The epic success of the "No Make-Up Selfie", Can It Be repeated?

After the massive success of the ‘no make-up selfie’ viral campaign for Cancer Research, which has raised over £8million in just 6 days (Peacock, 2014), there is no doubt that marking departments across the globe are sitting in board rooms trying to work out exactly how to replicate theses impressive results.

But what exactly is viral marketing and how exactly can you make a viral campaign successful?

Michelle Heaton, Holly Willougnby and Kym Marsh Took Part in the campaign Source: The Guardian (2014)

What is Viral Marketing

The Collins English Dictionary (2005) describes viral marketing as  “a marketing strategy in which conventional media are eschewed in favour of various techniques designed the generate word-of-mouth publicity, in the hope of creating a fad or craze” . In simpler terms those who read it spread the message rather than this being accomplished by the company it’s self. These messages are usually in the form of pictures or videos and while viral messages used to be commonly spread via email chains, they are now far more conventionally shared over social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

Successful Campaigns

Many viral campaigns have succeeded in recent years, each one unique. One factor that stands out from all of these campaigns is they possess some quality that engages viewers, giving them a reason to share it with those around them. Previous successful ads seem to either; be funny, showcase amazing feats or have significant to the target audience.

Funny adds are by far the most popular option for viral ads and in March of 2012 the Dollar Shave Club released their add on Youtube. Entitled ‘Our Blades Are F***ing Great’ the ad clearly explained the company’s product whilst at the same time adding large amounts of dry humour, this resulted in shock value and encouraged viewer to share the link. The video has now had over 13 million views and the resulting worldwide demand has caused the Dollar Shave Club to post apologies on their site due to unavailability in some regions.

Impressive ads are more often than not staged, but filmed in such a way that the audience believe them to be real. The ads themselves showcase feats that are so impressive followers feel the need to share these with their friends. One such ad is the Quicksilver ‘Surfing With Dynamite’ that showcases a group of young men throwing explosives into a river and using the ensuing wave to surf on. It has been reported that this viral ad caused a grater impact than the combined remaining advertising channels for Quicksilver at the time (Altoft, 2008).

Back to the 'Selfie'

This is where we revisit the ‘no make up selfie’ which was given meaning by connecting the posting of these photos as an act of courage, comparing the deed to  living with and fighting cancer, this gave the campaign meaning and encouraged users to participate.

The unique aspect of this campaign however is that it was not created by cancer research, but instead was a growing trend spurred by author Laura Lippman in support of Kim Novak who was receiving criticism over her looks following the 2014 Oscars (Flood, 2014). From here the trend began to spread, by users posting their own pictures and challenging friends to do the same, even celebrities began joining in.

Laura Lippman in the first "No make-up selfie". Source: Flood (2014)

                                    

Even though the ad was in no way conceived by Cancer Research, they merely made the right decision at the right time, the result was one of the most successful viral advertising campaigns to date. The real reason for success is in fact purely that the campaign was something that users actually wanted to be involved in, rather than something being pushed onto them.

So, how do we get the same results?

So the truth is that it may not be possible to re create the epic success of the ‘no-make up selfie’ campaign, mainly due to the fact that it wasn’t a conceived campaign but a wise marketing strategy to attach a message to a growing trend, but that doesn’t mean we cannot learn from it.

If you want to be involved in viral marketing, and you want your campaign to work you need to create something people truly want to share, not just something you want people to share.

If you want to read more about Cancer Research's Campaign or Viral Marketing use the references below or check out the Facebook page here. Alternitivly search the web, the campaign has been heavily featured in the news.

Altoft, P. (2008) Top 10 Viral Campaigns of all time. Branded3 [Online] <http://www.branded3.com/blogs/the-top-10-viral-marketing-campaigns-of-all-time/> [Accessed 26 March 2014]

The Collins English Dictionary (2005), Dictionary.com Unabridged. [Online] <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/equator> [Accessed 26 March 2014]

Flood. A (2014) Laura Lippman's selfie 'in solidarity' with Kim Novak sets off tweet trend. The Gaurdian, 11^th March 2014. [Online] <http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/11/laura-lippman-selfie-kim-novak-solidarity> [Accessed 26 March 2014]

The Gaurdian (2014) No Make Up Selfies Raise £8m for Cancer Research in 6 Days. The Guardian. 25th March 2014. [Online] <http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/25/no-makeup-selfies-cancer-charity> [Accessed 26 March 2014]

Peacock, L. (2014) £8m: The total raised so far by #nomakeupselfies. The Telegraph, 25^th March 2014. [Online] <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/10721107/No-make-up-selfie-cancer-campaign-raises-8m-in-6-days.html> [Accessed 26 March 2014]

Meeting Consumers Needs in e-Commerce: The OCHN

Meeting consumers needs has been a key focus of every business for many years. However, the rise of e-commerce has opened up businesses to a whole new section of consumers with different wants a needs.

