Get Your Brand To The Tipping Point

An Insight Into Maloney’s 16% Rule

My last two blogs have proven that word of mouth along is powerful enough to drive a brand to the tipping point.  But I have been intrigued about why some campaigns work so well and then some fail miserably. 

Of course Malcolm Gladwells states all you need to do is follow these three characteristics:

1. The law of the few – according to Gladwell success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of a few people with a particular set of social gifts. 
2. The stickiness factor – the content must render the impact memorable.
3. The power of context – epidemics only work when the environment is right.

But I can’t help but feel there must be more to it. Further research has enabled me to understand how you can strategically plan an extraordinary word of mouth viral campaign to get your brand to the tipping point.

Let me share some great insights I have found using Maloney’s 16% rule. 

Firstly, Maloney looks at the ‘Diffusion of Innovation Adoption Curve’ (developed by Everett Rogers as seen here) and two best selling authors theories, Geoffrey Moore and Malcolm Gladwell.

Geoffrey Moore’s famous book and theory, ‘Crossing the Chasm’ begins with the Roger’s ‘Diffusion of Innovation’ theory and argues there is a chasm between the ‘early adopters’ of the product and the ‘early majority’. Moore claims that these segments have different psychological profiles and needs, which creates the ‘chasm’ that marketers must recongnise.  On the other hand Malcolm Gladwell looks at getting over the chasm to the tipping point by following the three characteristics as outlined above.

Let’s now look at this in more detail

Point 1: Early adopters and early majority don’t get along

Basically ‘early adopters’ and ‘early majority’ are different people – and really don’t get on.  ‘Early adopters’ see themselves as visionaries and have a strong desire to have things before anybody else.  They are driven by ‘exclusivity’, ‘uniqueness’ and ‘individualism’.  This is why Gladwell claims you have to market to a few to make the product seem exclusive and special. “Early majority’ on the other hand are pragmatists, they like to see people using the product before they do.  They require social proof of its acceptability before they jump in to buy it.  They are driven by ‘social confirmation’, ‘a sense of group belong’ and ‘uniformity’.

Point 2: Creators and Critics don’t exactly get along, but they need each other to exist and grow

Maloney also found an interesting crossover after researching 'Groundswell' by Forrester Research, in which they identify six Social Technographics, as shown here. 

Forrester Research shows at around the 15% mark of adoption, ‘creators’ are faced with ‘critics’. Similarly to ‘early adopters’ and ‘early majority’, ‘creators’ and ‘critics’ don’t exactly get along, but they need each other to exist and grow.  This point was demonstrated so clearly in the success of “Fifty Shades of Grey”.  The book didn’t really explode into full view until the ‘critics, both good and bad’ started to chip in.  That’s what started the debate - which fueled the media frenzy. 

Interestingly, Kony 2012 was similar, but with a twist.  The creators published the content, which then got the attention of the critics.  At first the critics were positive, (young teenagers), which drove the first six days of success.  But then the negative critics (primarily adults) got hold of it and over powered the creators’ message – which resulted in irreparable damage to the Kony 2012 brand.

INSIGHT: AT 16% ADOPTION CHANGE TACK

Maloney’s Rule suggests that once you have reached 16% adoption you must change your message and media strategy.

Tip 1:  Messaging

At the launch of a new product or service target the message to ‘early adopters’ – appeal to their need for scarcity. ‘Be the first to try this new…. ‘

But at the point where the product has 16% of the target population change the message towards targeting ‘early majority’ – which means focus on social proofing. ‘Join the thousands who are now enjoying this great new product’

Try to control the critic’s messages by the creators sending out interesting information that is targeted strategically.  The best result will be if you can generate ‘healthy debate’ that polarises people’s views – but doesn’t undermine the credibility of your brand.

Tip 2:  Media Mix

At the launch keep the product discrete and exclusive, i.e. lead with social media that is highly targeted.  As adoption builds get onboard influencers to generate positive endorsement and encourage social proofing. 

At the point of 16% adoption, in order to cross the chasm you will need to switch to social proofing – which means more mass exposure.  This could be generated through a viral campaign or maybe mass media if you have the budget. 

So it’s now up to you to jump the

‘Chasm’ and reach ‘The Tipping Point’….

