GOING VIRAL: Popular people and viral media

I’VE just finished reading a thought-provoking book titled The Tipping Point (2000) by best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell, who is a well-respected journalist at The New Yorker. In his book Gladwell focuses on how ideas, products and messages reach a tipping point where they spread like viruses and enter­ into popular culture.

Several of the examples Gladwell uses are taken between the sixties and the nineties, with one of the earliest examples being the stirrings of the American Revolution. Gladwell asserts that word-of-mouth is still the most effective method for creating social epidemics. Spreading the famous phrase “The British are coming” for example, spread like wildfire and saved the settlers of early America.

Gladwell argues that out of any population of people it is only a few who are responsible for making something go viral. These people he refers to as Connectors — trustworthy, charismatic people who are a part of many social circles and are therefore well connected. Whether an idea, product or message sticks is dependent on what Gladwell calls The Law of the Few.

Never have Connectors been more important to this social process than they are today in the digital age. Today people don’t even need to know their online contacts or followers personally to help them make something go viral. Social media has made it possible for anyone to become an influential Connector. It doesn’t even take long for a viral e-mail to find its way around the world.

Demotivational posters are one of the most viral forms of imagery on the Internet. A Google image search for ‘demotivational posters’ fetches more than one million results.

Advertisers still attempt to increase the popularity of products by using celebrity endorsements. Fans of such celebrities may very well be persuaded this way. However, there is a far greater chance today of a product or idea going viral based on what those same celebrities say on Twitter or on their blogs. If Stephen Fry recommends a good book on Twitter, there is a chance that over three million people will follow suit.

The Internet is a fantastic tool for self-education, but it has to be said that, generally­, people will follow the law of crowds. If 640 million people have watched Justin Bieber’s video Baby you are likely to assume that it must be good and proceed to watch it yourself; or, you may watch it just to see what all the fuss is about. When a record label catches wind of such popularity and comments are largely favourable, those 640 million viewers are counted as potential consumers and Justin Bieber becomes an overnight superstar.

YouTube has great power to influence popular culture as it continuously evolves. Social media research conducted in 2009 reported that every minute, 24 hours of video footage is uploaded onto YouTube. Whether any of this becomes sticky and goes viral depends on those few individuals who, firstly, spend a lot of time on YouTube, and secondly, who are well connected and widely followed. What the rest of the world will consider popular largely depends on what they will consider to be popular.

It’s an intriguing yet daunting thought. A reflection of some of the most watched YouTube videos of all time include “lolcats”, people singing or dancing, and people falling over or getting hurt. Cats hold their position as the second­ most popular pet in the world, two of the most popular TV shows watched today include Idols and Dancing with the Stars and there has been a proliferation of reality shows depicting dangerous stunts or bodily functions — Jackass, Crazy Monkey, Dirty Sanchez, The Dudesons, Balls of Steel and Kenny vs Spenny, to name just a few. One would imagine that countries such as Bhutan, which are not a part of social media phenomena, would find such epidemics quite bizarre.

It appears that cultural globalisation lies in the hands of a few. We can either choose to take part and be contributing spinners of the growing web or we can be susceptible flies caught in its sticky threads.

TED TALK: Richard Seymour on product beauty

“BEAUTY is in the eye of the beholder”, they say. To someone more cynical about love: beauty is in the eye of the beer holder. To the advertiser and product designer, beauty is in the limbic system of the beholder.

Beauty is intrinsically tied in with advertising and new technology. I was intrigued to recently discover that the marketing of motor vehicles is not so much about shapes but reflective surfaces. The recent motor show illustrated this well, with each car shimmering more than the next in the strategically placed lighting. This has the effect of making stationary objects come to life.

Consider Steve Jobs’ claim to fame. The flood of articles that have emerged since his death remind us that Jobs was not the genius behind Apple software but rather the chief designer and marketer. His work revolved around beauty and involved appealing to the emotional beings that we are.

