Dramatic Hamster: 19mn views for the version that went viral; maybe 40mn from the spin-off versions. But why?

There are four parts to the solution (the one to the question about how things become viral and influence spreads; I have no idea about the hamster):

• the nature of the spreader or influencer(s);
• the nature of the audience;
• the nature of the network or media through which the information is moving;
• and the nature of the information/content itself.

So how do you get stuff spread on the Internet?

1) Through very influential people

Some people are more influential than others, it seems. If I tell you to buy a Blackberry rather than an iPhone, I’m not – on the face of things -  likely to achieve as much of a result as if Brian Lam (the editor of Gizmodo) said it. Why? Because he’s more of an influencer on this subject than I am. He has a rather larger audience. He runs a site that is acknowledged as an authority for this sort of information. And because he’s being reviewing mobiles and other gadgets for some time. If you were a marketer working for RIM, you’d probably be inclined to take Brian out for a nice lunch and send him some Blackberries.

You might call this the ‘old-fashioned’ model of PR and marketing. You want a story about your product/services/company in a big publication – so you take the editors out to lunch, give them access to information not available elsewhere, such as an interview with the CEO and send them free stuff.

This old model has been somewhat reinvigorated in recent years with the realisation that the most influential people might not be working for the FT or even Gizmodo, but might work for what seem smaller publications or websites that are read by or otherwise reach all the other editors. These ideas stem from those published by Katz and Lagerfeld in Personal Influence (1955). Malcolm Gladwell’s influential 2002 book The Tipping Point revived this, suggesting the existence of thought-leaders (Mavens and Salesmen in his parlance) who – if they recommended something – will lead to that item spreading like wildfire – the spread of hush-puppy shoes in 90’s New York is his most-cited example. It didn’t come from fashion columns or fashion magazines. It came, Gladwell says, from a small number of eminent dudes (to use the scientific term) sporting this footwear brand.

That’s when things get tricky. Finding these ‘quiet influencers’ is difficult since you (as a marketer) haven’t got access to other people’s reading lists. Where do the editors of the FT and Gizmodo go to for their information? Where do they find their stories, outside of their Inbox? Where do other people go for their footwear and mobile phone advice? On the Web, you might look at the blogrolls most people publish on their websites – if you find the people that lots of others read or cite, then they are most probably very influential, whatever their apparent profile or position. (Tim Hoang wrote some interesting stuff about this at the start of the year).

Even greater access comes through Twitter, where following/follower lists are visible to any user of the service. I went to a seminar last week about online influence where Andrew Walker from digital agency Thin Martian described some work they did around the UK release of the film Anvil last year. They wanted to find out who the most influential rock-music twitterers were. But rather than looking to the likes of Coldplay (2.5mn followers) or Lily Allen (2mn), they traced back from the people who talk and write about rock, publishing blogs and zines. It emerges that the most influential rock-twitterer is shock-jock Howard Stern, with a mere 67,000 followers. Why? Because the people who talk, write and otherwise publish about rock all follow him. (Mat Morrison has done some analysis of the UK social media twittersphere that you may find interesting).

2) By finding influence-able audiences

That last finding, about the extent of Howard Stern’s influence, despite relatively modest audience figures points towards the second part of the ‘finding influence’ equation – finding audiences that are willing to be influenced. Stern’s read by people who are looking for stuff about rock music to publish on their own sites and publications. They’ll be receptive to all sorts of tidbits that wouldn’t necessarily be seen as interesting by other audiences. Back to the Blackberry example, if gadget-review magazine Stuff (ABC circ. 95,000 pcm) publishes a 10/10 review of the latest model, then that could well be more influential than Lily Allen giving it the thumbs-up, despite 20-times the reach. Give people the recommendation in the context they want it and it will carry. Otherwise, it probably won’t.

Research into influence and virality suggest that finding these audiences is far more important when it comes to spreading information than the apparent influence quotient of the person passing it on. Yahoo chief researcher Duncan Watts has poured scorn on The Tipping Point’s idea of key influencers:

“It just doesn’t work,” Watts says, when I meet him at his gray cubicle at Yahoo Research in midtown Manhattan, which is unadorned except for a whiteboard crammed with equations. “A rare bunch of cool people just don’t have that power. And when you test the way marketers say the world works, it falls apart. There’s no there there.”

