Black Ops Advertising. Mara Einstein

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       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.

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