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WHAT WE SHARE & WHY WE SHARE

Marrying marketing messages to editorial content is not done because of some malicious plot by advertisers to fool us. To their minds, they are providing cost-effective, useful information and entertainment . . . that just happens to be produced by a marketer. And if you like it enough to share it with your friends and family, all the better.

In one fundamental way, this is not all that different from traditional forms of marketing. In the mass media model, the idea was to promote to a lot of people in hopes of finding the “Early Adopters”—who today are called “Influencers”—who would then tell their neighbors and friends about the promotion.¹ You might remember the commercial from Fabergé Organics shampoo, where a woman says that she tried the shampoo and loved it. She told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on and so on, with each “so on” leading to the screen being divided into more and more people. That is the idea behind word of mouth (WOM). One person tells a friend, who tells another friend, until the product becomes a topic of conversation and the latest must-have product. Alternatively, companies have used PR tactics to get trusted others to do the selling that advertising could not. For example, the father of PR, Edward Bernays, promoted Beech Nut bacon by coaxing doctors to recommend the benefits of the product to their patients,² and bartenders have long been an important component to selling alcoholic beverages. Now, with the rise of digital media—and in particular social media—a number of those discussions have moved online. Marketers amass tracking data based on our interactions and can use it to find Influencers, who might be professionals (like Bernays’s doctors), celebrities, or simply fans of a brand. With this ability, messaging tends less toward mass advertising and more toward Bernays’s one-to-one cloaked methodologies.

Talking about products and brands has become part of day-to-day conversation. In the past, we gave someone information about a product or service because we wanted to be helpful, or because we wanted to appear in the know. You might run into your neighbor and say, “Try Fabergé Organics,” or more likely, “Sam the butcher will order special lamb chops for the weekend if you tell him by Tuesday,” or “I just saw that the record store is having a sale starting on Friday. You better get there early.” Today, you might tell a friend, “I just saw the new Avengers movie. You should really go see it,” or, more likely, you post the movie’s trailer on Facebook and tell your friends what you thought. Similarly, you might provide a link to a business article on Twitter or LinkedIn or post wedding dress ideas on Pinterest. Online, these communications are to be helpful, for sure. The difference, though, is that the technology has been created in such a way as to compel us to share information, and we are not sharing with one or two people, but more likely two or three hundred.³ A few hundred may still not seem like a lot, but if just a handful of people share with their friends, it can scale to reach as many people as some television programming. According to social media company Lithium, if a brand conversation reaches more than a thousand people, it can “generate up to half a million conversations about your brand,” which is the modern-day version of the so on and so on idea. To reach those numbers, marketers find (or pay for) “Superfans.” These well-connected, digitally plugged in folks generate three to five times more word of mouth (WOM) messages, and those messages are four times more likely to have an impact on purchase decisions.⁴ And most importantly, word-of-mouth recommendations are responsible for 20 to 50 percent of purchases, according to McKinsey & Company.⁵ Bottom line: companies need to get people talking about their product, and the more the better. Luckily for them, because of digital technology we share more content with more people than we ever have, more quickly and more often.⁶

Perhaps unexpectedly, while it feels like we share an awful lot online, the vast majority of word of mouth happens in offline conversations. According to research from the Keller Fay Group, “91 percent of respondents’ information about brands came as a result of face-to-face conversations or over the phone.”⁷ While this is true, those offline conversations are facilitated by word of mouth marketing, and that marketing more than likely happened online. Word of mouth marketing is defined as “the technique of promoting a product, service or business by soliciting positive comments from satisfied customers. Word of mouth marketing is an interactive process such that customers are collaborating with the business, product or service for which they have derived enough satisfaction that they are willing to speak out about it and even recommend it to others.”⁸ Word of mouth marketing, then, asks consumers to talk about products and services. More often than not this will include some remuneration for us, like a coupon or a prize for having participated in a contest, and for Influencers repayment is typically free products or cash payments—a form of paid endorsement that we do not see.

Marketers consider one person telling another about a product to be the most effective form of advertising because—not surprisingly—people trust their friends and family more than they trust an advertiser. According to Nielsen’s Trust in Advertising report, word of mouth is the most influential form of advertising, with 84 percent of respondents saying it was the most trustworthy.⁹ Word of mouth is integral to stealth forms of marketing because “peer group recommendation is the ultimate marketing weapon.”¹⁰ With WOM marketing, although the idea gets seeded by the marketer, consumers sell it to one another, and it doesn’t feel like marketing.

WHAT WE SHARE

Marketers have traditionally used a combination of what are called push and pull strategies. For push strategies, think about a pushy salesperson. They push the product on you. That is like the old broadcast media model. The opposite of that is a pull strategy, where consumers like the product so much that they help pull it through the distribution channel. That is what word of mouth marketing is all about. To facilitate WOM, marketers use a number of different tools to get us to engage with and then ultimately talk about their products.