Academic research into modelling the spread of ideas through the simulation of epidemics has supported Watts’ beliefs. Instead, Watts’ approach is far more akin to traditional – albeit well-targeted – advertising. Get the thing out there to lots of people who may be receptive. Watts recreated the famous Milgram experiment (not the one about following orders, the one about six degrees) and found that, yes, anyone is separated from anyone else by six-degrees-of-separation or fewer (just three for the population of the US). But furthermore, there weren’t key links in the chain – the alleged especially-connected people or gatekeepers. Accidents and apparently unrelated environmental variables were just as important to the spread. See Watts’ 2007 paper Viral Marketing in the Real World for more on this. These ideas should give marketers heart, though: even if you can’t get the editor of the FT to look at your company/thing, getting a few bloggers on the case may well result in the same amount of real-world influence.

And that brings us on to the next part of the equation…

3) By using media and networks that spread quickly

This helps to explain the importance of websites like Twitter, YouTube and digg when it comes to spreading the news. People go there for distraction. These sites are all about finding cool, new stuff you can either re-publish or pass on. An article that reaches the front page of digg can expect to receive 100X its normal level of readership, not because it represents world-class journalism, nor because it comes from a terribly influential site, nor even because the person proposing it is especially influential (though there are cartels of diggers and influential diggers – something the site has fought to curtail since its establishment). Rather, because it caught people’s attention as something worth passing on – I’ll go into the reasons later.

Marketers certainly can and do attempt to get hold of some of this. Ask bloggers to write about your stuff. Make short-form videos instead of microsites. Write and give away handy guides and white papers. Submit your stuff to all the social bookmarking sites. Get people to join their Facebook groups.

This can work spectacularly well. But, as most agencies and clients have found to their cost, it’s rather hit and miss. Tens of thousands of videos, groups and bookmarks are created every day. People can only take notice of a limited amount of cool, new stuff each day. Your stuff is likely to be missed. This is particularly invidious when working under the constraints of a time-limited campaign or project – items on the web can and do accrete considerable value over months and years, but that’s not much use if you’re being judged on figures to be delivered in six weeks’ time.

One important lesson here. You can’t do any of this stuff in isolation. Making a great video is all very well, but you also need to give it velocity through straight PR and marketing; social media strategy and positioning.

It’s so annoying that most efforts fail that you might be sorely tempted to cheat – get your entire staff, your client’s staff, their friends and relations, plus a load of made-up accounts to vote for your stuff in the hope of it either (a) being noticed by a larger audience because of your apparent popularity or (b) that this pseudo-popularity is enough to assuage your client. There are downsides to this, though, because people will notice. Then you will look inept, your client’s brand will suffer and it’s bye-bye social media budget.

So, as well as all the above, you’ll want to make sure that your stuff is both good and spreadable.

4) Creating stuff that’s good and spreadable

The ‘spreadable’ part is the easiest to deal with and has already been mentioned above. Make sure that people can email it in some way. Attach social bookmarking links to your items. Put it into contexts, like YouTube and delicious that encourage sharing and spreading. Instead of regular press releases, use the SMNR model to make them blogger (and journalist) friendly. Make artefacts remixable to help generate spin-off variants.

That’s all quite common sense and mechanical. Good is where the difficult part lies.

There’s already plenty of advice on creating linkbait – make something that’s either useful, surprising or controversial. (‘Linkbait’ is web content that people are likely to link to, share or otherwise transmit elsewhere). Unfortunately, everyone on the Web has already read those articles and we’re swimming with ‘Top Ten Ways to/Resources for X’, ‘Why Y will be the Z Killer’, zippy flash games and mind-blowing visualisations. There’s an SEO arms race afoot and while there is a lot of success to be had with these formats, there are thousands of people going after the same top slots.