The Online Consumer's Hierarchy of Needs (OCHN) is a framework developed by Valacich, Parboteeah and Wells (2007) in order to create a standard framework for e-commerce businesses so that they can adequately meet the needs of their customers.

Developed from Maslow's highly regarded Hierarchy of Needs, the OCHN divides online consumer's needs into three distinct categories; Structural Firmness, Functional Convenience and Representational Delight (Valacich, Parboteeah and Wells, 2007).

For each category, there is a minimum level of compliance that must be reached in order for consumers to use the website in question and this makes up the horizontal section of the framework and is named the 'Zone of Intolerance'. The remainder of the framework is divided into the same three categories, however this section is not essential to a consumer purchasing, but rather increases the satisfaction consumers have with the website or web page (see Figure 1).

Figure 1       The Online Consumer Hierarchy of Needs

Source: Valacich, Parboteeah and Wells (2007)

The theory is expanded upon further through the consideration of differing websites. These are classified as Utilitarian sites (sites designed to be practical rather than attractive), Hedonic sites (sites designed for attractiveness) and Hybrid sites (sites that require to both be attractive and practical) and the distribution of these three competencies differ depending on the type of website it is applied to (See figure 2).

Figure 2       The OCHN for differing websites

Source: Valacich, Parboteeah and Wells (2007)

While utilitarian sites are more heavily reliant on structural firmness, hedonistic sites benefit more heavily from improved representational delight. Hybrid sites, depicted in figure 2 as a even split, are in actual fact dependant on their exact positioning, which can be more closely related to either utilitarian or hedonic.

The OCHN framework, while not comprehensive, give an indication to e-commerce business on the driving factors behind their consumers motivation to use their site above their competition, and so can be a useful tool when deciding where exactly to invest when re-designing or updating their online platform.

For more information on the OCEN read Valacich, Parboteeah and Wells (2007).

Reference: Valacich JS, Parboteeah DV and Wells JD (2007) “The online consumer’s hierarchy of needs”, Communications of the ACM, Vol 50, No 9, p84-90

Email Review - Asos

So I have been asked to critically evaluate an email from my inbox today and I have chosen to look at an email I got from Asos.


I often end up opening all the emails I get from Asos, both due to my affinity with the brand and the fact that the subject lines are intriguing, often showing savings or time exclusive offers.

Below is a screenshot of the email shown when opened.
  

As you can see the subject line shows a 30% off deal as an incentive to open, however the subject line is in no way personalised, as a matter of fact, there is no personalisation in the entire email (other than sending make the male version). It could be beneficial for Asos to consider adding some form of personalisation to their emails in order to achieve a more personal feel with their customer base, which is believed to increase brand loyalty among consumers.


I also found it strange that this 30% deal is not available above the fold of the email, which is odd when compared to the emails that I would normally receive such as the example below, where the subject line directly reflects the main deal in the email itself.

Other than this flaw the email is both relevant and laid out effectively. It highlight consumer behaviour for the time of year, showcasing Christmas gift ideas and winter clothing and is attractive with a simple layout.



Liked areas of the email are clearly defined by placing them inside boxes and using clear CTA's which are underlined to refelct hyperlinked text. these link through to relevant pages that accurately reflect both the look and content of the email, sharing similar page layouts, product types and headers. 

Google analytics and AdSense

So today I started playing around with the analytics i set up about a week ago via google analytics, while confusing at first i found i really useful blog which features a ton of useful information right the way from a beginners guide to using the tools all the way to interpreting results and what actions to take if your stats start to drop.

The blog is created by Simply Business and you can find it by clicking here.

So far I have played around with the different metrics available, switched in and out of the real time feed and tried playing around with the different dates and displays. While its interesting to work out how all of these metrics work, I haven't had that many visitors yet and so the displays aren't overly interesting to analyse.

I've also decided to sign my blog up to Google AdSense in the hope I can earn a little bit of money. Im interested to see how it work but am currently waiting for web address to be approved.

Data Science

In this article Provost and Fawcett (2013) put forward the idea of data Science, a concept that can be used in order to extract information from sets of data and relies on many processes, principles and techniques used got understanding phenomena using automated analysis.

The information can then be used for Data Driven Decision Making which in turn minimized the need for decisions to be made on speculation. 

The article goes on to address the movement from big data 1.0 to 2.0 and address the interactions between Data science and  Big Data.

The full article is available here: http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/big.2013.1508


Reference
Provost, F., & Fawcett, T. (2013). Data Science and its Relationship to Big Data and Data-Driven Decision Making. Big Data, 1(1), 51-59.

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