Marketing professor Colin Campbell and his colleagues developed a helpful way to categorize the types of messaging available, which is to delineate media based on two axes: (1) who created the content, and (2) whether the content was paid or unpaid.¹¹ Building on Campbell’s work, I have revised the template to reflect current terminology, as well as to present it as a tool for thinking about how different methods facilitate sharing.

BRANDED CONTENT MESSAGING STRATEGIES

Source: Based on Campbell et al (2014).

Starting on the top line, content creators can be the brand (Coca-Cola, for example), a combination of the brand and the news media (Coca-Cola and the New York Times), the news media alone, or the user—that is, you and me. Unpaid content, or earned media, is publicity—for example, when a product is mentioned on a news story or an author appears on The Late Show—and paid media is, of course, advertising. Editorial content is the only element in the chart that is not—or at least not necessarily—influenced by corporate bias.

Below, we will look at examples of word of mouth strategies, including viral videos, consumer-generated content, and sponsored word of mouth. Native advertising and content marketing, the most covert of the types, will be discussed in subsequent chapters. Bear in mind that the point of view, the bias of the content, changes based on the scenario. Given the example of Coke and the New York Times, imagine how different a story about Coke and obesity written by the newspaper would be from one that was paid for by the soda company.¹²

Some of these categories are more driven by stealth than others, and not all marketing will be covert. It cannot be: we have to have some familiarity with a product in order for covert methods to work. That is why these methods rarely exist as standalone communications, but rather as part of an overall campaign.

Procter & Gamble’s “Thank You Mom” campaign provides a helpful case study to see how the integration of online and offline, as well as of stealth and visible methods, can make a marketing effort effective. As part of this initiative, P&G bought traditional television commercials. These ads were originally created for the 2012 Olympics, and creatively they pull at the heartstrings by showing mothers from around the world doing tireless work in support of their children’s athletic careers. Prior to the TV advertising, the campaign started with unpaid media online in the form of a video called “Best Job,” which introduced the campaign and which became “a digital sensation.”

The commercials and video were followed by an integrated segment (paid product placement) on NBC’s The Today Show. According to a document from P&G’s advertising agency: “Throughout the broadcast, the cast referenced the online popularity of ‘Best Job,’ aired the full 2-minute version within programming and additionally aired the :60 version in the ‘A’ position during the commercial break. The pièce de résistance was a P&G executive appearing on the show to surprise moms of Olympians with a financial gift to help them get to London (based on the insight that many families couldn’t afford the trip).”¹³

Throughout the Olympic Games, social media (unpaid) was used in the form of a Thank You Mom Facebook page, a Twitter handle (@ThankYouMom), and YouTube videos. P&G created Facebook and Twitter pages to give mothers around the world an opportunity to post pictures of themselves with their children, and thus to create an emotional connection with the brand. In addition, athletes from around the world—many with extensive followings—posted thanks to their mothers. YouTube videos presented winning athletes and their moms. Some footage for these videos came from NBC, which agreed as part of the sponsorship contract to capture shots of mothers reacting to their children’s wins and losses.

This outlines just some of the paid and unpaid methods that P&G used to grab our attention by pulling on our emotions. Some of these methods were stealth (the Today Show mentions, the mom footage as part of the Olympics), and much of it depended on consumer word of mouth. In terms of consumer engagement, there were 17 million views on YouTube, Facebook fans increased by 65 percent, and Twitter followers increased by 20 percent. The “Best Job” video was shared during the Olympics more than any other advertising, making it the most viral.

In total, “Thank You Mom” became the most successful campaign in the company’s 175-year history, leading to more than $200 million in incremental sales. Like many marketing campaigns, a mix of media types, both covert and obvious, worked in conjunction with one another to bolster awareness and promote sales. For example, showing mothers in the stands at the Olympics is not outright advertising. However, throughout a hundred-day period leading up to the Olympics, consumers were bombarded with messages connecting moms and P&G. It stands to reason that many would think of the marketer’s advertising after seeing these images and then, once inspired, were led to talk about it or retweet it or post their own picture on Facebook in response to it.