To be more positive. A recent academic paper – Social Transmission and Viral Culture by Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman – analysed the virality of 7500 items from the New York Times, monitoring the most-emailed list from the site. They focused on the psychological characteristics of the items, rather than their actual content, which provides some useful prompts. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, awesome is good: “content’s ability to inspire awe is strongly associated with its virality”. But awesome doesn’t mean – here – some sort of Bill and Ted mind-blowing. In a more classical sense, it means something bigger and wider:

One emotion we focus on in particular is awe. Stimuli that open the mind to vast and often unconsidered possibilities can inspire awe, a unique human emotion that expands a reader’s frame of reference (Keltner and Haidt 2003). Awe is the emotion of self-transcendence, a feeling of admiration and elevation in the face of something greater than the self (Haidt 2006). It occurs when two conditions are met (Keltner and Haidt 2003). First, people experience something vast: either physically vast such as the grand canyon, conceptually vast such as a grand theory or finding, or socially vast such as fame or power. Second, the vast experience cannot be accommodated by existing mental structures. Intellectual epiphanies, natural wonders, and great works of art can all make people feel a sense of awe (Shiota, Keltner, and Mossman 2007). Similarly, news stories about a treatment that may cure AIDS or a hockey goalie who continues to play even with brain cancer may both inspire some level of awe.

The other values tested, all of which indicated likely virality, though to a lesser extent, were:

• practical usefulness (e.g. how to get a cheaper mortgage)
• surprisingness (e.g. dog drives owner to hospital)
• positive stories vs. negative stories (e.g. X is great vs. Y is terrible: positive stories get greater word-of-mouth, which you may find surprising)
• emotional content (e.g. anger against X; tragedy of Y)

Awe-inspiring ought to be the goal, then. Hmm you’re thinking that’s all very well. But my client makes sprockets for Acme. Where does that leave me? In all honesty, it probably means that you aren’t going to achieve virality for a story without considerable imagination. A great example would be liquidiser manufacturer Blendtec who converted drab kitchenware into a runaway viral success with its Will it Blend videocast. The Best Job in the World campaign by Nitro converted a run-of-the-mill ‘Come to Queensland’ message into an awe-inspiring adventure to attain an idyllic lifestyle. Diet Coke and Mentos turned two totally familiar supermarket staples into boy’s-own science fun combined with Bellagio spectacular. Yes, that sounds bloody hard to emulate, but that’s the nature of this territory. Sorry.

To sum up

Four ingredients to spreadiness. None of them are totally foolproof, but each reinforces all of the others, so it only makes sense to work on all four. In essence, it’s not very different to a traditional media plan.

• Involve influencers (if you still believe in that tack); but don’t mistake volume for influence.
• Work out where your audiences are (who and where are the people who want to talk about this stuff?) and go after them with the best & most sources you can reach.
• Do blogger outreach (but don’t be a dick); social media sites; making it spreadable; etc. Get broad exposure as well as targeted. It can produce the same results, if not better.
• Take a long time to think up the ideas. Be really imaginative and make it awesome.

picture credits: jiparis and wikipedia

In mitigation of my not being able to think of anything interesting to write about today, I shall pass on several thousand words by other people, published by The Society of Digital agencies (SoDA). It’s a survey and editorial on what members of the society think 2010 holds for digital media marketing.

It’s a 70-page PDF, but don’t worry too much about the apparent weight – it’s all microchunked into big charts and easily-digestible 500-word thought pieces from the leaders of a number of digital agencies.

Overall, the outlook is bullish:

• 81% of Brand Execs expect an increase in digital projects for 2010
• 50% will be shifting funds from traditional to digital media
• 78% of global participants believe the current economy will actually spawn more funds allocated to Digital

Two Thousand and Ten Digital Marketing Outlook

hat tip: iboy

The idea is that fans can collaborate with the band in their latest music video. You use your webcam to imitate a pose taken by a band member (e.g. arms out wide or sticking out your tongue). Then upload your snap to the site and it is then integrated – every hour, on the hour – into the video. It creates a phenomenal blurring effect as dozens of user photos follow every move of the band, in synchronisation.

