Posted May 14, 2012

By Ed Keller and Brad Fay

The Facebook IPO has both the financial and marketing communities abuzz, and with good reason. Facebook is the king of the social media hill, and its growth and ability to attract a loyal and highly networked audience is to be admired.

For brands, however, online social networks are far from the Holy Grail of marketing.  The research is increasingly clear and compelling that for brands that want to be social and generate conversation, a far bigger and more powerful force is real world, face-to-face conversation.

It has been said that online social media is “word of mouth on steroids.” Key to that argument is a belief that online conversations will spread to hundreds or thousands of people (and maybe more) with the click of a mouse. But while that is theoretically possible, it is not the way online sharing usually works. Most links that are shared reach only 5-10 people. And the huge legions of Facebook fans, it turns out, are not so actively engaged with the brands they once “liked.” Fewer than 1% of brand fans on Facebook have any type of active involvement, bringing those huge numbers back down to earth.

Meanwhile, our research finds that 90% of word-of-mouth conversations about brands take place offline, primarily face-to-face, in people’s homes and offices, in restaurants and stores, really anywhere people congregate. These conversations bring with them greater credibility, a greater desire to share with others, and a great likelihood to purchase the products being discussed than conversations that take place online.

So if not via Facebook and other social networking sites, what can brands do to get conversations started? It is important to fight the urge to start your marketing strategy with a particular tool or approach. Instead, start a story that consumers will want to talk about. What are the messages about your brand and category that make you talkworthy?

Next, it’s important to tap the right talkers. Who are the consumer influencers in your category, and your brand advocates? When and where do they talk, about what, and why? Often the people who have credibility when they talk are not the target customer. And the places to reach these influencers will not flow naturally from your media optimization plan unless you’re clearly focused on word of mouth as a primary goal. Media with the largest concentrations of influencers will surprise you.

Once you have your message and target in mind, only then does it make sense to choose the channels through which to reach people and to encourage sharing. And it turns out, the biggest and most productive channel to spark conversation is not online social media, but paid advertising. Fully one-quarter of conversations about brands include an explicit reference to ads. In fact, television advertising is far and away the single biggest driver of consumer conversation. Far from being a dinosaur, as some pundits say, television and other traditional media play a key role in today’s social marketplace.

Today’s consumer marketplace is highly social, but not because of particular platforms or technologies. The businesses that will be the most successful in the future are the ones that embrace a model that puts people– rather than technology – at the center of products, campaigns and market strategies. Those who achieve the greatest success will recognize that there are many ways to tap the power of today’s social consumer.

The great social wave is an opportunity that no business can afford to ignore or look at myopically. It’s happening all around us – and to the continuing surprise of many, it’s mostly happening face-to-face.

Ed Keller and Brad Fay are co-authors of The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace, to be published in May by Free Press. They are also principals of the Keller Fay Group, a market research and consulting firm.

On May 22, Brad Fay’s and my new book, THE FACE-TO-FACE BOOK:  Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace, will be published.   You can download a free excerpt from the book here or buy it online here.

As part of our research we looked at the history of word of mouth and social influence, and were reminded that the past is indeed prologue.  My first blog on this topic, reviewed the seminal work of Columbia Professors Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz – Personal Influence. Part two discussed the origins of word-of-mouth advertising in the 1960s and its relevance to today. In this third and final look back I turn to the Cluetrain Manifesto published in 1999.

We live in the social media age of Facebook, Twitter, and their brethren.  Who foretold the current new age?

In 1999, The Cluetrain Manifesto went live.   It laid out a vision of how people will live and why business must change in the Internet age.  It began with these words:  “A powerful global conversation has begun.  Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed.  As a result, markets are getting smarter and faster than most companies.”

The message for business was that as networked markets learn to speak in a natural and genuine voice that “can’t be faked,” respect is being lost “for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.”  Cluetrain argued for a shift toward more authentic communications, and away from marketing hype. Companies should talk with consumers, not at them, and they should nurture consumer-to-consumer conversation about their brands as well.

Was Cluetrain correct that we had entered a new era?  And was it mainly attributable to the rise of the Internet?