KONY 2012, a viral sensation or a viral disaster?

In  2012 Invisible Children, a not for profit organisation launched a 30-minute video aimed at raising awareness and raising funds to stop Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) abducting, killing, and displacing civilians in East and central Africa. 

The KONY 2012 campaign video took a day to hit a million views and six days to reach 100 million.  For days every news outlet on the planet aired the story, every website and blogger had an opinion about the story….  it certainly reached the tipping point in a fast and furious way – and then the talking stopped.

 

I explore three big questions. What caused the KONY 2012 campaign to be word of mouth sensation?  Why did the talking stop so rapidly?  What viral lessons can we learn from this extraordinary story?

 The starting point to the journey….

Invisible Children first encountered the atrocities of Kony and LRA in northern Uganda in 2003 when they met a boy named Jacob who feared for his life and a woman named Jolly who had a vision for a better future. Invisible Children promised Jacob that we would do whatever they could to stop Joseph Kony and the LRA.  Invisible Children was founded in 2004 to fulfill that promise.

The organisation developed a four-part model that focussed exclusively on the LRA conflict to address the problem in its entirety.  Part one of the model, “media” was designed to building awareness and introduce new audiences to the conflict and inspire global action of their cause.

1. What caused the buzz sensation! 

In March 2012, Invisible Children’s put out a 30-minute “documentary” featuring Jacob, the former LRA child soldier and the campaign organizer Jason Russell’s son Gavin.  The video – campaign was highly emotive and engaged the viewer through strong use of live footage and emotive language. Viewers were asked to help an online “experiment” to stop Joseph Kony by making him famous. 

They then used Gladwell’s “law of a few” to start to spread the word.  Prior to the launch they promoted the video to the Invisible Children’s core teenage supporters. This teenage network of 5,000 then used Twitter and Facebook to bombard celebrities with demands for support. What they also used effectively was the use of hashtags such as -  #StopKony and #MakeKonyFamous.  They also targeted key celebrities like Oprah and Kim Kardashian to tweet and spread the buzz.  Well, buzz it did all over the world within a couple of days.

Success was fast and furious!

It became the fastest online video ever to be viewed 100 million times. 3.7 million people pledged their support for efforts to arrest Joseph Kony. Thousands rallied in Washington, DC and the KONY 2012 Global Summit on the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) brought together seven leaders from international institutions and the affected region to talk about what they are doing to stop Joseph Kony and his rebel army.”

The KONY 2012 campaign reached young people in a way no charity had been able to do before.  They connected with young people on a deep an emotional level.  It wasn’t snazzy or trendy.  It was just good old-fashioned story telling, using their medium.

“After seeing the KONY 2012, Sofia spent time sharing the documentary with anyone and everyone – her parents, her friends, her church, and even her school principal. Against the urgings of her parents to stop obsessing over the KONY 2012 campaign, Sofia could not give up her desire to take action. And act she did. Sofia organized a week-long bake sale at her school, got a local church on board, and ended up raising $1,000.27 – all by herself

http://blog.invisiblechildren.com/2013/08/14/supporter-spotlight-sofia-liberti/
Sofia (blue shirt) with her family

Mark Galloway of International Broadcasting Trust says, “KONY 2012 was a charity game-changer.  We heard about this charity from our kids.  That’s how I heard about it, from my teenage son, 48 hours in.  He was like, ‘How come you haven’t heard about the KONY video? I hadn’t, and it was my job”.

The company's CEO Ben Keesey said the impact of KONY 2012 exceeded their "wildest dreams".  "The video had more than 100 million views within six days of launching the campaign," he said. "Our website had nearly half a million unique visitors in a single day; a thousand articles were being published every day about the conflict; and seven of the ten worldwide trending topics on Twitter had to do with KONY 2012 and the LRA. "It was more than we expected, and in some ways it was more than we could handle."

2. Why they talking stopped! 

The backlash from the video was as fast and furious as their initial campaign support.  Questions, primarily from adults were published online about the legitimisy of Invisible Children’s finances.

"Invisible Children has been condemned time and time again. As a registered not-for-profit, its finances are public. Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services, with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production.” (Zoe Fox, Mashable, 2012.  Extract from Tumbler dedicated to evaluating the legitimacy of KONY 2012).