More than 8500 people have already taken part. Not enormous numbers perhaps, by some people’s standards. But hey, it’s for a Dutch indie band I’ve never heard of.

To me, it illustrates a few great ideas about doing social media well:

• Don’t make your users do all the work. Send us your videos and we might turn it into an advert sounds so phony and exploitative nowadays.
• Reward your people instantly – or as close to that as you can.
• Make it something that makes your relationship closer. Something that’s really sharing, not paying lip service.
• Make it joyous if you possibly can. I don’t own a webcam, but I’m tempted to get one after seeing this!

photo credit: Michale

via Jez Kay

AdWeek covers a story that most people working in the digital sector will already have had some intuition of:

Forrester Research conducted a “state of interactive agencies” survey of about 100 global interactive marketers. It found just 23 percent believed their “traditional brand agency” is capable of planning and managing interactive marketing activities. About 46 percent did not believe them capable, with the rest neutral on the question.

While that held good news for digital agencies, particularly as digital becomes a much larger part of marketing, Forrester found few clients are willing to give them responsibility for the brand’s direction. Just 22 percent agreed that their interactive agency is “ready to lead my brand.” Another 33 percent said their digital shops aren’t ready, with the rest neutral.

via ‘Great Race’ Between Traditional, Digital Shops.

In brief: clients think traditional agencies can’t be trusted to do online; digital agencies can’t be trusted to lead.

The article postulates a ‘Great Race‘ as traditional agencies struggle to acquire digital skills and people, while digital shops expand their offerings to include more mainstream marketing activities to prove their wider competence.

The trouble here is that it slows down and distracts both sides.

Initially, at least, they are likely to do a poor job of imitating their competitors on the other side, despite sinking what probably seems like an inordinate amount of resource into them. The two sides come with very different mind-sets in the majority of cases, and adjusting to the world of mainstream brand marketing or interactive media will be a painful and slow process that will inevitably involve several failures.

I am sure that there are some marvellous full-service agencies, but when I look at the ones I come across, it emerges that they’re actually formed of five or six different business centres created through acquisitions and spin-offs.

While they’re busy getting nowhere fast, new disciplines like interactive signage or phone apps appear, and specialised agencies pop up to fill the gap. Neither the digital nor traditional agencies have a handle on these disciplines because they have been spending all their time watching their competitors.

So now there are three, four, five and more agencies looking for a slice.

I’m not convinced that getting involved in the Great Race is likely to lead to a winning position. Better surely, to display leadership, integrity and genius in the bit that you’re actually good at?

42.6% of respondents say they feel less inhibited interacting online than face-to-face.

20% say they lashed out at companies or products thanks to the anonymity of online interaction.

31.5% say that online interaction let them do something they’d been wanting to do.

via marketingcharts.com

Research from Euro RSCG suggests (as you’d have guessed) that people become ‘disinhibited’ as a consequence of an increased ability to interact with brands, products and people.

There’s a positive element to this, of course. Being inhibited is by no means a pure good.

I’ve been writing recently about living in a post-digital world. Not that computers have gone away in any sense, but rather that the digital world now penetrates ‘normal life’ to such an extent that to make a distinction between digital and other media seems archaic. Anyway, cleverer people than me have been having similar thoughts.

On the other, crikey, there are an awful lot of digital folk working in PR nowadays. And digital outfits that ‘do’ PR. And journalists who’ve crossed over to both, for that matter.

So I am less biased than you might imagine.

Last night’s NMK event – What Happens to Online PR? – covered a lot of bases. What exactly is PR; what is Online; and what is needed for the industry to gain some leadership in the online space?

The room was heavily dominated by people at the forefront of reinventing PR. People who are already moving well beyond press relations into the guardianship of reputation and the formation of real relationships – both in digital and analogue. Or is that backwards in time? Panellist Stuart Bruce maintained that PR was never about the press, and always about looking after and promoting reputations and establishing and growing relationships.

There is, as everyone knows, a land-grab going on. Everyone in the marcomms space, from designers to planners, is on their toes (unless they’re rubbish) to find a reason to suggest that it is they who should lead in digital. The people who gain a credible early lead will probably be able to maintain that, and the people who don’t will wither away.