Thesis #1 of The Cluetrain Manifesto set the stage:  “Markets are conversations.” For most of human history, it declared, people did business face to face, in open markets, where conversation between buyers and sellers was valued and motivating:  “The first markets were filled with people, not abstractions or statistical aggregates; they were the places where supply met demand with a firm handshake. Buyers and sellers looked each other in the eye, met and connected. The first markets were places for exchange, where people came to buy what others had to sell — and to talk.”

With the rise of the industrial revolution and then the age of mass media, Cluetrain argued, person-to-person connection was lost, to the detriment of consumers and of business.  But with the rise of the Internet, said Cluetrain, people are returning to the “era of conversation.”  Businesses that seize the opportunity and change will thrive, it argued; those that fight it will struggle.  The keys to business success in this new era:  “Loosen up. Lighten up. And shut up for a while. Listen for a change. . . .By listening, marketing will re-learn how to talk.”

The Cluetrain Manifesto was prescient in many ways, even if it took many businesses almost another decade to become comfortable with the idea of being “open” and “social.”

At the same time, Cluetrain was incorrect in one important way.  While the internet is making consumer conversations more visible to companies, we actually never left the era of conversation. Consumers have always made their decisions in a social context, and have sought authentic communications with brands. The reason is that people are social animals, whose survival depends on our being not merely the strongest or most aggressive, but on being collaborative.  Recent advances in neuroscience, evolutionary biology, psychology and related fields have made it increasingly clear that we are hardwired to be social, and always have been.

For all the impressive growth of online social networks, they are not the Holy Grail of marketing.  When looked at in the context of the “total social” opportunity, they are one very small part of the overall picture and needs to be seen as such.  And true to John Naisbitt’s “high tech, high touch” megatrend, online social networking is no substitute for the power and impact of face-to-face communications.  Real world conversations – most of which take place face-to-face – are still the dominant mode of communication by a very wide margin, and they are the most trusted and persuasive.

Today’s consumer marketplace is highly social, but not because of particular platforms or technologies.  The businesses that will be most successful in the future are the ones that embrace a model that puts people first – rather than technology – at the center of products, campaigns and market strategies.   The great social wave we are experiencing today is an opportunity that no business can afford to ignore or look at myopically. It’s happening all around us – and much to the continuing surprise of many, it’s mostly happening face-to-face, in the real world, with all forms of media and marketing having the opportunity to contribute.

By Ed Keller

On May 22, Brad Fay’s and my new book, THE FACE-TO-FACE BOOK:  Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace, will be published.   You can download a free excerpt from the book here or find it online here.

As part of our research we looked at the history of word of mouth and social influence, and were reminded that the past is indeed prologue.  My first blog on this topic, reviewed the seminal work of Columbia Professors Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz – Personal Influence .  Here I discuss the origins of word of mouth advertising and its relevance to today.

The Advent of Word-of-Mouth Advertising

As far as we have been able to determine, the phrase “Word-of-Mouth Advertising” was coined by Ernest Dichter who, in 1966, published an article in the Harvard Business Review entitled, “How Word-of-Mouth Advertising Works”

Dichter was a psychologist by training.  His firm focused on consumer behavior and the motivations that drive them, including the role of persuasion in advertising.  He is generally considered to be “the father of motivational research,” and the first to coin the term “focus group,” a technique that helped him understand “why,” why people were motivated to buy or do or think something.  His work helped advertisers to shift their focus from straightforward product information and statistics, to image and persuasion.

Dichter brought this perspective to his HBR article, which began with the observation  that whenever his firm would ask consumers “what made you buy this brand or particular product?” the answer invariably came back, a friend, expert or relative who told me about it.  To Dichter, this prompted the important question, “Why in a time of increasing advertising volume does Word-of-Mouth recommendation loom so high?”

To provide answers, Dichter launched a large scale research project to investigate the ways in which word-of-mouth recommendations affect advertising, and the flip side – the ways advertising affects word-of-mouth.  Dichter’s goal was to help advertisers refine their techniques such that they could embrace word of mouth and use it to their advantage, rather than seeing it as a force that was at odds with their advertising.

In many regards, it was a precursor to the desire many marketers have today to integrate three major communications assets – paid, owned and earned media.  Rather than treating them as independent silos, or worse, forces that work in opposition to each other, Dichter sought to understand how these assets should work together.

How Can Advertisers Earn Word-of-Mouth?

Dichter provided concrete ideas to advertisers about ways to “earn” word of mouth and thereby earn a bigger return on their investment in “paid” media.  Although Dichter’s advice was given almost 50 years ago, many of his ideas are similar to the guiding principles that social media and word of mouth practitioners deploy today.  Some of these include:

1. Advertisers should provide “proof of friendship” to the consumer, in order to separate themselves from their role as “sales channel” and become a trusted friend of the consumer.  Examples include providing small, but thoughtful “gift packages” to say thanks; helping your customer to feel that they are being initiated into an ‘exclusive’ group by using your product; or “establish audience kinship” through the messages and style of your advertising to illustrate that you have things in common with the customers and truly understand them.
2. Trace “the company myth” – i.e., convey the back story of the product’s founding or the way early consumers used it – in order to personalize the product and create authenticity.
3. Provide “customer testimonials” to simulate word of mouth, which if done properly will allow the viewers or readers to believe that the third party endorser is truly speaking spontaneously and truthfully, and not as a “hired hand.”
4. Design the advertising itself to provoke, stimulate or produce word of mouth.

Dichter’s underlying messages to the advertising community stands the test of time and is as relevant today as it was a half century ago:

• Advertising cannot sell against personal influence;
• Advertising must change from its traditional role of “a salesman who tries to get rid of merchandise,” to a new role of “advertiser as that of a friend who recommends a tried and trusted product”;
• Advertisers should do so by understanding the steps that make person-to-person interaction powerful, and modify mass media approaches accordingly; and
• There is a ready-made market of “influencers, experts, or afficionados” that can be reached and, in turn, influenced by advertising in the right media and with the appropriate creative approach.

The Golden Age of Advertising, or a Missed Opportunity?

Dichter , together with Katz and Lazarsfeld (whom I wrote about previously) and leading thinkers at that time were (for example, Everett Rogers) were not the only ones to extol the importance of word of mouth and influencers during these “early years,” but they were the leading lights and their insights are enduring.  The stage was set, and advertisers were challenged to act and behave differently in order to maximize the impact of their marketing efforts by embracing, rather than ignoring the power of personal influence and word of mouth in the buying process.

Sadly, this didn’t happen.  Instead marketing was overtaken by the era of the “Mad Men.”  It was an era during which the great ad man David Ogilvy felt it necessary to say to his colleagues: “The consumer isn’t a moron; she’s your wife.”  His quote reminds us that it was a male dominated business, and that the consumer certainly wasn’t at the center. Advertising executives were enamored with their own brilliant creativity and their ability to persuade the mass market through the power of their ideas, delivered primarily through TV advertising.  It was a top-down, “father knows best” world, despite the reality that decisions then (as now) were being made “horizontally and socially.”

Many call this time period “the Golden Age of Advertising”; and if you were in the ad business it undoubtedly was. We would call it a three decades long “missed opportunity” for Madison Avenue’s clients.  During those years, the power of word of mouth advertising, influencer marketing, and the like not only failed to take hold, it began to recede from the marketer’s consciousness.  There was relatively little focus throughout the rest of the 60’s right up through the late 1990’s.

In my next and last post on the history of word of mouth, I’ll pick things up in the late 1990s with the publication of the Cluetrain Manifesto and it’s exhortation that “markets are conversations.”

On May 22, my new book, The Face-to-Face Book:  Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace will be published.   Coauthored by Brad Fay, it is a book about the hugely important social wave that is rolling across the world of business today.  But unlike many books and articles argue that online social networks are creating this social wave, we argue that the largest and most important part of social influence is that which happens when conversations happen in the real world, face to face.  There is a vast array of tools and approaches that can be tapped by marketers to drive these real world conversations. You can download a free excerpt from the book here.

While researching the book, I reviewed the history of word of mouth and social influence.  It was a clear reminder that past is prologue.  From a marketing perspective, focus on the role of word of mouth was quite robust in the 1940s, ‘50s and into the ‘60s, before marketing was overtaken by the era of the Mad Men and “the Golden Age of Advertising” and long before the Internet or online social networking.

The ‘40s and ‘50s, we were the dawn of the mass media era, and many people ascribed vast power of the radio and the emerging medium of television.  A prevailing theory of the time, known as the “hypodermic needle model” or “magic bullet theory,” held that powerful mass media could “inject” ideas into people who would directly (and passively) accept and act on those messages.  One incident often cited in support of this theory was the 1938 radio broadcast of the War of the Worlds, and the subsequent nationwide panic that ensued.

To those who advocated the hypodermic needle model, this “cause/effect” was proof that people would hear what the media reported, and take immediate action. But soon thereafter, this theory about how mass communications works was discredited by the eminent Columbia University researchers Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz.

Their argument was based on research – known as “the Decatur study” — the purpose of which was to ascertain how average women in a typical American town (Decatur, Illinois) made decisions about everyday products and services.  The results of the Decatur study were published in 1955 in a seminal book called Personal Influence by Katz and Lazarsfeld.  Among the many findings from Personal Influence were two that are particularly relevant to today’s social era.

People Persuade, not Advertising

The first was that the mass media do not “cause” people to do things or make purchase decisions in isolation, as the “hyperdermic theory” held.  Rather, it identified an important relationship between advertising and word of mouth.  The study noted, “The traditional image of mass media must make room for ‘people’ as intervening factors between the stimuli of the media and resultant opinions, decisions, and actions.”  Katz and Lazarsfeld went so far as to say that mass media, generally, don’t do a very good job at persuasion, but rather tend to reinforce pre-existing views.  Persuasion, they said, happens best when mass media connect with everyday consumer influencers who pass along the message to others, and in so doing are better able to generate new customers.  They called this the two step-flow of the mass media.

Which brings us to a second important, and lasting finding.  In their discussion of these “everyday consumer influencers,” Katz and Lazarsfeld were the first to document the impact of influencers – not people in official positions of power but a group of everyday people, be they family, friends, or neighbors, to whom people look for advice and recommendations because they find them to be trustworthy and knowledgeable.  They observed that influencers are heavy users of media, who tend to learn about and share with others things that are new, interesting, and important.  “Leadership at its simplest, “ they called it:  “It is casually exercised, sometimes unwitting and unbeknown, within the smallest grouping of friends, family members and neighbors. . . it is the almost invisible, certainly inconspicuous, form of leadership at the person-to-person level of ordinary, intimate, informal, everyday contact. . .”

Remarkably, many of the fundamental truths noted by Katz and Lazarsfeld still pertain today, despite massive changes in the media and marketing landscape.  Their findings are an important reminder that people are the force that drives social influence; and that media and technology are enablers of rather than cause people’s desire to share and learn from each other.

In my next post I’ll continue this historical review, focusing on the first advice to advertisers to embrace word of mouth advertising from a 1966 Harvard Business Review article – it is also quite fresh and relevant to today’s times.

UK consumers are talking more and more with their friends and relatives about the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympic games, but the rise in buzz about the games is very gradual.  To date, football remains a much bigger talking point, particularly among men and many traditional sport fans.  Buzz is also much weaker outside of London and the South-East.

These are the findings of the latest consumer research on word of mouth by the Keller Fay Group.  They are based on new, just released information from Keller Fay’s TalkTrack Britain^® study, an ongoing research programme which tracks word of mouth in the UK on a continuous basis.  It is the only such research that looks at both offline as well as online conversation and was launched in the UK in July 2011.

During April 2012, 20% of  UK consumers said they had discussed the Games over the previous 24 hours, which is up slightly on the March figure (18%) and considerably above the levels recorded in the latter half of 2011 (8-10%).  As the Games approach, buzz will of course increase, but at this stage we are some way off from the Games capturing the attention of the entire nation.

The 20% buzz figure compares with 25-30% who typically discuss Premier League football in a 24-hour period.  More broadly, issues such as holidays, shopping, food/diet and money/economic issues are generally more widely discussed.

Encouragingly for London 2012, those discussing the games are not necessarily hardcore sports fans, with women almost as likely to discuss the Games as men.  But the downside is that many of the traditional sporting audience – football and rugby fans in particular – are currently more focussed on their own teams and leagues.  So perhaps attention will shift to the Olympics once the football and rugby seasons finally close.

The other challenge facing LOCOG is how to engage those living far away from London and other Olympic venues.  People living in London itself are around three times more likely to discuss the Games than those in Scotland or NE England.

In summarising the research results, Steve Thomson, Managing Director of Keller Fay UK, said “It’s clear that excitement about London 2012 is building, but at the moment traditional sports – football especially – are hard to dislodge from getting the main attention around the nation’s kitchen and pub tables.  In England, this week has started with the focus on Roy Hodgson, and it seems that until the summer itself the Olympics aren’t yet top of the agenda.”

By Ed Keller and Brad Fay

What explains the spectacular success of Facebook? Does it represent the desire of people to go online to connect with each other, with brands and with information? Or does the rise of this social networking platform actually reflect a more fundamental human need — to connect in real life?

It is easy to see Facebook’s success as a sign of dramatic change — in technology and in human relations. But a deeper look suggests that Facebook’s rise is merely Exhibit A of a much larger truth: Our modern society is not providing people with the human connections they crave, and online social networking is a rather poor substitute.

Statistics show that more people than ever live alone in the USA. According to the Census, about 31 million Americans live alone, representing 28% of the nation’s households.

Online talk unsatisfying

Until recently, our cities were losing population as people flocked to suburban enclaves of large homes where one’s next-door neighbors are often strangers. The Internet has provided powerful new ways to interact with people, even as we remain physically isolated. But these are unsatisfying replacements for face-to-face contact.

For the past six years, we have been studying the conversations of the American public, and we’ve conducted similar surveys that confirm our results in countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Mexico, Russia and South Korea. Our research has focused on all forms of conversation, whether they happen face to face, over the phone or online.

The data we have collected via more than 2 million conversations have taught us:

•75% of conversations in the U.S. (and even more in other countries) still happen face to face; less than 10% take place through the Internet. The rise of social media, such as Facebook, has led to a reduction in e-mail “conversations,” but not a decline in face-to-face interaction.

•Face-to-face conversations tend to be more positive, and more likely to be perceived as credible, in comparison with online. What people talk about online differs dramatically from offline. The former tends to be driven by what is perceived as “cool,” while the latter tends to be about sharing real life experiences.

Power of media

•In the sphere of products and services, conversations are significantly impacted by what we see and hear in “traditional” media, including television, radio and print publishing and online. These traditional media motivate and provide content to far more conversations than online social media does.

What we have learned about the power of traditional media to spark conversations provides an important insight. All forms of communication work best when they lead to the sharing of ideas and recommendations, especially face to face. The fact is, all media are social — or should be.

Social media has helped us rediscover the power of “social.” But the richest social gold mine is literally right under our noses: in the word-of-mouth conversations that happen in our kitchens and living rooms, next to the office water cooler, and on the sidelines of youth sporting events. These are the places where we actually live our lives.

Facebook is a fine way to find long-lost friends and exchange tidbits of information and recommendations. But if we want to promote real change — as in our politics, public policies and cultural behavior — it’s best we do it face to face.

Ed Keller and Brad Fay are co-authors of The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace, to be published in May. They are also principals of the Keller Fay Group, a market research and consulting firm.

MIT Professor Sherry Turkle wrote a powerful opinion piece in this past Sunday’s New York Times Sunday Review in which she draws a sharp distinction between conversations that take place face-to-face, in the real world, and connections that get made online through social networking sites.

“We are tempted to think that our little ‘sips’ of online connections add up to a big gulp of real conversation,” she writes.  “But they don’t.  E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, all have their places – in politics, commerce, romance and friendship.  But no matter how valuable, they do not substitute for conversation.”

Texting, emailing and online posting, she says, allow us “to present the self we want to be.  This means we can edit.  And if we wish, we can delete. Or retouch:  the voice, the flesh, the face, the body.  Not too much, not too little – just right.”

Meanwhile, she says, “human relationships are rich; they’re messy and demanding.  We have learned the habit of cleaning them up with technology.  And the move from conversation to connection is a part of this.”

And then Turkle makes clear her view that technology is neither the same as nor a substitute for human interaction:  “[I]t’s a process in which we shortchange ourselves. It seems that over time we stop caring, we forget that there is a difference.”

We forget there is a difference.  That’s a fundamentally important point.  My colleagues and I talk regularly to clients and audiences about the significant differences between offline and online word of mouth, and routinely people ask whether what happens online isn’t merely a reflection of what people do and say offline.  The answer is a resounding no, as we argue in our forthcoming book, The Face-to-Face Book.

The differences between online chatter and that which takes place in the real world have important implications for brand marketers, for whom it is a very big mistake to think they are the same, or that online social media is a substitute for offline word of mouth.   The evidence is increasingly clear that people use offline and online communication channels for very different reasons.

According to recently released academic research, the primary drivers of online word of mouth are (in order):  social signaling, functional, and emotional.  The primary drivers of offline word of mouth are the reverse:  emotional, functional and social.  According to the researchers, “Offline conversations, which are mostly in one-on-one settings, are more personal and intimate by nature and thus allow people to share emotions such as excitement and satisfaction. Online WOM, which usually involves ‘broadcasting’ to many people (e.g. twitter), is more appropriate for social signaling (e.g., uniqueness).”

In other words, offline and online conversations are not mirror reflections of each other, but serve different needs with different implications for brands.  Marketers should not choose a “social strategy” without first understanding the motivations of consumers to share.  Online social media will be most effective if you have a new product or a new message for which social currency will be gained by sharing. But if you are seeking to tap the emotions that come with strong brand satisfaction and excitement that comes as a result of a recent purchase or exposure to an advertisement, then look for ways to help consumer share those stories offline where they will have their best chance for success.

Successful social marketing requires marketers to take a holistic view that considers all the ways that people gather and share information. To tap the full potential of social marketing you need a people-centric strategy, not a channel-centric strategy.  Remember, there is a difference between connections through technology, and conversation in real life.

In his latest blog, UK ad legend Dave Trott bemoans the trend for ads which are “beautifully made, but dull and invisible to anyone outside advertising”.  Trott’s frustrated with risk-averse clients settling for easy-to-like campaigns which have little of any substance to say.

Crucially, Trott feels that the expensive, vapid ads he refers to have weak viral properties, and fail to realise the potential of increasing advertising ROI by “getting noticed, getting word of mouth, and getting repeated”.  But here we’re not talking about assessing viral property in terms of Facebook likes or shares, it’s about what he calls ‘real viral’ (not ‘internet viral’) – getting people to spread your ideas and brand propositions and not just a 30-second piece of entertainment.  Crucially, Trott feels that Opinion Formers (as opposed to Opinion Followers) are more receptive to challenging, less predictable ads that really have something to say (and not just something to show).

As it happens, we’re often asked to outline ‘the best way’ for a brand to generate word of mouth in the real world.  We’re at pains to point out that there is no magic formula – any type of advertising or promotional activity has the potential to do the job if it’s done well.  In other words, there’s no substitute for a strong creative, and most of all you have to leave the consumer with something they can and want to talk about. There has to be a story worth sharing.  You need, as Trott says, ‘‘’ideas’ and ‘words’, not just executions”.

And if you want your brand messages to resonate (as Dave Trott puts it) “at the pub, at Starbucks, on the train, in the street”, you really do need people to talk about your brand, not just quickly click a ‘share’ button.

It seems only logical that the more interesting a product is to consumers, the more they will talk about it. But the latest research from two Wharton professors suggests that when it comes to creating buzz-worthy advertising campaigns, how people communicate (e.g., whether they talk face to face or over email) is a big factor in determining what they discuss.

In their paper titled, “How Interest Shapes Word-of-Mouth over Different Channels,” marketing professors Jonah Berger and Raghuram Iyengar explore the relationship between successful marketing and the methods used to spread it. The topic is especially timely in the digital age, when word-of-mouth relies largely on social media.

Berger and Iyengar analyzed two unique sets of data involving thousands of everyday discussions across different conversation channels, then conducted a controlled lab experiment in which they manipulated conversation to examine the effects. The results of all three studies point to a single conclusion: How interesting a product is to discuss matters more when people communicate through discontinuous channels, such as blog posts, texts, emails and online conversations. “The punch line of this paper is quite clean,” Iyengar says. “It is one of the first pieces of evidence that we have seen that it is not only the message but also the medium.”

The professors draw a distinction between discontinuous and continuous channels. The latter include face-to-face or phone conversations in which there is an instant response. When people speak in this manner, interesting products or brands are not talked about with any more frequency than less distinctive ones because social convention demands an immediate response, the researchers note. “It’s awkward to have dinner with a friend in silence, or ride in a cab with a colleague without conversing, so rather than waiting to think of the most interesting thing to say, people will talk about whatever is top-of-mind to keep the conversation flowing,” they write. “It’s not that people do not have enough interesting things to talk about; rather, they do not have the time to select the most interesting thing.”

