Recommendation has and always will be one of the most powerful drivers for product purchase. The power of friends & family singing your brand's praises will always resonate more than a basic advertiser's message. In the age of social media however, the way we communicate has fundamentally grown, and subsequently, so has the way we recommend products to others. The consumer of today has communication options that have expanded not only his social circle past geographic and cultural limitations, but allowed brands to create a conversation with the consumer that previously didn't exist. With all of this communication expansion, what has digital & social networking really meant for recommendation?
With so many social media choices, what does it mean for how people recommend?
The requirements for an effective recommendation are relatively basic. It requires an informative statement about something, given credence by the trust level of the reviewer and the perceived relevance of the information. As trust grows, so does the power of the recommendation. Alternatively, the more relevant the recommendation seems, either through timeliness or quality, the more powerful it becomes. So as consumers communicate over greater distances, faster speeds and with a higher number of casual acquaintances, what happens to the power of recommendation?
Product recommendations from our friends and family automatically gain power from existing trust and Facebook, as the social network du jour, is well positioned to exploit that. Through the 'like' feature we can easily share what products and brands we care for, slowly building a recommendation network amongst our contacts. The simultaneous distribution of friends' recommendations through news feeds, means that opinions about brands and products can be shared quickly and clearly, from both internal and external Facebook sources (thanks to open graph & FBML) and leading to content inside & outside of the network. However, though Facebook is well positioned to communicate peer recommendations, a high level of trust still relies on a close knit network. Recommendations from general acquaintances or those unknown outside of the network still lack the power given to closer 'friends'.
Aardvark's Social Search in Action...
Outside of traditional social networking, recommendation needs to rely on other sources to build trust. While Facebook uses existing ties, social search engines & sites, such as Aardvark or Yahoo Answers, rely on the wisdom of crowds and perceived authority as trust arbiters. Aardvark , acquired by Google earlier this year, seeks to answer questions based on a hybrid model, pairing user answers through existing social networks and based on topics that an individual has claimed expertise. Sites such as Yahoo Answers or review sites such as Qype, utilize a voting or user hierarchy model to attempt to signal which individuals are the most trustworthy. By considering a user's grade and his recommendation relative to others, individuals can begin to judge the quality of information, without the trust found in traditional relationships.
Badges & check-ins help to identify expertise
Alternatively, incentive based networks such as Foursquare or Get Glue use a mix of existing ties and accomplishment markers to signal trustworthiness. Through gaining badges based on accomplishments, users are able to signal that actions or qualifications have been completed, meaning they may be more trustworthy sources of related information. Requiring action may be a more effective way than asking an individual to show expertise, but it also involves a clear signaling system and direct links between signals and knowledge. Conversely, recommendations through action (such as Foursquare check-ins or tips at a specific venue) also have the capacity to prove more trustworthy than other sources, given the increased effort required.
So what do these differing online recommendation networks mean for advertisers and brands?
Regardless of network type, brands must make themselves available to users. Building trust through interaction and making content easily available to experience, recommend and widely share, can help brands to create and facilitate user to user communications. Be it creating a heavily produced piece of digital content for a large brand or simply curating the venue page or website for a small establishment, the ease of use with which a consumer can find, interact with or share content can aid with gaining effective recommendation.
So, its no big secret that two of my largest geek obsessions: psychology & digital marketing, come together rather often on the blog. However, where as I normally start with a digital marketing concept/story and throw in some consumer psychology, I thought it might be entertaining to do the opposite.
Aside from being as far from the actual World Cup as possible, what makes Nike's ad easy to share while others aren't?
With this in mind, I was recently considering what tools might be useful to differentiate the mass of digital content posted by brands. With the World Cup coming to a close and people marveling over the number of views advertisements like the Nike 'Write Your Future' video garnered, its interesting to consider what separates this from other similar, less viewed World Cup content. Along these lines, I thought I would take a relatively basic consumer psychology concept, the means-end chain, and apply it rather liberally to the world of online viral marketing, to view content in new ways.
What is the Means-End Chain?
The means-end chain is, at its most basic, a way to describe how a product interacts with the consumer. Whereas more complex explanations can be found elsewhere, for our purposes, I'll go with a basic definition I've used since school At its heart, a product on the means-end chain breaks down in three different areas:
Not every product touches the consumer in each of these areas (some basic products may only deliver a basic benefit and possess simple attributes), but by analyzing a product along these lines, we begin to take apart its essence. Within each of the three groupings, two subgroups exist, which begin to paint a progression for product analysis (shown below).
These six sections allow marketers to analyze not only how a product interacts with the consumer, but where advantages may exist in relation to similar products. For example, on the surface, few differences exist between Coke & Diet Coke. If we put Coca-Cola Classic on the means-end chain, we see that it hits the boxes expected from a soft drink:
Purchasing, possessing & consuming a Coca-cola isn't a life changing decision, no matter how many people you buy a Coke for or teach to sing. Even its psycho-social benefits (those conferred from others) are tenuously weak, with a fleeting acceptance coming from only the most needy of consumer. However, when we compare it to Diet Coke, we can see that in some interpretations, a soft drink can become more than just a beverage.