WORD OF MOUTH STRATEGIES

VIRAL

In Contagious, Wharton professor Jonah Berger outlines what causes a video—or any other content—to be passed from one person to another. According to Berger, content goes viral because of the acronym STEPPS: Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, and Stories. Much of this is not new. People like to share what they know in order to look cool or to become the go-to person for the latest info. That information is a form of social capital that gives one standing in a group, what we used to call “water cooler talk.” It could be that you know what happened on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last night, or that Prince played a live performance in a tiny venue in town. Triggers are reminders that lead us to talk about things around us. In the P&G case above, seeing moms react to their children winning an Olympic event is a trigger for us to think about the campaign. You likely know from your own experience that if something moves you in either a good or bad way, you comment on it or review it. It is emotions that drive these actions, and awe and anger are the emotions that are most likely to lead us to share content. Tied to triggers is the concept of making the private public. Bright yellow Livestrong bracelets, for example, made charity a public issue, and white earbuds made people using iPods visually stand out from the crowd. We might also share practical information like a recipe, or a video (maybe you’ve seen it) on how to correctly shuck an ear of corn. Finally, people share stories. Just as Leo Burnett knew that he needed to connect products to characters within a larger story, today marketers attach their products to a larger narrative that consumers can pass on to others.

There are many, many viral video examples that could have been used for this category. P&G’s Always campaign called “Like a Girl,” which also appeared as a commercial in the Super Bowl; “The Devil Baby” for the film Devil’s Due; any of the many John Oliver videos that act as promotion for his weekly HBO show. Here I have selected “Hey Minions Fans!” for AMC Movie Theaters and “The First Kiss” to highlight Berger’s thesis. In part, I’ve selected the latter because it takes the idea of obscuring who’s behind the content to decidedly new levels.

Anyone with young children likely knows that “Minions” are the adorable animated characters from the Despicable Me movie franchise. In this video created for the holiday season, a group of Minions singing “Silent Night” are interrupted from their calm refrain by a more rambunctious Minion who leads the group in singing “Jingle Bells.” Connected to the video is the message that if you purchase a $30 gift card to AMC (presumably for a friend), you will receive free popcorn for yourself. This video was viewed more than 65 million times and shared on Facebook almost 4 million times, but it only had about a thousand Twitter shares. It was a no-brainer that families and friends would share this video among themselves, because passing this along to others gave kids and their parents social currency: it’s an adorable piece of content and gave them something to talk about. The entertaining video evoked joy, as well as provided a practical incentive through the offer associated with it.

Even more viral was “First Kiss,” the most viewed video advertising of 2014. In this beautifully shot black and white video, several couples—gay and straight, old and young—are introduced to each other for the very first time and asked to kiss while being filmed. The couples are understandably uneasy: they ask each other’s names, they shake hands, they ponder how to start the process of locking lips with someone they’ve met only moments before. “First Kiss” does not present itself as advertising. The only indication that this is a piece of commercial content is a title on the screen in the upper left corner for about one second at the very beginning that says “WREN presents.” This is followed by a screen that says, “FIRST KISS a film by Tatia Pilieva,” language that suggests that this is an artistic work rather than an advertisement. Most people had never heard of the apparel company, Wren, so this did not initially register as advertising.

“First Kiss” has more than 156 million views on YouTube and spawned dozens of video parodies. The total number of Facebook shares for this video, at 1.5 million, was much lower than for the Minions video, but there were 74,000 shares on Twitter (a considerable number for that venue), with most of these happening within the first month of its release. Twitter tends to be a more adult and more business-oriented social media platform, and it is not surprising that marketers, for example, would share this with others as a form of social currency. The film itself is entertaining, and the concept is one that people have not seen before.

However, it was not just social media that led to this content’s success. The film’s creator sent copies to twenty-one friends, and by the end of the morning two million people had seen it. Then the New York Times did a story on this video in conjunction with the start of Fashion Week, as did other news outlets. The fact that this wasn’t obviously advertising increased the content’s appeal because people felt like they were watching an artfully produced, quirky film.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the Ice Bucket Challenge, a viral phenomenon that overtook the Internet during much of the summer of 2014. This initiative was a fundraiser to leverage social media and consumer-generated video to raise money for charity. Viewers were challenged to videotape themselves dumping a bucket of ice water on their heads or to donate money (most did both) and then challenge other people to do the same. Celebrities like Bill Gates and Martha Stewart, as well as thousands of everyday people, did just that. Most of the videos were fun to watch, with some evoking considerable pathos. What made this so successful is that social currency (“Did you see Lady Gaga’s ice bucket challenge?” or “did you do the challenge?”) and storytelling (why people chose to make their videos) are ingeniously embedded into the challenge itself. The Ice Bucket Challenge thus embodies the key elements that would lead people to share this content with others. That said, this example doesn’t neatly fall into a single category. Yes, it went viral, but it was not produced by the ALS Association, an organization that raises money to help cure amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease).¹⁵ In that sense, this was consumer-generated marketing (discussed below). We all heard about the video challenge, in part from the mainstream media and in part by its online presence. However, it is difficult to quantify the success of this initiative because it is not based on a single video but on thousands of individual ones. Rather, the success of the campaign is evident in the funds raised for the organization: $115 million from July 29 to September 15, compared to $5 million raised in the same period the year before.

