ARF Interview with Thales Teixeira on "Viral Advertising via Ad Symbiosis: Self-Interested Sharing"

Marketers all want to make the next quotviralquot ad but it39s not that simple What makes people share ads with friends What characteristics do viral ads have in common We had the chance to talk with Thales Teixeira Marketing Professor at the Harvard School of Business Professor Teixeira39s work focuses on why people share and what content they39re inclined to shareARF Why do viewers share adsThales Teixeira Consumer sharing of ads the basis of viral advertising has turned out to be a very uncertain and complicated process My research breaks down the ad sharing process into three sequential consumer behaviors necessary for an ad to be successfully shared online attraction retention and sharing First viewers can39t avoid eg skip the ad Second they should watch the ad until the end And third conditional on viewing they need to decide to share the ad with their acquaintances My research explains the ad features that facilitate though not guaranteeing that an ad will 39survive39 these three stages so as to be on track to disseminate virally onlineInitially we thought that people share ads to connect to others to provide their acquaintances with content that they think has value in an altruistic manner It turns out that most sharing is done for selfinterested motives In one way another consciously or not the sender intends to gain 39social capital39 in the process It is not just about content To create successful viral ads brands need to enlist the right consumers to do the distribution job Brands need to ask the question 39What39s in it for them39 Providing desirable ad content for example novel humor AND allowing them to gain social status in the process is the key to enlisting consumers to work on behalf of your brand This 39symbiosis39 wherein both senders and advertiser benefit is what ads that have successfully gone viral haveARF How can advertisers design to be sharableTeixeira The tricky part is that just because a viewer may really like an ad doesn39t mean she is also likely to share it In particular I found that although shocking content and humor may get people to watch an ad privately it often works against their desire to share the spot Bud Light39s quotClothing Drivequot where the characters respond by removing clothes they39re wearing garnered high viewership but it was not as widely shared as other Bud Light ads Even the blackedout nudity was too shocking The solution Surprise but don39t shockARF Can you tell us about the effects of emotional delivery Were there any surprises in your findingsTeixeira Using facialtracking technology we39ve found that ads that produce stable emotional states generally aren39t effective at engaging viewers for very long The solution Build an emotional roller coaster Viewers are most likely to continue watching a video ad if they experience emotional ups and downs This fits with psychologicalresearch findings about human adaptability When we come into a warm home on a cold winter day or when we receive a pay raise we experience pleasure but the feeling is transitory the novelty soon wears off So advertisers need to briefly terminate viewers39 feelings of joy or surprise and then quickly restore them creating an emotional roller coasteramp8212much the way a movie does Surprisingly giving the viewer the most amount of joy surprise or other positive emotion in ads isn39t the best way to hold their attention Interrupting something good actually helpsARF How can companies use these findings to develop adsTeixeira Practically speaking one clear means to develop better TV and online ads is to grab attention at the onset Ads should evoke surprise followed by joyful or happy scenes not the other way around and alternate between high and low levels of joy Entertaining the viewer first pays off to some extent Using purely humor ads with the brand at the end is too high a price to pay with too little time left to persuade the ultimate goalARF Why do viewers change the channel What are views turnoffs and turnonsTeixeira Prominent branding puts off viewers Using eyetracking we discovered that viewers routinely focus on brand logos onscreen This isn39t the boon it might seem The more prominent or intrusive the logo the more likely viewers are to stop watchingamp8212 even if they know and like the brand Why People seem to have an unconscious aversion to being persuaded so when they see a logo they resist The solution Utilize quotbrand pulsingquot Smart advertising unobtrusively weaves the brand image throughout the ad My experiments have shown that this can increase viewership by as much as 20 One of the best examples of the technique is CocaCola39s animated quotHappiness Factoryquot ad It depicts a fantasy version of what happens inside a Coke machine when someone inserts money A Coke bottle is shown repeatedly but each appearance is quick So if a primary goal is to get viewers to watch ads until the end TV and online video ads should not show the brand logo too intrusively and should pulse it onoffon whenever possible One way to do this is to have the brand act as a hero in the story as opposed to a persuading symbol This technique also improves the ad39s virality potentialWant to hear more Professor Teixeira will be speaking at the ARF Rethink 2012 Convention on Tuesday March 27 at 1150 am Register now You can also read his report

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ARF Interview with Thales Teixeira on "Viral Advertising via Ad Symbiosis: Self-Interested Sharing"

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