For pure digital agencies, their case is clear: we grew up in this space; we know and understand it best; we’re the geeks that you used to call the back-room boys (and girls). But now things have changed. Now online isn’t something separate, it’s everything. If you want the best skills and insight in everything, then call us.

On the PR side the case is clear but muddied by 100 years of history and culture. At its purest, Public Relations is about reputation management and relationship management. It’s about the strategy behind communications policies as much as executing those policies.

At the execution level, it’s about crafting, creating and sustaining stories which will work with those relationships and bolster or protect that reputation.

At its not so pure, PR is about coverage and column inches; it’s about billing on AEV; it’s about hitting the front page of the FT; it’s about whacking out a press release every 2 minutes about anything that you can loosely associate with a client (I received about 10 budget-related press releases today, most of which were totally spurious).

As everyone who works in media knows, sadly, you get ten times as much contact from the bad end of the scale than you do from the shining knights. That’s how spam works: if the conversion rate is 0.000001%, then you send 1,000,000 emails. If it’s lower, you simply send more.

As both sides of the panel last night agreed, this is not sustainable. Maintaining relationships and building reputation depends on adding value, not taking it away. There are agencies that I (and presumably a lot of other journalists) have blacklisted – and they will never be able to recover from that.

So, the way forward for PR agencies: stay still, integrate, specialise or outsource?

Stay still: you die. And you deserve to. You shouldn’t be on this blog. Go away.

Lots of agencies are integrating. Bringing in digital media people, or hiring PR graduates with that inclination: bunch them together and call them the digital team; maybe bringing in a heavy-hitter who’s well-known in the pure digital space; maybe even buying out a digital agency to call their own. (You know I could name and shame here, but I won’t). Problem: 80% of your agency has no clue what the hell you do. They won’t be able to sell, explain or justify your projects to clients. You’ll be working 24/7 to stay still.

Or specialise. Become an online PR agency. Lots of geeks; lots of analytics; project managers. This has been a good model for the last couple of years. The problem? The people who hold the purse strings don’t trust you johnny-come-latelies with your flip-flops and skateboards one bit. Especially when it comes to reputation. A bunch of internet guys? Are you having me on? Sure you can do my website, but corporate reputation? Yeah, riiight.

Or outsource. You do your bit on strategy and then outsource the bits you haven’t got the skillz for to the best pure digital players available. This agency for your SEO, that one for your design and the other for your social strategy. There’s lots of danger here, too. Your outsourced agencies are also your competitors. Because they all want your lunch money. Also, you’ve increased your costs massively in most cases. You’ve also got a whole bunch of communication issues to resolve – not easy ones, either, because everyone in marcomms has an ego the size of a planet.

So not any of those things, really.

Start again. No, really.

Start again.

Integration, specialisation and outsourcing aren’t going to work as plausible business models in the long term. I think we all know that. You need an agency that is Digital and PR. An agency focused on relationships and reputation, but wholly grounded in today’s arena of communications. Then you win.

I’m not an entrepreneur, I’m a hack, but I hear all the arguments, all the time; I hear all the stories, every day. A lot of you have already started again. The rest of you will not survive except through brute force and a lot of that will involve layoffs.

Start again.

[I'll create a post on NMK collating discussion so far, but in the meantime:

Steven Waddington published before the debate but agrees "real threat is not the contraction of the industry but the army of new digital agencies that is capitalising on the disruption in the market"

Gerel Orgil offers the two-minute version - very useful indeed - I'd forgotten half of what she recorded.

Roger Warner great summary and a real call to learning and education - you risk losing the opportunity to learn! "the threat to a traditional PR agency isn’t just in losing a slice of Online business, it’s in losing the right to learn about it."

Lloyd Gofton says the winning agencies will have the right blend of skills.

Jo-Rosie Haffenden condemns "an industry which is not as excited as it should be about change".

Danny Whatmough didn't turn up but favours a media mix: "no one group will dominate and that there will be plenty of new tricks to learn and plenty for everyone to practice".

Jed Hallam promised to help with the hats and coats, didn't, but instead offers a great post on "influence and social mechanics".

Peter Hay crikey - old media loves us too.]

I never quote Seth Godin. I find his stuff far too happy-clappy for my comfort zone (ach- another americanism!) Yet here I am: Seth on America choosing Neil Armstrong as their ‘moon landing guy’:

NASA did what many organizations do when picking someone to act as company spokesperson. They avoided risk, played it safe and chose someone who wouldn’t make a ruckus.

What a shame.

Armstrong could have taught the world about science. He could have done work that would have won him a Nobel Peace Prize. He could have had a huge impact on his country and the world. Instead, he mostly disappeared.

Many organizations worry that if they put their clout behind an individual, he or she will gain notoriety and power and eventually double-cross the organization. So, instead, they go for bland.

Bland is a tad harsh, though I wish they’d chosen Buzz for the first man on the moon. He’s got a much cooler name. There’s another reason as well – because I continually get to tease my wife for confusing him with Buzz Lightyear on one occasion. (Buzz Lightyear apparently trained on Lanzarote’s volcanos for his moon trip).

Speaking in my capacity as a has-been journalist, bland won’t get you a headline in a magazine or newspaper. But hang on… Neither will the out-spoken fool.

No journalist is going to publish a story that says ‘Dave Colossus, mega-spokesperson for XCorp, today said they’d be curing cancer within a year using the power of social networking’. Dave Colossus (not his real name) is out of a job within a week, and the fools that did print the story, well, probably they keep their jobs in my experience.

Stick to bland, and true. And bollocks to you, Godin: I’m not sure I’ve come across a better quote in the last forty years than ‘One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind’. If that’s bland (and even if he got it wrong), it’s still pretty magical.

But I still wish it was Buzz.

As is customary at top-end press-conferences, there was a schwag-bag for all attendees containing various branded giveaways. Mouse mats, mugs and stuff – it saves having to buy Xmas presents for a lot of journos. *cough*

(As an aside – Yay! that more bloggers and vocal fans are getting their hands on this stuff.)

But the cleverest bit (for me) was that this also included an online keycode for WoW that would allow players of that game to gain a new companion for their online avatars – the characters they play in the game. Remember, they invited guild leaders and fanatical WoW bloggers along**.

The pet itself will be a miniature version of the Archangel Tyrael of Diablo 2 fame who will travel with you on all your grand adventures in Azeroth! Pictures of this amazing new pet will be available on the official website soon for everybody to check out.

Get it? The WoW pet is a viral promo-item for Diablo III! It’s limited edition, so it’s sought-after; it’s a sign of prestige in the community; and it’s constantly in the face of relevant audiences.

Pure genius. Or evil.

________________________________

*World of Warcraft – or WoW to its friends – an online roleplaying game which charges a monthly subscription – to around 10mn people.

**WoW players organise themselves into ‘guilds’ to assemble teams for online combat and for social reasons – their leaders are the most visible, longstanding and respected players.

Via. Kotaku

“You must be new, welcome to the Internet. Here on the Internet you are required to view any publicly held company as evil and any effort on their part to charge for a service as pure, unadulterated greed preferably attributed to their CEO or other high-ranking executive. Corporations should provide as many possible services for free, regardless of the time, capital, and human resources required to develop and run those services or products. Any efforts of corporations to charge money in voluntary exchange for their services or products is to be likened to highway robbery, extortion, or in the case of particularly large corporations, rape. I hope these guidelines have helped.”

I work closely in partnership with a music business site, MusicTank, and while those guys might seem like dinosaurs to the 2.0 crowd, there is one key issue that they are acutely aware of that always gets brushed over in the digital world. How do artists get paid? The idea of concert revenues or merchandise taking over from direct sales of music is bullshit. People will not buy things they don’t want instead of things they do. The same arguments are true of all content producers. This stuff, these people, these tracks, articles, pictures, whatever need to be paid for.

There’s so much inventory on the web – so many zillions of pages and zillions of users – that advertising isn’t working for publishers any more. So who pays, and how? I don’t really believe any of us know yet.