By dipping into enabling values the consumer may have about fitness or getting into shape, Diet Coke has the ability to interact on a level traditional Coca-Cola cannot. While it may be tenuous to say that one Diet Coke could enable a consumer to achieve a step towards a long term goal, it does point out how we project possibilities onto products in noticeable ways.
What does this have to do with viral content?
Moving away from the straight forward example of two related products, its clear to see that the basic concept of the chain is useful to think of products in a different way. However, relating this product analysis to online content however, may be more difficult.
When someone mentions viral marketing & the internet, a variety of things can come up. From tweets to pictures, video & websites, users & brands both enjoy the benefits of the way content travels online. The reach generated by a user generated movement can multiply the effectiveness of a brand's campaign exponentially, but predicting what content will resonate with the online audience is difficult. Much like predicting product/consumer interaction, the way users consume online content is unpredictable, leading to uncertainty about communication performance.
A focus group discussing re-tweeting last year attempted to sum up how content is passed on to me as 'attributional cool'. This meaning that users only pass on what they deem cool & interesting, hoping to impart a bit of that feeling to themselves as they share with their friends. Predicting what achieves the level of 'attributionally cool' is a nearly impossible task involving analysis of social norms, reference groups & a host of other complex factors. However, the relationship between the user, content & viral transmission begins in the same way as with the user & product.
Instead of a purchase & consumption, online content hopes to motivate the user into interaction & distribution. Therefore, it may be possible to compare two similar pieces of content, in the same way Coke & Diet Coke were compared, and see if some level of interaction dictated greater depth of engagement. While the very nature of viral content & 'attributional cool' lives in the Psychosocial area of the means-end chain, I believe the other areas can still help to unlock basic insights about content.
Applying the Means-End Chain to Digital Content....
Applying the chain to viral content, it seems that the attributes and benefits may possess a more obvious presence than values, as the relationship between content and the user is rather shallow. That aside, each area seems to take on new characteristics when thought of in the digital space.
Ok Go's 'Here It Goes Again' Video helps to illustrate how concrete attributes, such as embedding functions for content, can heavily shape pass-on performance
Attributes, as we think of them in traditional product analysis, entails the actual dimensions & capacities of the product. With our Coke & Diet Coke example, the concrete attributes described unchanging things about the packaging and the liquid itself, while functional attributes described interpretive aspects such as taste. In applying the means end chain to digital content, concrete attributes can become the aspects of the product that control viewing such as resolution (HD or non-HD), encoding, video delivery platform (i.e. flash based or HTML 5), sound or no sound, embeddable or non-embeddable, etc. Functional attributes becomes analysis about the content itself, (i.e. does it feature recognizable characters, what is it's tone, etc.). While functional attributes may seem to play a larger role in viral pass-on than concrete attributes of a product, remember the performance of OK Go's viral music videos. After their treadmill based 'Here it goes again' went viral, their follow-up 'This too shall pass' featured disabled youtube video embedding at the behest of their record company. While this was eventually overturned, views of the video were significantly lower than the embeddable original, due to a change in the concrete attributes of the digital content.
Content such as the Toyota Sienna viral 'Swagger Wagon' illustrate the challenges in balancing depth of benefits with a target group to widespread appeal.
Benefits, in traditional product analysis, are the deliverables that the product can bring (i.e. Coke quenches thirst (functional benefit) and it may signal something to others about your choices (psychosocial benefit)). Alternatively, when analyzing digital content sharing, the perceived psychosocial benefits play a large role in deciding if content will be passed on. The functional benefits of digital content speak to the enjoyment the viewer gets from consuming the content, while the psychosocial benefits speak more to the possible 'attributional cool' that the user feels he may get from sharing such content. While the psychosocial benefits may seemingly outweigh the importance of the functional benefits in assessing if content will be shared, we shouldn't discount the importance of the intial viewer experience in assesing content. How the initial viewer enjoys the content is very important on how he/she feels others will react to it. The reference groups of an individual also heavily shape expectations of what would be considered 'attributionally cool'. For example, a 15 year old might not progress down the means-end chain to the same level as a 35 year old family man when presented with content such as the 'Swagger Wagon' music video, though both may find humor in it. Therefore, the means-end chain helps to illustrate the challenge content faces when it hopes for a large pass on rate, delivering both functional and perceived psychosocial benefits to the largest audience possible.
Possibly one of the most well known pieces of digital content in the last few years, 'Yes We Can' illustrates how the rare phenomenon of tapping into the values part of the means-end chain can benefit a piece of content's consumption & pass-on
As mentioned before, Values are the hardest level for both products and digital content to interact with the consumer. While few products can reach the consumer in a way that leads to delivering instrumental or terminal value, even fewer pieces of digital content can, due to fleeting engagement. However, given the scarcity and power of value based digital content, those that can latch onto some larger life goal gain a powerful chance to encourage pass-on. Content linked to political campaigns, such as the 'Yes We Can' video for Barack Obama's campaign illustrates how content may tap into larger goals due to its affiliations. While many politically related videos may touch on a similar topic in both attributes and benefits, the ability of the video to deliver the perception of instrumental value delivery gave it an appeal over others.