By contrast, discontinuous channels allow the participant to take time to craft a good response — or no response at all. It is socially acceptable for a woman to post a link on Facebook about a new pair of shoes that caught her eye, for example, and have no one “like” it. “A really simple way to think about it is the following,” Berger notes. “Imagine if you’re online and someone sends you something. You don’t have to reply. You’re only going to share things when they cross a certain threshold of interesting. The option of not saying anything is fine in a discontinuous conversation.”

Armed with this knowledge, marketers can be more precise in crafting their campaigns to achieve better results. It’s not as simple as blanketing the web with pop-up ads or blasting the airwaves with commercials, Iyengar points out. It’s about picking the right medium for the right message. When that happens, marketers can hope that the flames of word-of-mouth will ignite and spread like a wildfire.

“Practitioners often believe that products need to be interesting to be talked about, but our results suggest they are only right for certain word-of-mouth channels,” the authors note in their paper. “If the goal is to get more discussion online … framing the product in an interesting or surprising way should help. Ads or online content that surprises people, violates expectations or evokes interest in some other manner should be more likely to be shared.”

The authors point to the example of blender manufacturer Blendtec’s series of commercials, which have garnered more than 150 million views on YouTube. In one commercial, a smiling actor in a lab coat and safety glasses drops his iPhone into the blender to answer the question, “Will it blend?” Upbeat music plays as the blender pulverizes the phone into a fine black powder. The actor lifts the blender lid to expose “iSmoke” and cheerfully warns viewers not to breathe in while he empties the contents into a bowl. The amusing ad has generated more than 10 million views and 24,000 “likes” since Blendtec uploaded it in 2007. “It’s very smart on the part of Blendtec because it’s just a blender. Why would it evoke interest?” Iyengar says. “But they showcased it in an unexpected way.”

Finding the Right Cues

The professors used several research methods to support their proposal. First, they analyzed aggregate data collected by marketing research firm Keller Fay Group, which relied on a large, nationally representative sample to avoid bias. The professors examined how often 1,200 products and brands were talked about by 5,690 people who had both online and offline conversations. While word of mouth was more frequent in face-to-face contact, the opposite was true when it came to correlating the level of interest. In addition, more distinctive products were mentioned more frequently in online conversations. The second study broke down the data to the individual level with similar results, suggesting that “the continuity of the conversation channels drove these effects,” the researchers write.

To explore their proposition further, Berger and Iyengar conducted an experiment in which participants sat together for conversation. Some were told to expect a pause before and between conversational turns (to mimic a discontinuous style like what they would experience communicating virtually). The professors then measured how those pauses affected the relationship between interest and whether a topic was discussed. Once again, the results were consistent that more distinctive products came up more frequently during discontinuous exchanges.

“The experimental approach is particularly useful because it allows us to test the mechanism we believe underlies the effects observed in the field,” the researchers conclude. “People who care more about seeming interesting may talk more online than offline, people may encode or remember interesting conversations that occur over one channel versus another, and some brands may be inherently more likely to be talked about online rather than face to face. Similarly, it may be easier to leave a boring conversation when your conversation partner is not physically there.”

Real-world application is at the heart of the research. “Brands, companies, nonprofit organizations, even politicians are chasing word of mouth,” Berger says. “It’s cheaper and more effective than traditional advertising. What this research shows is how to do it. If your goal is to get offline word of mouth, then interest isn’t going to be as important.”

That doesn’t mean all marketers should rush to create the next viral video. For some products, it seems that offline buzz is more valuable. Berger uses breakfast cereal as an example. It’s not the most exciting topic in the world, but it is top of mind, which means it’s more likely to be discussed in a face-to-face conversation at the water cooler or the playground. “We get up in the morning and eat [cereal] for breakfast, so there’s a good chance that we’ll talk about it,” he notes.

The professors point to data showing that food and dining are the most frequently discussed product categories in continuous conversation, more so than media, entertainment or technology. “Thus for offline word-of-mouth, considering how to trigger people to think about the product or brand may be a helpful approach to generating discussion,” they write.

