a one-off. For this, we have to build in incentives for users who have already been touched by the campaign to come back to the campaign material, interact again, and spread the material further. This should increase the basic reproductive number. If we can double the basic reproductive number of a campaign from for example 0.8 (by definition not a viral campaign, since it’s below 1) to 1.6, we have managed to set an avalanche in motion. This by simply adding an amplification loop into the campaign. Of course, numbers might differ a lot - these are just examples.
The difference between a retention loop and an amplification loop would be that the latter also incentivizes spread of the material, while the former just incentivizes the user to return to the service.
Through this (these - there can of course be more than one) extra loop we amplify the potential virality of the campaign. The trick is, as always, to come up with something interesting, something worth returning to, and something that makes the user want to pass the material on again, maybe with a new twist.
Here are some reading tips about viral loops:
5 crucial stages in designing your viral loop
What’s your viral loop? Understanding the engine of adoption
And some for the swedish readers:
Har din produkt en viral loop?
Tags: amplification > expansion > loop > retention > viral
Really impressive real time social media stats
Posted on | October 1, 2009 | No Comments
This really gives an idea of the enormity of content that is created all the time. Gary Hayes created this counter with real time stats on social media usage, updated for the time you have been here.
It took about 14 seconds for 1.000.000 million SMS to be sent, and about 8 seconds for 10.000 videos on Youtube to be watched. Impressive!
Hat tip to Ronnestam. =)
Optimizing for viral spread
Posted on | September 29, 2009 | 1 Comment
When talking about viral marketing, there is no question about it - content is king. To make videos, games or applications go truly viral, there is no substitute for great content.
However, even if you can have a pretty good idea, you can never know for sure how the content will be received by the audience. So, that’s one reason to do everything possible to optimize the campaign for viral spread. Besides this, there are two more reasons why you should try to optimize your campaign material, no matter what the quality of the content:
- There is just too much other content out there to compete with, so there is a risk even good content will not be seen enough by the right people to make it go viral.
- Once content has gotten attention, having it optimized maximizes spread and ROI.
Four questions
To maximize the possibilities for a campaign to go viral, I believe there are four important questions to ask yourself, evaluate the campaign and direct further actions and improvements. All questions are from the users perspective:
- Why pay attention?
- Why stay engaged?
- Why act/interact?
- Why not act/interact?
Finally, we also have to deal with the fact that there almost always are multiple audiences to a viral campaign. And, you may or may not want to appeal to them all.
Let’s go through each of the questions.
Question 1: Why pay attention?
Attention is the currency of the new media landscape, and to get rewarded with attention, you have to give something in return. That should be your content. But, millions of pieces of content are produced every day and users are only scanning it to decide what to pay attention to. To get their attention, you have to stand out among all other content when users are scanning. The “indicators of good content” have to be right. Otherwise you won’t get attention. Now, here are some bad and some good news – you can’t control all indicators of good content, but you control some of them. What you can’t control is often user-generated, like for example:
- Ratings
- Conversations
- Toplists
- Most viewed
On the positive side, to a certain extent, you can control:
- Features
- Titles
- Descriptions
- Images
- Tags
Once content is out there, it might get better or worse features, it might get new titles and new images. But, when launching the campaign, these should all be optimized.
Features
Features are something you usually have to buy, just like an ad. You can get features without paying, but then it is due to the content itself, when it’s being awarded video of the day or something similar. Paid features are the ones you can control. As always, more exposure, like for example through a feature, the more initial attention you will get, and this will increase possibilities of interaction with your content. Over time, more interaction equals greater possibility to get the content to spread.
Titles
The titles or seeding angles of a video or a game is also something that users scan to get an idea of what is hiding behind it. And, titles can sometimes be almost as important as the content itself. Titles, viral hooks or seeding angles should be appealing, connect to the content, be simple and memorable. Preferably, it should be intuitive, so that if you think of the content, and make a search on the words that come up in your mind, you should find the content. This makes it easy to find, to show to friends, and increases possibilities to be passed on.
Descriptions
While not as important as to create a catchy title, the description gives you yet another possibility to make it easy to find the content through search, and recognize it quickly when found. Descriptions should be accurate and filled with keywords you wish to rank high on.
