By Alan Coleman on 28 May 2015
A big thank you to all who attended our presentation on The Power of Visual Content at the Content Marketing Masters Conference.
Here's a run-down of the videos and campaigns we mentioned during our talk, and a reminder of our tips how you can create content that works for you and your brand.
Evoke the Right Emotion
Jonah Berger and Katherine Milkman did this fascinating study on ‘What makes online content go viral?’ They found that several elements influenced whether or not the article was shared. After practical value, the type of emotion evoked was a big factor.
We decided to use an awesome brand video from The Dollar Shave Club which has received over 19 million views now, but it got 2 million in the first 4 days of going live.
Why has this video been the making of a brand? Because it's funny! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUG9qYTJMsI
Anger is another useful emotion to evoke in an audience though, which is what we did with this daft infographic.
Our e-commerce study determined the correlations between website user behaviour and conversion rate - and discovered that bounce rate doesn't matter!We made an infographic out of it of course. See it’s not just positive emotions that make us share. Some negative emotions did make us more likely to share too: anger and anxiety.
Here’s our example of content that evoked anxiety recently: the Lego 'Block Shell' campaign by Greenpeace. The campaign was that it succeeded in its aim of convincing Lego to drop their working relationship with Shell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhbliUq0_r4 If you can’t do humour, you can always try and be awesome. Red Bull are famous for ridiculously awesome Vines of pro-skateboarders, snowboarders and all manner of other extreme sportspeople doing what they do best; death defying and amazing stunts!
It doesn’t have to mean a record-breaking jump or feat here. Here is probably the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen; a dog playing with a glockenspiel!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C3GdDtvjj4
Another strong correlation with content shared was surprise. This is a very effective technique, especially when combined with humour.
Here’s a great example from Dirt Devil which plays up on well known horror movie tropes and gives us a humorous surprise which makes the brand very hard to forget: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGb8pMIeY6w
So remember, when you sit down to plan your next video or infographic, check which of these elements you’re going for; which emotion you want to evoke and whether it’s the one that’ll get you those shares.
Re-purpose the Content you Already Have
The Nightmares Fear Factory is a haunted house and an inspiring content marketing strategy. See those photos on Flickr tirelessly uploaded by Vee Popat, and the Buzzfeed article that changed everything. 
Social sharing study
A more recent study by The New York Times Consumer Information Group identified reasons for sharing on social media that include:
- ‘defining themselves’
- ‘self-fulfillment’
- ‘nourishing relationships’
Get Customers to Create Your Visual Content
Thinking outside the box and cultivating a great UGC campaign will result in your customers, cheaply and organically, advertising your products/business and helping your brand 'go viral'. Here are some excellent examples of businesses using UGC to great effect:
Customers all over the world were asked to doodle on their Starbucks cups and submit pictures as entries. The winning entry would be the template for a new limited edition Starbucks cup. Nearly 4,000 customers submitted entries in a three week span.
Sometimes the simplest forms of marketing can be the most effective. Coca-Cola simply started printing generic first names on the sides of its cans and bottles for the 'Share a Coke' campaign. This resulted in huge amounts of viral sharing on social media, essentially giving Coca-Cola a near incalculable amount of exposure.
We created a UGC campaign for our clients, iClothing, that asked customers to submit selfies of themselves wearing their iClothing purchases along with the hashtag #iWear. iClothing's iWear campaign was hugely successful. Read the Twitter case study in their Business Success Stories.
Why do People Share Personal Experiences with Brands?
A 2012 Harvard Study concluded that, "Self-disclosure was strongly associated with increased activation in brain regions that form the mesolimbic dopamine system... individuals were willing to forgo money to disclose about the self." In other words, people's desire to talk about themselves even outweighs their willingness to make a profit. A Stanford study backed up this conclusion, showing that most tweets, by a considerable margin, are related to 'the self'. So strong is people's desire to talk about themselves that they will tell anyone who is willing to listen - and brands will happily do that.
Leveraging Social Currency
We like to share what we think will makes us appear cool in the eyes of others. Concepts such as the Prohibition Bar in Atlanta have taken advantage of this concept. Being the first to share the best new content is another means of appearing cool, Damme cool, in the eyes of one's peers (as this ad for Volvo Trucks, which has accumulated 80 million views, proves): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7FIvfx5J10
Our Takeaways Again
And a nice visual recap created by the brilliant Caroline Kliemt:
If you found this article useful, be sure to follow its authors, Aileen Power and Sarah Grogan, on Twitter. Their handles are: @AileenSpeaks & @SarahTGrogan. Wolfgang Digital can be followed here.