As is evident, not all elements are necessary for content to go viral. It can evoke emotion and be practical, but it does not have to contain a trigger or be made public. What I have found in using the STEPPS framework to analyze content is that emotions—the stronger the better—are what shape virality and social currency. We share content when we are moved by its message in the hopes that by doing so we will project a positive image of ourselves to the online world. And this ties in to what marketers are trying to achieve: the ever important customer-brand relationship. As Melissa Coker, Wren’s founder and creative director, said about their video: “What we really wanted to do with this video is to generate lasting brand awareness and love, not just a quick hit sale.”¹⁶

Static visuals can also be viral content, but these tend not to have the same emotional or widespread impact as videos. The most shared picture on Twitter, for example, is the Ellen DeGeneres/Samsung selfie at the 2014 Oscars, with 3.3 million retweets. This was achieved through a combination of product placement during the TV broadcast and from DeGeneres asking viewers to make it the most retweeted picture—an example of two stealth modes working in conjunction with one another.¹⁷ To put this into context, the second most tweeted picture is President Obama hugging the first lady after he won his bid for a second term in 2012 (750,000+ retweets).

As marketers move away from written content in favor of visual formats, the practice of sharing video and visual content will increase. In just two years, video content is expected to make up 69 percent of online traffic.

WORD OF MOUTH AND SPONSORED WORD OF MOUTH

We have already discussed word of mouth broadly as the communication of information from one person to another. More specifically, there are two types of word of mouth: unsponsored and sponsored. Unsponsored is what we have been discussing thus far: any natural or “organic” conversation about a product. Sponsored word of mouth, on the other hand, is far more stealth than its unpaid counterpart. These communications make it look like one person is simply making a recommendation to another, but in reality, there is a marketer behind the Influencer’s message.

Word of mouth—sponsored or otherwise—is being driven by the ubiquitous use of mobile phones and the accompanying apps. These have enabled us to read, share, review, and retweet on the go when we have down time during our workday, or at night while we are engaging with other media. As of the third quarter of 2014, Americans spend more time on mobile devices than they do watching television. Most of that online time is spent with apps, and of that, 80 percent is spent with one of the following five sources: Facebook, YouTube, Pandora, Google Maps, and Gmail. Since advertising spending follows the eyeballs, spending on mobile has grown exponentially, with the expectation that it will reach $40 billion in 2016, more than doubling what it was in 2014.¹⁸

Talking about brands (unsponsored WOM) has become a part of everyday conversation. Here are the stats: on a typical day, 76 percent of Americans will talk about brands, ten brands will be discussed, and 70 percent of the time, those conversations will include a recommendation.¹⁹ As noted above, many of these brand-based conversations are urged along with corporate intervention. This WOM marketing can also be called buzz marketing, viral marketing, and grassroots marketing.²⁰ Whatever it is called, the intention behind it is to drive consumer conversations without making it look like there’s a marketer’s hand in the mix.

Marketers generate brand conversations by finding Influencers (Millennials with followings or celebrities) who will positively promote a product in the hopes of it going viral, thus creating “buzz” around a product. According to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), buzz marketing is “using high-profile entertainment or news to get people to talk about your brand.”²¹ There are several methods that can be used to do this. Sponsored celebrity tweets are used for a vast array of products, and the cost for those 140 characters can be substantial, depending on the celebrity and the size of their audience. The Kardashian sisters make more than $10,000 per tweet, and Kim is reported to have made double that to promote EOS lip balm.²² Chinese actress Fan Bingbing combined her announcement of a new romance with three brands that she endorses.²³ Vine celebrities—people who have become online stars by making six-second videos—can also make a handsome sum by using these short snippets to promote consumer products. These “celebs” with anywhere from 300 thousand to 4 million followers have been known to promote everything from GE to Warner’s Bras to Coke, and they can make as much as $30,000 for a Vine—which has no sponsor designation in sight.²⁴ There is now even an app called Cosign that enables individuals to make money when their friends purchase products based on their recommendation.

More controversial, and frankly illegal, is promoting products online without letting readers know that the blogger or Influencer received compensation for writing about the product.²⁵ A whole industry now exists to support connecting Influencers with products. Amazon, for instance, has the Amazon Vine program, which gives “trusted reviewers” products to sample so that they can write about them.²⁶ Beyond PR companies that connect Influencers to products, as we discussed in the previous chapter, there are now online companies, like Izea and Ad.ly, that match blogs and social media stars to products. Advertisers can go onto the Izea website, for example, and see how many followers a celebrity has and how much they charge for tweeting. The website then sends an email to the celebrity, who can accept the advertiser’s offer of promotional money or not. If accepted, the cost gets charged to a credit card. It’s that simple. Similarly, anyone who blogs, tweets, or uses Instagram can create an account on Izea and presumably be connected to advertisers. Their promotional video describes it in the following way: