Have You Heard

Womma did a quick 5 minute interview with Jessica Johnson from Oddcast - a company that looks at producing on-line viral campaigns for brands (they call it user-personalised participation marketing). She had some interesting points I thought you would appreciate. Here are the best exceprts, but as always - click on the logo for the full article or the image below for oddcasts website.

What have you found makes campaign more sharable?
The ones that really get shared are the “do this to your friend” types....Campaigns like these, with the social component built in, seem to perform the best.

What are the key elements of viral?
I think it’s important to distinguish between viral videos and other viral content. Viral videos usually keep someone’s attention for under a minute. When it’s an application that allows for personalization, attention time rises — Oddcast sees average engagement times at around four minutes. Either way, it has to be something new, something novel. Otherwise there is no reason for someone to show it to a friend. That’s why we like to use personalization in our campaigns because it is inherently new and fresh.

How do you convince skeptical clients that your ideas and methods will deliver a good ROI?
Though it has become a little clichéd, I have to mention that we start with this point: the conversation will happen with or without them. The sooner the brand gets involved, the sooner they can benefit from the community... ROI is a tricky subject in the WOM world, but we show brand engagement both within an application, and then further via word of mouth on social networks. We are always working to develop our engagement, sharing, and conversation metrics so that we have the data to show our methods work.

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Jason Cohen has provided great insights into the secret to generating a viral message:
It’s not enough for the message to be interesting to your direct followers (children), it needs to be something your followers would be interested in repeating (grandchildren).
He goes on to say, that we should explicitly ask for the message to be passed on, but also make it easy to do so, using the principle of the chain-letter as an example – requiring you to send it on to 10 friends.
He sums up by saying that the #1 best rule is: Have overwhelmingly awesome content. So good that people intrinsically want to spread the word. But then of course you might as well also be smart about how you help them spread the message.

My biggest learning however, is the first point – the propensity for a message to be passed on is increased by the value and meaning of passing the message on for a person, as much as the value and meaning of the message itself.

As always – click on the image to read the full article.

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Viral was the big buzz word last year, but what is happening with Viral today? It seem to be becoming part of the Advertising clutter more and more. No longer are we seeing unprecedented numbers wathcing on-line viral ads as it is becoming increasingly more difficult to break through and be original on the internet.

And even if it is a success, what impact is the Viral ad making for the brand. Piers Hogarth-Scott of marketing agency DMC wrote in his blog this week: "So what if the clip has been seen by millions of people? How many influencers saw the clip and are advocating it to their peers? What impact is word of mouth having on sales? What level of sales uplift is attributed to this ad? What's been said about the brand good and bad and how do we engage these people in a two-way dialogue?"

"People go to the internet for entertainment. They don't go there to see an ad" said senior brand manager Anthony Toovey of Lipton Ice Tea. Rather than use TV, Unilever has developed an online game, braintrain.com.au, for Lipton tea as part of a push to communicate how an amino acid in tea can relax the mind as well as keep it alert. HaveYouHeard had a look at the site and were impressed. The lesson is that the content must be both Entertianing and Engaging. But most importanlty it must drive the intrinsics and the benefits of the product - otherwise it wont have any impact for the brand.

Tell us what you think.

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