How do ideas and products go viral? One more time

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viral-marketingWe continue to learn more about how and why ideas and products go viral.  To keep you up to speed, we continue to cover this topic.  About a year and a half ago, we pointed out a Wall Street Journal article featuring Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger.  We later brought you the tongue-in-cheek Buyral video.  Now Jonah Berger is back with more insights.  You can catch some of them in this Fast Company article “Why Ideas and Products Become Contagious:  The Jonah Berger Formula” (February 11, 2013) which includes six STEPPS to make any idea or product go viral.  If that intrigues you, you can read more in his forthcoming (March 5) book, “Contagious:  Why Things Catch On.”

Now here is a fun activity for class.  Show students a currently trending viral video.  Then bring out the Buyral video to inject a bit of humor.  Then ask students to work as teams to figure out what makes videos go viral.  Finally present them with Berger’s formula — and compare their ideas with Berger’s.

Generating Buzz…

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I don’t think Martin Lindstrom’s blog post, “Under-Promise. Over-Deliver. And Your Brand’s Fans Will Talk” (Fast Company, January 10, 2012) will surprise those of you teaching marketing. It is a good reminder and might offer some examples to use in class.  On the other hand many of our students don’t think about the benefits of giving customers more than they expect, instead focusing on the costs.  So I have also posted this at Learn the 4 Ps.

Ikea’s Creatively Demonstrates Its Furniture for Those Dwelling in Small Apartments

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Ikea’s target market includes urban young people — many of whom live in relatively small big-city apartments.  A lot of Ikea’s offerings are optimized to this segment.  One challenge for Ikea is demonstrating how their products make a small apartment bigger.  One way is to create a small apartment in their stores — but to get to more customers, you could bring the small apartment to them.  Ikea knows its urban market often travels on the metro (subway).  So they built a 54 square meter (about 580 square feet) apartment in a Paris metro station.  The apartment’s windows allowed customers to see Ikea’s furniture and cabinets in action.  Five volunteers lived there for a week — they even threw a party.

This is an interesting example of creative promotion.  Ikea got some buzz — so more than just metro riders in one station got to see this.  Will it generate interest?  Sales?  It is a good example of trying to break through the clutter of advertising.

Unilever – Sustainability Goals Require New Creative Direction

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Unilever has produced some memorable campaigns – it is behind the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty and those wild Axe ads.

Now Unilever’s using its marketing expertise to change behavior in the developing world — hopefully making its growth more sustainable.  For example, it has had to get creative to promote hand-washing in many parts of the world (see poster used in Indonesia).  Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan aims to cut its  products environmental impact in half while doubling sales.  You can read an interview with the Unilever CEO and better understand how its creative priorities have changed as it tries to change consumer behavior in many ways  – see “Unilever CEO Paul Polman On The Packaged Goods Giant’s Creative Shift” (Fast Company, Co.Create, January 12, 2012).

 

HOW TO: Launch Any Product Using Social Media

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Now Guy Kawasaki is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and a big name author in the tech community — I think this is his tenth book.  He already has an incredible network.  With the publication of his new book – Enchantment:  The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions, Kawasaki relied on low-cost forms of social media to get the word out and drive great initial sales. Read about it at Mashable “HOW TO:  Launch Any Product Using Social Media,” (March 31, 2011)

The book is already on the bestseller lists at the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.  In other words, it worked.  This is a great case study on how to use social media.  While the case study looks at the launch of a book by an already successful author, I think that with some in-class discussion, you can see how the ideas can be applied to other product launches.  It might make for an interesting exercise to ask students how these ideas could be adapted to launch a new dog food, hip hop band, or snow board.

This example could be used when talking about marketing strategy planning, promotion, publicity, or social media.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.