17 Jun 2013 Research & Ideas

Advertising Symbiosis: The Key to Viral Videos

Creating an online ad that goes
viral requires more than mere
entertainment. Thales S. Teixeira
discusses the key to creating
megahit marketing through
"advertising symbiosis."

by Carmen Nobel
It probably won't shock you that
the most popular YouTube video in
the past month was "Gentleman,"
the latest hit from South Korean
rapper PSY, whose "Gangnam
Style" is the most-watched video of
all time. More surprising: among
the other most-watched videos was
an advertisement for bottled water.
Evian's baby&me features several
adults dancing with toddler
versions of themselves in the
reflection of a store window. Only
at the end of the 77-second video
do we see a bottle of Evian, along
with the slogan "Live young."
Since its release in April, the video
has garnered more than 53 million
YouTube views. By contrast,
Nestl's self-explanatory "From
Maine Water Springs to You: The
Journey of Poland Springs Water"
has barely cracked 500 views. So
why did one water commercial
sparkle on YouTube, while the

other fizzled?
The answer may lie at the heart of
new research by Thales S.
Teixeira, which identifies the
ingredients necessary to create
online videos so compelling that
viewers will not only want to
watch them but also actively seek
them out and share them with
friends, family, and coworkers.
The research shows that if sharing
an ad will somehow benefit the
sender as much as it helps the
advertiser, then the ad might go
viral.
The stakes are high for advertisers.
eMarketer estimates that online
video advertising in the United
States will increase from $1.1
billion in 2009 to $4.1 billion in
2013an overall spending rise
from 4.3 percent to 11.0 percent of
all advertising expenditures.
Advertisers can get the most bang
for the buck if they post their
videos on YouTube and then
motivate consumers to disseminate
the ads for them, via email or
social media. Getting an ad to go
viral is among the cost-saving
techniques that fall under the
umbrella of what Teixeira terms
lean advertising. (Other lean
advertising techniques include
do-it-yourself content,
crowd-sourced talent, and
do-it-yourself distributionalso

COPYRIGHT 2013 PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE

known as inbound marketing.)

"It turns out that while

getting people to watch an
ad is all about emotion,
getting them to share it is
about the sender's
personality."
So how do firms increase the
likelihood that their ads will go
viral? For starters, they need to
prioritize entertainment over facts
and figures. To paraphrase an old
campaign, these are not your
father's Oldsmobile ads.
"People no longer want a lot of
information about the products or
brands in the advertisements they
watch," says Teixeira, an assistant
professor at Harvard Business
School who has spent the last four
years figuring out the factors that
make or break online ads. "In the
past, when a company launched a
new product, the advertisement
would include all the information
about the product so you could
discover whether you wanted to
buy it. But now we have all the
information about all the new
products available to us online.
Now, we want ads to entertain us."
But making an ad go viral requires

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more than mere entertainment.

According to Teixeira's research,
successful viral advertising
requires four key steps: attracting
viewers' attention, retaining that
attention, getting viewers to share
the ad with others, and persuading
viewers. "The issue is that some
content is better at the first stage,
some is better at the second stage,
some is better at the third, and
some is better at the fourth," says
Teixeira, who will deliver a lecture
explaining how to foster each step
at the Cannes Lions International
Advertising Festival on June 20.
"The challenge lies in getting the
best mix of all four ingredients and
baking them into your ad."

TAPPING INTO
CONSUMERS'
PERSONALITIES
Teixeira discovered the keys to
attraction and retention through a
series of lab experiments where
participants viewed real ads that
Teixeira selected from YouTube,
while a camera recorded their
facial reactions. They had the
choice of watching an entire ad or
skipping to the next one at any
time. Researchers collaborating
with Teixeira then measured the
participants' emotional responses
with a combination of eye-tracking
technology and facial expression
analysis software.

The data showed that evoking

surprise was the best way to attract
attention, while evoking
continuous moments of joy was the
best way of retaining it. Thus, the
most captivating ads in the
experiment were those that began

by surprising the viewer and then

went on to make the viewer smile.
But successfully capturing and
keeping viewers' attention during a
YouTube video does not guarantee
that they will share it. "People
watch a lot of things online that
they would never share with
anyone," Teixeira notes.
To figure out what prompts
viewers to share ads, Teixeira's
team conducted an additional
experiment where participants
could forward ads to their friends
outside the lab. The researchers
tagged the videos in order to keep
track of which ones were shared.
Participants also completed written
personality tests to gauge whether
they were introverts or extroverts,
self-directed or other-directed.
"It turns out that while getting
people to watch an ad is all about
emotion, getting them to share it is
about the sender's personality,"
Teixeira says.
After comparing the sharing
behavior with the emotional
responses and personality tests,
Teixeira found that the main
motivation for viral sharing was
egocentricitythe viewer's desire
to derive personal gain from
sharing the video. In this case, the
potential gain comes in the form of
improving the viewer's reputation
among friends and family, for
example. Thus, it behooves
advertisers to create videos that not
only will make the product look
good but, if shared, will make the
viewer look good, too. Teixeira
refers to this idea as "advertising
symbiosis" because the advertiser
and the viewer mutually benefit
from the act of sharing.