Critics also claimed the “documentary” over simplified the story of Kony's reign of terror and failed to sufficiently note that Kony – a wanted war criminal – and his followers were no longer a force in northern Uganda. Stories, rumours and untruths started to be tweeted and retweeted around the world.  This started to put a dark cloud over the authenticity of Invisible Children’s simple and pure story.  People started to question whether it was just a money grab. A Canadian girl of Ugandan decent uploaded a video film of her response to KONY 2012 in which she says; “Her parents told her Joseph Kony has been dead for years!”

Then, Jason Russell the campaign organizer had a very public meltdown in which in which he was picked up by police while naked and rambling on the streets of San Diego, Jason Russell said his mind "clicked" after weeks of promoting and then defending his campaign against the LRA and its murderous leader, Joseph Kony.

KONY had a big credibility problem!

Invisible Children and any future KONY campaigns would be plagued with credibility issues due to their messages being twisted distorted and manipulated by the multiverse of stories post their March 2012 launch.   On April 2, 2012, Invisible Children released a follow up video, titled KONY 2012: Part II – Beyond Famous, this campaign failed miserably and struggled to get a viral audience.

3. Lessons learnt

There is a scary lesson at the heart of this story.  We are never truly in control of the messages we push out. However, Invisible Children whilst they had a great campaign idea, they launched it without a robust post campaign plan to protect themselves against the PR spin and noise.  

Maybe, just maybe, if they had been more organized with strong arguments to fight the negative backlash, and if Jason Russell had been able to cope with the manic heat that transpired post the launch Invisible Children would have maintained their credibility.  Maybe, the campaign was full of holes and therefore they deserved to lose their credibility.

One thing is for sure…brand credibility is critical to maintain ongoing word of mouth.  Therefore brands that plan to reach the ‘tipping point’ using a viral campaign tactic such as this must think carefully about how people will view and react to their message – and then develop a post campaign plan.  Once a brand’s credibility has been questioned, it is very difficult recover it!

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/world-news/remember-kony-2012-well-its-2013-what-happened/story-fndir2ev-1226550575923#ixzz2cHyeWF3X 
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/world-news/remember-kony-2012-well-its-2013-what-happened/story-fndir2ev-1226550575923#ixzz2cHxamxXE

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/04/one-year-later-what-happened-to-stopkony.html

Fifty Shades of Grey: Secrets to Success

Love it, or hate it

 Fifty Shades of Grey is a story you can’t ignore. 

A book that seemingly came out of nowhere to roar up the books sales chart to become one of the fastest selling books in the 21^st century, is a sensational ‘Rags to Riches’ word of mouth tale.

E.L. James's Fifty Shades erotic trilogy sold more than 70 million copies in ten months between March to December 2012. This made it the fastest selling series for any publisher. (Bertelsmann, 2012 Annual Report). By contrast, Stieg Larsson’s, best selling Millennium trilogy and Lizbeth Salander’s highly popular Dragon Tattoo took four years to sell 20 million copies.

So why all the hype…. there's a lot of speculation as to why this book ripped up the charts and stole all the publishing coveted prizes. Before we answer that question I'd like to talk you through how Fifty Shades of Grey reached such a big audience so quickly.

E.L James, or Erica as she was known then, was a London wife and working mother who worked in television.  She started writing on fan sites a series of related stories inspired by Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight books. During this time she got feedback from loyal followers, which allowed her to develop her characters and experiment with the themes of their relationship. The first volume of the Fifty Shades story was released in May 2011 as an e-book and pay on demand paperback by Writers’ Coffee Shop, based in Australia. The next two books followed six months later.

This is where the story gets interesting.  Over the next few months the books gather momentum. Loyal readers discussed the book via their blogs and social media. This reached other influencers like suburban Connecticut, and a group called DivaMoms.com, who invited Erica James to come and visit them in New York. Viral chat escalated and it spread like wildfire.