Designers and advertisers are responsible for shaping our ever-evolving ideas of beauty year after year. This year some of the criteria that signify beauty in technology are flat, touchable surfaces, thin and light-weight with rounded corners. The beautiful colours are black, white and silver – much like the colour scheme of what we might imagine a modern-looking kitchen to embody.

A lot of funding for the marketing of new technologies goes towards understanding how people’s brains respond to images. Debates have revolved around whether we “think beauty” or “feel beauty”. What we do know is that it takes a good few seconds for stimuli to enter into the cognitive portion of the brain, where we get a chance to really think about what we have just seen or felt.

Television adverts take this fast-paced form of advertising to the extreme – quickly throwing imagery at our eyes coupled with strange statistics and tidbits of information. They attempt to embed these into our subconscious and supply us with answers before we get a change to think about what just happened. When we happen upon the product later on we suddenly feel a strange sense of familiarity with it.

Then there is the other extreme. There is roughly a six second period whereby stimuli and information reach the cognitive part of our brains – six seconds which is crucial to advertisers and product designers. The lights dimming before a movie starts in the cinema, for example, takes roughly six seconds. The intended effect is to create feelings of anticipation and excitement. BMW copied this technique with their slow dimming lights.

Richard Seymour: How beauty feels

Richard Seymour is a product designer who revealed some of these secrets during a recent TED talk. In his talk, Seymour explores our response to beauty and illustrates the surprising power that objects which exhibit beauty can have over us. Seymour explains that the goal of advertisers and designers is to form emotional bonds between us and products. What we see, he argues, “is an electro-chemical party trick that happens before we even get a chance to think about it.”

“We are slaves to the first flash”, says Seymour, and “we see and understand things not as they are, but as we are”, to quote the philosopher Anais Nin.

Seymour also shed light on how the beauty and our perception of something can change according to the information we are provided either before or afterwards. Consider ballet, for example. One who doesn’t understand the pain and discipline that ballet dancers endure would find it far less beautiful than someone who truly understood and appreciated the art.

It makes one wonder if the small and curvy Blackberry is suddenly less beautiful now than it was before.

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INTELLIGENT ADVERTISING: A collection of clever poster adverts

DO they still make those top-adverts-from-around-the-world shows? You know, the one where they showcase the top 100 adverts from around the world. I don’t watch much TV these days, but those shows were great fun.

I remember the earlier ones consisting of a lot of European adverts. The German ones tended to be quite raunchy. Some were banned because of their suggestive natures. What surprised me is that there were only ever one or two South African adverts in the mix.

South Africa tends to be rather good at intelligent advertising. We have the Nandos ads that never fail to amuse and even Marmite advertising tends to be tasteful. Here’s a small video collection of ‘Extremely funny ads you’ve never seen before’.

Humour goes a long way in advertising and I personally prefer good poster ads that are not only funny but intelligent. Below is a select few. They may not be South African, but the good humour remains intact.

Intelligent Advertising

Grannys Fries

Sugar free candy

Pedigree

Comedy Central

Durex

Che - Men's Magazine

Ear plugs

Ancap

Autofocus

Nikon - detects faces

Wide angle lens

***More Intelligent Advertising***

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ADVERTISING: A fine selection of intelligent adverts

THERE’S something very pleasing about an intelligent advert, whether it be a poster or a TV commercial. Most people consider adverts as invasive and mute them whenever they come on, while others are suckered into buying just about anything that’s thrown at them.

I often find myself completely oblivious to what adverts are trying to sell – rather focusing on what subtleties they have employed to appeal to people’s human desires. These are usually quite obvious – the major ones being sex, fame, beauty and prosperity.

My favourite ads are the ones that take the piss out of the blatant methods of advertising and offer us something clever, tasteful and humorous. Those are the ones we remember and make you rush out to buy their product at a store near you. Strange … I have a sudden urge to drink Heineken ...