Conclusions
So after attempting to apply the means-end chain to digital content, what have we learned? I think breaking down each section has shown that the 'content as a product' model works for analyzing how content is consumed. I think limitations exist in the power of the model based on the impact of reference groups and social norms, but that two similar pieces of content, with similar target groups and interests, can feasibly be compared for differences along the means-end chain. Overall, this entire exercise shows the value in applying new points of view to existing ideas, mining insight from the synthesis of different, but related, fields in marketing.
Last year, I wrote about Method's 'Shiny Suds' advertisement, which sparked a decent amount of controversy based on its slightly creepy appraoch to illustrate the effect cleaner residue can have on a shower. I've embedded the ad above because I'd like to use it to quickly discuss another ad which caught my attention, the Bird's Eye frozen food campaign using Willem Dafoe as a stuffed polar bear.
The inclusion of Willem Dafoe in a fish finger ad would have garnered some press coverage on its own due to the seeming mismatch between the actor and the brand. This is the man from Platoon (and a less gravitas bestowing Spiderman), so flogging frozen goods may create a bit of a gap of expectation in consumer's minds. Brilliantly however, Bird's Eye & AMV BBDO leveraged the gap in consumer expectation to make a memorable ad by playing to Dafoe's unique image and the strangeness of his presence in the commercial.
'Never underestimate how far dedicated brand spokesmen will go to sell fish sticks'....
Every element of the commercial seems to lend itself to being slightly off-kilter and creepy. The polar bear seems to be designed as part hallucination/part ratty hand puppet. The lack of emotion conveyed by the puppet's minimalist face and its passive-aggressive tone means that its expected behaviour and intentions are slightly worrying & unclear. Dafoe's voice makes this part as his tone easily switches from paternally reassuring & humorous to slightly sociopathic, leading the viewer to wonder if the commercial will end with a laugh track or simulated animal puppet violence. Conclusions like this make it woth noting that compared to Bird's Eye's previous campaigns (example below), this is quite a departure in a new direction.
Compared to the previous campaign, and in general, I really like the Bird's Eye ad. However, as I previously said in my post about the 'Shiny Suds' ad, I'm not exactly the target market. I'm certainly shower much more frequently than buying frozen fish sticks, but in both purchase decisions, I don't have much involvement. As a 20 something guy, I'm still surprised that the shower doesn't clean itself with everyone using so much soap in it; as for frozen fish sticks, if I purchased any, I can tell you they would live forgotten in my freezer until the next equivalent of the Pre-Cambrian extinction came around. This aside, its not a great time to be a housewife in advertising. From showering to food, it seems that placing the archetypal homemaker in creepy situations is the current de jour for challenging convention and gaining interest.
So, if both ads bank on housewives in creepy situations, how can I like one and feel slightly apathetic to the other? Relative to each other, the 'Shiny Suds' ad just has more malice, which while aiming to be funny, leaves an odd aftertaste on the psyche. Simply put, 'Shiny Suds' gives off a creepy/edgy vibe by being mean and creepy. The elements brought to bear in 'Shiny Suds' seems useful if attempting to bring about behavioural response to a worthwhile need (i.e. London Cabwise Advertisements), but just seems somewhat offputting when used on a FMCG.
Alternatively, the Bird's Eye advertisement also comes off as quite creepy, but by utilizing odd voice acting, unusual visual cues and a soundtrack that seems like Phillip Glass also came along to production. The creepiness generated by the combination of the advertisments odd elements isn't as visceral or threatening as with 'Shiny Suds'. Instead its more of a novel creepiness, an awkward feeling that plays out like something from a TV edited David Lynch movie.
The comparison with elements of a David Lynch film reminds of another recent ad set in suburbia (shown above) for Gu Chocolate Pods. The unusual composition of the Gu ad is leveraged to suggest some manner of illicit suburban underbelly instead of a purely creepy encounter, but once again shows that suburban convention can be challenged for an interesting effect. The product matches with the elements of the advertisement in a way that the previous examples do not (chocolate pods and a conveyed feeling of relaxation & illicit sensousness do go together better than with fish sticks), however all three show how skewering suburbia's norms and feeling of routinized security can generate attention.
Regardless of comparions, considering the Bird's Eye ad as a whole, one can definitely see that potential exists to generate interest for the product. Perhaps the most final measure of success for the campaign though, is how the chief food purchaser in the household reacts to it. A stereotypical housewife may not be positively swayed by the method campaign, however, Bird's Eye's ad may have successfully found a balance that leverages creepiness into prolonged recognition and consideration.
What do you think? Are you more or less likely to buy frozen fish sticks after this? Where would you place the ads presented on a scale of creepy & interesting to creepy & uncomfortable?
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