KEYNOTE TALK FROM JONAH BERGER
Jonah Berger, author of ‘Contagious’ asks us “which brands get’s word of mouth the most” and felt we were all too scared to put our hands up (he didn’t prompt us to put our hands up to indicate any of the three brands presented at first, so not so much about being scared but not sure what we’d be putting our hand up for!). The three brands presented were Walk Disney World, Honey nut Cheerios, and Scrubbing Bubbles (a brand I’ve never heard of).
Jonah is a psychologist and looks at the drivers behind ‘word-of-mouth’. He said sometimes asking people questions doesn’t necessarily give us the right answers. He asks the audience what we as researchers can use to look at word-of-mouth and says we can use social media as a research tool. Jonah teaches at the Wharton School. He uses the quote “Word of mouth generates more than twice the sales of paid advertising in categories as diverse as skincare and mobile phones” – McKinsey Quarterly.
Word of mouth works great by matching identities in a simialr way to how advertising thinks ‘people who skii may read my magazine’. Jonah says friends are very similar and uses a real life experience to decribe friend to friend targetting. He was sent 2 books in the post, one for himself and one for him to give to a friend.So how to companies generate word of mouth? What percent out of 100% is online? 7% on Facebook and Twitter. So this means there is a slight amount but an amount which we should pay attention to, but of course most word of mouth is face to face, despite that there is no physical measurements of this. He talks about social media platforms which were supposed to take us (researchers) by storm but haven’t done so. Despite that technologies change, word of mouth is still between people in the real world.
Jonah puts a picture of a cat DJing and asks us why he may have put this picture up. People theorize that cat pictures which are funn go viral. This simply isn’t true. The same 6 things drive why people share.
Jonah has carried out experiments to see what works for spreading news or pictures and has honed the drivers down to 6 things. No time for him to go through each of the 6 steps (disappointing!) but the acronym is S.T.E.P.P.S: Social currency, Triggered, Emotion, Public, Practical Value and Stories
Jonah uses the example of a ‘secret’ hot dog restaurant that makes people swear to secrecy when they go to the restaurant via the back of a telephone booth INSIDE the bar. He then uses the example of his friend Carla who drives a mini-van. He asks us what assumptions do we make about Carla because of what she drives. Audience chimes ‘she’s in her 30’s!’, she has kids! They play soccar! He said our choices communicate information (knowledge and identity?). He advises… SOCIAL CURRENCY
1) Make people feel like insiders. Example: When Linked In recently emailed people to say ‘you were in the top 1% of searched profiles’ – people forwarded that email. He also uses the example of when McDonald’s recently only put the McRib on the menu but only at certain times of the year and at certain restaurants in certain cities. There’s even a McRib locator website, despite that actually the McRib isn’t very nice! He said that gmail sent out the beta version to specific people, making people feel special, like insiders.
2) Find the inner remarkability (surprising, novel or interesting.) He shows us a video of a CEO of blenders, who made a YouTube video of him blending an iPhone. Video has over 10million views. He found the inner remarkability behind blenders by showing it in an interesting way.
TRIGGERS
Jonah plays a video by Rebecca Black (a pop star I’ve never heard of) the song came out and people hated it, but the song has over 3million views. Jonah shows data from Google showing the spikes since 2011 on the popularity of this song. Shows the song is most popular on Friday, because the song is called Friday, this is a trigger to help people think of the song. He says: Top of mind means tip of tongue. He also shows us data from Google on Cheerios searches, always happen in the morning. But the Walt Disney World brand is only talked about when people are about to go there, or are actually there, because when they’re NOT there, they’re no other triggers. He uses Peanut Butter to ask us the audience what we think of next. The word ‘Jello’ comes from the audience. He says ‘Rum’ the audience says ‘COKE’ in unison. The words are triggers, as if Peanut Butter is a mini-advert for Jello.
Kit Kat is another example used regarding triggers. People associate ‘breaks’ with KitKat. The attitudes were favourable on KitKat but no one would think about it. KitKat came up with the campaign to ensure when people think about coffee, to think about KitKat, this simple piece of radio advertising gained them an extra 200 million in sales. He advises the singer Rebecca Black should NOT make a video titled ‘leap day.
EMOTION
Jonah advises to read his book to find out what the other letters in his STEPPS acronym stand for, advises to buy/read his book. (Nice advertising Jonah!).
PUBLIC
He asks us why we go into busy restaurants, despite that there might not be very many seats available. This is because we’re gaining verification from others on ‘what’s good’. Standing ovation is a good experiment, people behind (always behind) then begin to stand and clap when people in front begin to clap. He says ‘make the private, public’. Built to see, built to grow. He uses the Polo T-shirts and Apple Logo as examples: the Polo logo on T-shirts has increased by 18 times, and the Apple logo was turned upside down so that when people open their laptops, other people know you are using an Apple product, similar to the white headphones they have.(My personal favourite example of the red undercolour of Christian Laboutin shoes). Another example: Movember – when men grow moustaches in aid of raising money, the private action becomes more visible.
PRACTICAL VALUE
Jonah advises to read his book to find out about this.
STORIES
Stories sell. He asks why so many stories have morals, but they don’t just skip to the moral. Stories are vessels, they carry morals inside them, or brands, or benefits, or knowledge. He says Gerred (in his slide) lost weight by going on a Subway Sandwich diet, where they have 5 subs which are under 5 grams of fat, because that’s actually what Subway sells -but he said the story is more interesting than the information because Gerred lost lots of weight doing this diet. He shows us the Pandar Cheese advert (company called Pandar in Egypt) as a good example of ‘story’ behind brands. The story, or message behind the adverts are ‘never say no to Panda’ as the Panda threatens people in the advert who say no to the cheese. He says people in suits anyway are funny and humour is a great emotion to evoke in advertising. He advises the content should be a ‘Trojan Horse’.
Jonah finishes by talking over the 6 S.T.E.P.P.S and say popular videos and brands don’t just happen by accident. they include one of all of these key elements outlined in STEPPS. He summarizes his talk and each of the STEPPS.