Images
Images or thumbnails are usually scanned even before titles, and therefore, it is extremely important to optimize them to make it as appealing as possible to engage with the content. Images should be optimized in two ways:
- The first image, the thumbnail, should be optimized to get the user to want to engage with the content.
- The last frame, in for example a video, is often freezed on video sites, and should be optimized to increase potential of pass along.
Make it as appealing as possible, to first get the user to engage, and then at the end to keep the user thinking positively about the content. Using a black screen in the beginning and/or end of a video is the worst you can do. Sometimes video sites auto generate the thumbnail from the first frame and then you get a black thumbnail. Who wants to click on that?
Tags
Tags are also essential in making videos accessible through searches and increase exposure of the content. Tag the content with all relevant words that relate to the campaign material. If you have more than one video for example, tag them with the same words, as long as they are applicable to the video. This will increase potential for additional views of the content, as videos with similar tags will appear in “related videos” on most video sites.
Question 2: Why stay engaged?
With limited time, and the fight for attention, once the user choses to interact with content, you have to give something in return. Normally, a user decides if they will keep engaging with the content within 10 seconds. So, this is the time-frame you have to use as best as you can. Something interesting must happen, something that makes the user stay engaged. In tv-series and other fiction, a “cliffhanger” is often used to keep viewers interested in the next episode.
The same concept can be used in online content, to keep the users engaged. Build “cliffhangers” into the content right from the start. You can even use cliffhangers in the title.
For online games, long load times is a no-no. For videos, the first 10 seconds are essential. Give the users a first payment for investing their attention and time. In general, the shorter the content, the easier it is to keep the users engaged until the call to action. Unless they stay engaged to the end, they have no reason at all to pass it along. Shorter content is usually better.
Usability is also essential. If a user doesn’t understand how to engage with the content, they will stop trying.
Question 3: Why act/interact?
For content to be passed on, there has to be an expected positive experience for the receiver. This means content should be:
- Funny,
- Spectactular,
- Provocative, (but not too much)
- Unexpected,
- Relevant,
- Taboo (but not too much)
- Highly informative,
- Secret (but not too much)
- Controversial
- True? (is it true?)
- New
The one question to ask here is: If I received this clip, would I want pass it on, and if so, why? If you can’t come up with some clear reasons why a user should want to pass it on, they probably won’t either. If someone has deemed the experience worthwhile, there is a chance that they might want to share it. Being first with the latest creates respect among peers, especially if the content is really good. Passing on information is part of what ties us together with our friends and family, and good content makes the cut. Someone passing good content to their friends will gain in esteem, which is the ultimate reason for viral spread.
But, this will only take place it it is reasonably easy to do so. Which takes us to question number four.
Question 4: Why not act/interact?
The reasons for not interacting with content can be many. Top of the list is of course when there is no real incentive to pass it on – basically, the content isn’t interesting enough and the expected value to the receiver isn’t high enough. We already covered that.
But, even if content is good, there are still many reasons why you might chose to not pass it along. These have to be addressed to maximize the possibilities that a campaign goes viral:
- Is it too commercial relative to the quality of the content? Specifically, think of:
- logos,
- urls,
- the content itself.
- Is there too high an effort to pass it on?
- Long urls that break
- Deep-links not possible
- Is there a non user-friendly process?
- Is it too hard to understand?
- Is too much information required to pass it on? Generally, personal info, like:
- Name
- Year of birth
- Phone number
- City of residence
- Zip codes
- Are all options to pass it on available and easily accessible?
- Embed
- Post to Facebook, twitter etc.
- Link
- Download
- Send to friend
In general, is the effort or investment needed to pass it on bigger than the pay-off? If so, the material has to be re-worked in terms of quality of content, ease of spread, or possibly both.
Multiple audiences
Something to really think about when it comes to launching campaigns on the Internet is that they almost always have multiple audiences. There is of course the target audience of the campaign, often a regular user, who passes good content on. But, there are also the webmasters, bloggers and other power users that can act as “gatekeepers” to the content, often boosting the number of views if they accept the content. These work as springboards and are extremely important to create a successful campaign. Of course, they have to be taken into account when creating campaign material. Some issues they think about are:
The content:
- Quality of the content.