COPYRIGHT 2013 PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE

FIVE EXAMPLES OF
ADVERTISING
SYMBIOSIS
Teixeira offers five approaches as
examples to achieve virality
through advertising symbiosis:
CONCEPT: Make the
viewer the center of
attention.
EXAMPLE: Old Spice's
Twitter campaign. In
2010, Procter & Gamble
launched a campaign
where Facebook and
Twitter users were
encouraged to send
messages to Isaiah
Mustafa, the strapping
spokesman for Old Spice
who markets the idea that
if men can't look like him,
they at least can smell like
him. The advertising
agency Wieden+Kennedy
then created and uploaded
185 short videos where
Mustafa responded
personally to individual
Twitter users, a mix of
celebrities, politicians, and
average fans. Inevitably,
they supposedly shared the
personalized responses
with their social networks,
and many of the videos
received upwards of a
million views each.
CONCEPT: Offer the
viewer privileged access
to valuable content.
EXAMPLE: Virgin
Atlantic's sneak peek.
Also in 2010, members of
Virgin Atlantic's
frequent-flyer program
received an email message
with a link to the airline's
2

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new commercial on the

web. The ad wouldn't air
on TV for another week,
the customers learned. The
airline was giving them the
privilege of a sneak peek
at the adand the
privilege of being among
the first to share it.
CONCEPT: Give the
viewer the opportunity to
communicate his or her
values to others.
EXAMPLE: Dove's
message about
self-image. Two months
ago, Unilever's Dove
brand uploaded "Dove
Real Beauty Sketches," a
web-exclusive
mini-documentary in
which a forensic artist
sketches each of several
women twice, first based
solely on their descriptions
of themselves and then
based on descriptions from
strangers. The women are
seated behind a curtain,
hidden from the artist's
view. Side-by-side
comparisons of the
sketches inevitably reveal
that the sketches based on
the strangers' descriptions
are more stereotypically
attractive than the sketches
based on the women's
descriptions of themselves.
The powerful tagline,
accompanying a Dove
logo: You are more
beautiful than you think.
(Evian's "live young"
campaign delivers a
similarly positive
messagenot to mention
the fact that dancing babies
garner the magic mix of
surprise and joy.) "I think

of these types of ads as

video bumper stickers,"
Teixeira says. "They let
people broadcast their
personal values the way a
bumper sticker on the back
of a car does."
CONCEPT: Enable the
viewer to showcase a
badge of honor and
relate to tribes.
EXAMPLE: Fiat's
rapping mommy. Last
December, Fiat UK
released "The
Motherhood," a hip-hop
video in which a British
mother raps about the joys
and indignities of being a
mom. ("I swapped my sexy
handbag for a snot-stained
sack?") The Fiat 500L
makes a cameo
appearance, but her life is
the focal point. The idea is
that moms will share the
ad with other moms. "Fiat
is not really about mothers,
but the company is
providing the connection
among them," Teixeira
explains.
CONCEPT: Let viewers
show off their ability to
find strange hidden
gems.
EXAMPLE: Blendtec's
wacky blender videos. In
2006, Blendtec founder
and CEO Tom Dickson
launched a series of
infomercials where he
sticks an object in the
company's flagship Total
Blender and answers the
question, "Will it blend?"
Items he has blended in the
series include an iPhone,
an iPad, a can of Easy

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Cheese, and a vuvuzela.

Unlike many viral ads, this
one features the product
front and center. Usually
that's a turnoff, Teixeira
says, but these videos are
too fun and
unconventional not to
share.
As for persuasion, the final step of
successful virality, marketers (with
the notable exception of Blendtec)
face the tough challenge of
entertaining viewers without losing
a connection to the brand.
Showcase the brand too much and
viewers will stop watching, not
enough and they won't know what
the video is advertising. The
solution, based on Teixeira's
research, is a technique called
"brand pulsing," wherein the brand
or product is shown repeatedly but
not too intrusively throughout the
course of the video.
And if it produces a strong
emotional response, the
videoand the brandmight stick
with the viewer for a long time.
"When entertainment creates an
emotional connection, it leaves a
lasting effect on our minds,"
Teixeira says. "Psychologists have
shown that emotions are memory
markers, and if you feel very
strongly about something during
the day, your brain will more likely
retain the information related to
that emotion longer."

About the author

Carmen Nobel is senior editor of
Harvard Business School Working
Knowledge.