Another important factor in pitching a product is figuring out how to establish cues for consumers. Again, that differs based on whether the channel is online or offline. Iyengar offers the example of Starbucks, which used an early strategy of market saturation. Multiple stores in close proximity established brand recognition and triggered consumer desire for the product. “What are some cues that people can [use to] remember your product?” Iyengar asks. “In Starbucks, it’s frequency. But there can be other types of cues. In an online context, it might be less about the cues but the content itself that is interesting.”

Berger cites the example of Doritos commercials that have aired during the last two Super Bowls, an event that has become synonymous with creative advertising. The ads are a good move on the part of the manufacturer because they mainly target offline, face-to-face communication, he says. “What’s interesting about that situation is that people watching the Super Bowl are also sitting there talking about tortilla chips, guacamole, seven-layer dip. Those aren’t the most exciting things in the world, but [people] are talking about them because they are right in front of them.”

Iyengar says he and Berger are considering taking their research deeper by replicating it in a field study, perhaps focusing more on online communication, such as Facebook. The results could further assist marketers in crafting campaigns in the fast-changing environment of social media.

“It’s really about understanding what drives people to talk about things on different channels,” Berger notes. “If we don’t understand why they share word of mouth, we can’t make it more likely to get them to share” in this way.

When people consume media together, either in-home or out-of-home, does it help or hurt advertising effectiveness?

The argument that it hurts the advertiser is the “distraction” model, which argues that the presence of other people distracts people from on-screen content, reducing value to the advertiser. This is an argument put forth by Steven Bellman et al. in their 2011 paper “How Coviewing Reduces the Effectiveness of TV Advertising”.

The argument that it helps the advertiser is the “social influence” model, which posits that the presence of other people leads to more emotional engagement and the sharing of advertising content, leading to higher ad effectiveness.  This is an argument that Brad Fay and I put forth in The Face-to-Face Book, forthcoming from Simon & Schuster/Free Press in May 2012.  It was also the topic of a recent paper presented by Brad Fay and Gregg Liebman, Senior VP at Turner Broadcasting, at the recent ARF Re:think 2012 conference.

The Liebman/Fay paper reported on the results of research that the Keller Fay Group conducted for Turner during the 2011 NBA Eastern Conference Finals, a six game series between the Chicago Bulls and the Miami Heat.  The purpose was to test the “social model” summarized above.  The primary focus was on the top 12 advertisers for this series, comparing word of mouth among people who watched in social settings compared with those who watched alone.  And more specifically, those who watched in social settings out-of-home vs. those who watched in social settings at home.  The 12 advertisers included: T-Mobile, Adidas, Miller Lite, State Farm, McDonald’s, Hyundai, E-Trade, Disney Studios (Cars 2 & Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides), Microsoft (Microsoft Windows & Windows Phone), Chrysler/Dodge, Sprint, and Progressive.

A representative sample of more than 2,220 males aged 18-54 were studied during the NBA finals, in which they kept track of their word of mouth conversations about brands including the advertised brands.  We compared these results with word of mouth levels about the same brands during the off season, the NBA regular season, and the early playoff rounds.

The study showed that co-viewing delivers a clear word of mouth benefit for advertisers by increasing engagement with the ad content.   This can be seen in two key sets of data.  First, when we looked at the levels of conversation about these top advertisers among men who watched the Eastern Conference Finals in out-of-home settings (work, other people’s homes, restaurants/bars, etc – which collectively represented 43% of the total viewership) we found that they are far more likely to talk about the advertised brands – between 1 ½ and 2 times the level of conversation compared to the norm. And when we looked at those who watched in social settings (with friends or acquaintances, whether in-home or out-of home) we found conversations levels about advertised brands were approximately 1 ½ times the norm.  So far from being a distraction, co-viewing was associated with greater levels of word of mouth.

Co-Viewers Talk More about Advertisers

Source: Gregg Liebman and Brad Fay, “Social TV Viewing, Word of Mouth and Ad Effectiveness:  Co-Viewing and Out-of-Home Viewing,” Presentation to ARF Re:think, March 2012.

There are a number of important implications from this research.  For media buyers, it suggests that co-viewed formats may have higher value than solo-viewed formats.  For creative development it suggests the need to design content that will be shared offline as well as online, especially for ads which will be seen in social settings.  For programmers, it suggests a new reason to work on developing programs that will appeal to the whole family in order to spur more co-viewing.   From a research perspective, we look forward to finding the right opportunity to test these findings further with non-sports programming to see if the same trends hold.