- Technical set-up, like:
- Plug-ins needed?
- Software upgrades needed?
- Java needed?
- Size of game/video in pixels
- 400-500 pixels maximum width – preferably sizeable
- Difficult to embed games on site?
- Embed code available?
The user:
- Load times – too long?
- Language of content – does he/she understand?
In general, go for the smallest denominator. The less that is required, the better. Try to make the material flexible, easy to integrate on sites and easy to spread. If a webmaster doesn’t understand the content, either because it is not good enough, it’s too complicated to use or integrate, or language is too complicated, you will loose out on a lot of potential users.
(Yes, this is actually a two year old post I made on my old blog, slightly updated to be more accurate today. Things change fast on the Internet!)
Tags: optimize > spread > viral
Why engage in social media? The power of metaphor
Posted on | September 27, 2009 | No Comments
Metaphors are great to make something a lot easier to understand. The constant mantras in social media circles telling businesses in general and customers in particular are pretty easy to understand. Some examples: “listen, learn and interact”, “don’t be afraid of losing control” and “people will talk whether you are there or not. Better be there.”
Still, as easy it is to understand, they lack the kind of power that the metaphor has.
Andy Sernovitz makes it a lot clearer already in his post title: If you were afraid of bad press would you shut down your PR department?
“If you want to increase control in social media, you need to do more social media outreach so people want to talk with you instead of about you.”
Do you trust your friends?
Posted on | September 23, 2009 | No Comments
Well, it is hardly news anymore that people trust “someone like me” the most. Nielsen’s recent study just confirms the picture. However, it is interesting to know that the numbers are actually going up. In this study, 90 % stated that they “completely” or “somewhat” trust recommendations from people they know. Jonathan Carson, President of Online, International, for the Nielsen Company, says:
“The explosion in Consumer Generated Media over the last couple of years means consumers’ reliance on word of mouth in the decision-making process, either from people they know or online consumers they don’t, has increased significantly.”
Second to “recommendations from people known” comes “consumer opinions posted online”, with the same percentage, 70 %, as “brand websites”. Interesting to know though, is that there are quite large regional differences. For swedish readers it might be extra interesting to know that we are the ones who trust brand websites (40 % compared to 70 % on average) and brand sponsorships (33 % compared to 64 % on average) the least.
As consumer generated media continue to grow, I expect trust in consumer opinions posted online will grow too, especially the aggregated kind in the shape of different average ratings. Quantitative data gives a fuller picture, and in combination with qualitative data in the form of written reviews it might move the percentages upwards even further.
The customer is always right - what does it mean?
Posted on | September 22, 2009 | 1 Comment
Here is a really tasty quote from Seth Godins post - Win the fight, lose the customer.
…smart marketers understand that the word ‘right’ in “The customer is always right” doesn’t mean that they’d win in court or a debate. It means, “If you want the customer to remain a customer, you need to permit him to believe he’s right.”
If someone thinks they’re unhappy, then you know what? They are.
It is definitely not rocket science, but it’s always worth repeating. And in addition, it is worth not just repeating, but actually living by and taking action based on it!
Danish mother seeking - and the spoofs
Posted on | September 14, 2009 | No Comments
Just like Daan from ViralBlog suspected, MediaCulpa confirmed, and Resumé writes about it was a hoax, the Danish mother seeking video that got so many people talking and posting these last couple of days.
VisitDenmark, the danish agency promoting Denmark as a tourist destination, that was behind the campaign, has now taken the video down. But, of course other people have posted it again, and it is fun to watch some of the spoofs that have been created by other youtube users. I especially like the danish creative agency Mindjumpers‘ spoof - Danish mother seeking ( The father’s story ). You can see the original clip (not the VisitDenmark upload though), and then Mindjumpers’ spoof here below. Mindjumpers also wrote a bit about the campaign and the actress in it.
And the spoof.
Tags: danish mother seeking > fake > hoax > spoof > Visitdenmark