Anne Messitte, publisher of Vintage division of Random House, realized the appeal of Fifty Shades of Grey. Random House struck a deal in March 2012, valued around million dollars, according to news stories at the time. Messitte put down the extraordinary success of Fifty Shades of Grey to the Internet and word of mouth exposure.  Social media amplified the ‘noise’ and built a sub culture of people like it had never done before, says Messitte. The media heard the noise and then amplified it even more causing a frenzy of discussion and more book sales.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMQmfI0-2F4

So why did this book reach such a critical mass so quickly, when other books had taken five to ten times as long. Some put it down to the classic romantic story line. Some say success is due to the sexual themes and non-typical relationships portrayed in the story.  Some say it was due to well developed characters and their backgrounds.  Maybe because people could read it in 'private' even though they were in public, by downloading it onto their kindle or iPad.  

I believe Fifty Shades of Grey success grew from a word of mouth epidemic created by Gladwell's identified characteristics aligning at the right time.  

Lets run through Gladwell's 'tipping point' characteristics and see how they fit with the 50 Shades case at point.

• Point 1 - the law of the few – E.L James (Erica) built early momentum with a loyal audience through developing her story on the fan site.  These loyal followers then spread the word, which then influenced other and so on.

• Point 2 -  the stickiness factor – the content of the book was extremely memorable.  This was the first time woman truly started talking about this taboo topic. Never before had we openly discussed  bondage, domination, sadism and masochism (BDSM) with our friends, let alone our daughters and mothers.  It pushed women beyond their comfort zone – which made it unforgettable.  

•  Point 3 - the power of context – the environment was right for this type of topic to be debated, and debated it has been.   Views were polarised, which meant reactions were emotional and the debate was extreme.  It became powerful and explosive.  The use of Kindle and iPad technology enabled people to read naughty literature in public without having to be judged or feeling that they were on display.  This provided women with a sense of liberation and freedom.

Social media just amplified the epidemic to world-wide proportions because the topic was of global interest and enjoyed by so many.

Is word of mouth alone powerful enough to escalate a product or brand to the tipping point?

With companies now spending in excess of $1billion on word of mouth campaigns, it would appear targeting opinion leaders, to spruk your product or brand is becoming big marketing business.  

But, does it really work?  Over the next twelve weeks I’m on a mission to find out whether word of mouth marketing is powerful enough to escalate a product or brand to the tipping point. To be able to answer this question a definition of word of month and the tipping point is needed.

First lets define word of mouth marketing.  When opinion leaders or change agents informally influence the actions, attitudes of opinion seekers through personal contact, such as phone, email, chat, direct face to face or social media means.

According to Malcolm Gladwell, the tipping point is the moment of critical mass, the threshold, and the boiling point. It is the point when everyday things reach epidemic proportions. 

There are three distinct characteristics of epidemics or contagiousness when change happens not gradually, but at one dramatic moment.

• The law of the few – according to Gladwell success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of a few people with a particular set of social gifts.
• The stickiness factor – the content must render the impact memorable.
• The power of context – epidemics only work when the environment is right.

Malcolm Gladwell states that word of mouth alone is powerful enough to take a brand to the tipping point. This is that magical moment when and idea, product or trend spreads like wildfire.  According to Gladwell this happened to Hush Puppies in 1994.

Hush Puppies was a dying brand.  With their shoe sales down to only 30,000 pairs per year, company executives were thinking seriously about discontinuing the product.

Then something happened.  Between 1994 and 1995 they were able to significantly influence consumer perceptions of the Hush Puppy brand by activating a number of New York fashionisters to talk about the product – using a range of social media channels. The opinion leaders spoke to other fashionisters who followed suit. The ‘cool’ kids spoke to the fashionisters, the less cool kids spoke to the cool kids…. And so on.  The word on the street reached a critical mass that caused an explosion and put Hush Puppies back into the fashion scene.  In 1995 the company sold 430,000, an increase of around 70%, and the next year it sold four times that.

Within 2 years Hush Puppies sales exploded by 5,000% without a penny spent on advertising.

Wow, if this is truly possible why aren’t more companies slashing their marketing budgets and engaging opinion leaders to engage in word of mouth activity?Have you got other brand or product stories that provide further evidence that word of mouth marketing alone can take a brand to the tipping point? 

Or is the Hush Puppy case just a story of luck and being in the right place at the right time?