Intelligent Advertising

Ad for Geeks - very clever!

Pedigree - for strong dogs

WWF: 15km2 of rain forrest disappears every minute

Durex - XXL

Energiser

Post-it - never forget a name again!

Plumber with a sense of humour

BIC - makes your face smoother than things that are really smooth

Heineken - may contain adult content

Tractors - getting old gits laid since 1912

Heinz - keeping food sexy

Volvo - For life

The power of viagra

Wasn't that great!? Big-ups to the minds behind these designs - whomever they may be. Such products deserve attention when advertised so creatively.

More: Intelligent Advertising part 2

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MONEY: Earn a sizeable bounty for your creative ideas with Idea Bounty

HAVE you ever experienced one of those moments when you, a friend, or a family-member comes up with some really good idea during conversation when someone says: "That’s brilliant! You really should patent that idea!" Most people have, yet while we may dwell in the flattery of such words, very few naturally-gifted think tanks ever get off their behinds and actually do something with such ‘million-dollar ideas’.

Of course the market for ideas is a competitive one; people are trying to sell ideas every day. It’s also not easy pitching unique ideas to different individuals and trying to get them to see your vision. If, on the other hand, you decide to implement a practical idea yourself, you may find that you lack motivation or the resources to do so.

Sometimes you just want to get an idea written down and put out there and hope to the powers that be that it somehow gets discovered and praised. But why not get paid for it too?

If you’re bursting with business ideas, but perhaps lacks the motivation to implement them yourself, there is the perfect platform for you.

Idea Bounty is a social think-tank that provides a secure channel for the worldwide creative community to offer solutions to creative briefs. A bounty is offered for the idea that best answers the brief, and the contributor of the winning idea gets the cash.

Idea Bounty is an online service that operates within the market for ideas. Businesses or clients sign up and submit a brief for something they want — such as ideas for an advert. Users or creatives are then invited to submit their ideas for that brief. A sizeable bounty is offered by the client beforehand and it is bestowed upon the person who submits the best idea. In other words, the best idea is chosen by, and sold to, the client or business.

The Idea Bounty website is now one year old with more than 7 500 registered creatives. Among the clients served so far are FNB, Castle­ Lager, BMW and Red Bull, with the biggest bounty to date being a whopping $10 000. Here’s a little more from the Idea Bounty team ...

• What is Idea Bounty?
Well the simple answer is that for clients, Idea Bounty is the simplest way to hire thousands of creatives and only pay for the ideas you want. For creatives, it’s an amazing platform that allows you to pitch on various briefs. The bottom line: clients get the best ideas and creatives get paid for those ideas.

• How does this social think tank operate?
Idea Bounty is a social think tank that provides a secure channel for the world wide creative community to offer solutions to creative briefs. A reward or ‘bounty’ is offered for the idea that best answers the brief and the contributor of the winning idea gets the cash.

• What’s the catch?
There is none! We want to facilitate the exchange of ideas based on an open economy. The value of the reward will dictate the quality of the ideas competing for the bounty. Creatives: The idea belongs to you until you get paid. Clients: You only pay for what you like. You use it, you buy it.

• What’s in it for clients?
The traditional model for purchasing creative output (in the form of creative expertise, ideas and ultimately communication platforms) has dictated that the client (the person with the problem) pay based on how many people and hours have been used in creating the end product. So it’s rare that a budget allows more than two or three resources to be allocated to solving a brief.

If you truly wanted to inject the energy and diverse thinking (ideas) of hundreds of hungry experts, the costs would grow exponentially as new individuals lend their expertise... enter Idea Bounty. Here you have access to all the ideas and brains behind your brief but you only have to pay for what you like.

• What’s in it for creatives?
Are you a ‘great ideas scribbled on the back of a napkin’ type of person, the type who keeps a notebook next to their bed so when they wake up they can jot down the most insanely inspired dream-time Ideas?

