How brands can avoid the viral cliff of death: Devang Raiyani

So your video went viral, but did your brand get any action?

For brands to start taking this form of advertising seriously, they need to see these millions of views convert into meaningful actions. Without proving ROI, branded content will be nothing more than a part-time hobby of a handful of marketers hoping to scratch the surface of pop-culture. And merely sprinkling call to action buttons on videos doesn’t quite solve the problem.

With its fantastic storytelling and an unconventional cast, one of my favourite ads of the year – ‘11 minutes’ – got over 5 million views, making it one of the most viral ads of the year.

But as the graph below shows, it reached the viral cliff of death in about a week’s time, before disappearing from public memory. The fate of this video is not very different from many other pieces of viral content one sees these days – instant fame that fizzles out in a short time, an impressive number of views, but very little action.

To get more bang for the buck marketers need to explore newer content formats, leverage behavioural psychology and deliver real value and not just entertainment. Here are a few pointers in that direction, using the fabulous ‘11 minutes’ film as an example.

Create utility, not just entertainment: The moral of the ‘11 minutes’ film was that each cigarette takes away 11 minutes of your life, so choose wisely. You’ve hooked them, now you’ve got to reel them in by adding a simple utility, perhaps adding an ‘Up in smoke’ calculator – where one enters the number of cigarettes smoked every day and see how many years of life have gone up in smoke. While the idea of serving a useful tool for the audience is an obvious one, it’s shocking to see how many marketers miss this simple trick to convert viewers into participants.

Think journeys, not one-off interactions: You’ve hooked them with the video, calculated the number of years lost, what next? After learning this life changing fact, don’t leave them struggling for answers! Quitting is a journey that’s best navigated through a series of small nudges. Can you help ease off this addiction? Can your narrative hold them through a journey, reaching its ultimate goal?

In categories where customer education is the norm, the leap from content to action takes more than a single exposure – as demonstrated by the DBS Chilli Paneer campaign. Narratives that cleverly nudge users further down the marketing funnel are more likely to convert users than those with nothing more than CTA buttons at the end of a video.

Think platforms, not just campaigns: We’re in the age of Instagram, where unpolished and imperfect are embraced over airbrushed and photoshopped, and yet we don’t see many brands co-opting their users in the marketing process. As marketers, we’re still caught up thinking about campaigns that ‘target’ people. We’re the producers, while they consume. This old paradigm of brand-down advertising is giving way to platform thinking, where brands provide creative avenues to fuel content and conversations on an on-going basis.

Instead of stopping at yet another customer feedback forum, look at how Starbucks created ‘My Starbucks Idea’, a space where their most loyal users come up with new product ideas and the best ones are released. Unlike most limited shelf life campaigns, this platform is still relevant even after seven years since it first launched. So, in the case of ’11 minutes’ – could it be a platform like ‘The Quitters Club’, where people who’ve quit could share their stories and practical tips for staying off the addiction. Such a platform could fuel inspiring content for years to come, rather than fade away in a few weeks.

Gamify the engagement: Ever got a free ride on Uber when you shared the referral link with a friend? Ever rushed to your favourite pub to make it in time for happy hours? Or saved on taxes by investing in insurance? Well, you’ve been gamified. Gamification is the design of incentives and penalties to nudge people to do certain actions, in a competitive environment. By adding game dynamics to key actions, brands can build stickiness to even mundane tasks. Using gamification, Nike+ has made the world’s most unorganised and some would say, uninspiring activity into a sticky habit that people can’t get enough of. With gamification, they’ve changed the idea of running, forever. Can these principles be applied to quitting smoking? Yes, even more so! Check out the MyCoach app by LiveStrong. Would’ve done wonders for our friend in the ‘11 minutes’ film.

There’s lot more to branded content than cracking a great script. Next time you’re investing in content marketing, don’t end up like the protagonist in the film, where you have great content, but no action.

(Devang Raiyani, Head – Product Strategy, Advocacy)