So you’re über creative and ideas pop into your head at a rate of knots, but why would you need Idea Bounty?

The world’s creative industries are competitive by nature and driven by accolades and rewards. Unfortunately these don’t always carry any financial benefit ... enter Idea Bounty.

• What’s the deal between clients and creatives?
The ideas you submit will only be visible to you and the client so you don’t have to fret about anyone ‘borrowing’ your brilliant ideas. If your idea is used by one of our clients you will receive the cash reward (Bounty) on offer.

We will of course let everyone know whether their ideas have been rewarded, and in the case where the client would like you to continue working on the project we will gladly put you in touch with one another.

• The team behind Idea Bounty

“Idea Bounty was started by a guy who saw the light and a guy who was frantically waving a torch."

"The Idea Bounty team boasts a collective 16 years experience in the worlds of traditional advertising and online marketing. Above-the-line, through-the-line, below-the-line... any bloody line - you name it we’ve done it.

In short - we know how to find creative solutions to business problems and ensure that finding these creative solutions is a smooth process. Idea Bounty is the social think tank that is going to inject some real inspiration into your business.”

There you have it – the perfect platform to get those creative juices flowing and perhaps earn a pretty penny in the process.

That’s www.ideabounty.com

• Click here to sign up and get cracking!

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WEB STATISTICS: The difference between hits, page impressions, user sessions and unique visitors

EVERYONE with a website or blog should be interested to know just how well they are doing in terms of generating online traffic. However, the value of website statistics lies in the interpretation of trends rather than concentration on precise figures.

While some site aggregators focus on 'hits' and 'user sessions', others offer insight into 'unique visits' and 'page impressions'. Below is an attempt at distinguishing between these terms in order to better understand what the dots and lines on web statistics mean.

WEBSITE HITS:

The idea of measuring website traffic using hits is becoming rather old school due to its inaccuracy. Technically speaking a page hit is the term for any requested file, including each of a page's images or graphics. It is the retrieval of any item, like a page or a graphic, from a web server. Any time a piece of data matches criteria you set, in a Google search for example, it's recorded as a hit.

The problem with hits however is that when a visitor calls up a web page consisting of several graphics, each one is recorded as a hit plus one for the html page. For this reason, hits often aren't a good indication of web traffic.

PAGE IMPRESSIONS/VIEWS:

While a hit is a single file request from a web-server, a page impression is a combination of one of more files sent to a user via that user's request (such as a search). In other words, it is the viewing or downloading of a website in its entirety by one user.

In web advertising, the term 'impression' is often synonymous for 'view', and is usually what advertisers use to determine how and where to advertise online.

However, the accuracy of this data will depend upon whether or not the user's PC is 'caching' the files integral to that page, or whether the user clears the cache after each session. In other words, whether or not the page has to reload each time.

Page impressions therefore become meaningless on framed sites. If a framed page has a separate frame for the header, the top border and the main text area, for example, a visitor will create a total of four different page impressions rather than one.

USER SESSIONS:

In tabulating more accurate statistics for website usage, user sessions are often used for counting the number of times a particular user visits the site. This is determined by the visitor's IP address and thereby solves the problems of repeat visits to pages.

These are calculated by the presence of a user with a specific IP address who has not visited the site recently (typically, anytime within the past 30 minutes). For example, a user who visits a site at noon and then again at 3pm would be counted as two user sessions or visits.

UNIQUE VISITORS:

A related term for user sessions, a unique visitor refers to a person who visits a website more than once within a specified period of time.

Different from a hits or page views (measured by the number of files that are requested from a site) unique visitors are measured according to their unique IP addresses. These act like online fingerprints, and unique visitors are counted only once no matter how many times they visit the site.

One could think of unique visitors as your loyal readership or website users. Treat them well!

Hope this was helpful. Please add any additional insight or unique info you may have below.

Links:  • Hits and impressions • Site measurement FAQs

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