When Social Influence is Anti-Social

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Del curso dictado por University of Pennsylvania

Viral Marketing and How to Craft Contagious Content

calificaciones

University of Pennsylvania

Viral Marketing and How to Craft Contagious Content

calificaciones

Ever wondered why some things become popular, and other don't? Why some products becomes hits while others flop? Why some ideas take off while others languish? What are the key ideas behind viral marketing? This course explains how things catch on and helps you apply these ideas to be more effective at marketing your ideas, brands, or products. You'll learn how to make ideas stick, how to increase your influence, how to generate more word of mouth, and how to use the power of social networks to spread information and influence. Drawing on principles from his best-selling book, "Contagious: Why Things Catch On," Professor Jonah Berger illustrates successful strategies for you to use buzz to create virality so that your campaigns become more shareable on social media and elsewhere. By the end of this course, you'll have a better understanding of how to craft contagious content, build stickier messages, and get any product, idea, or behavior to catch on.

De la lección

How Social Influence Shapes Behavior

In this module, you'll examine how social influence shapes everything people do: from the products we buy and candidates we vote for to the food we like and careers we pursue. You’ll learn how people use others to help them make choices and how companies leverage this power to shape the products and services we use. You'll discover when people are more likely to conform or do the same thing as others, and when they are more likely to diverge or do something different. At the end of this module, you'll understand how to avoid being influenced by others and how to use influence to make yourself more successful.

The Power of Social Influence8:03

Normative Influence5:49

Using Social Influence to Increase Success8:16

When Social Influence is Anti-Social5:36

Conformity or Divergence?3:24

Conoce a los instructores

Jonah Berger
Associate Professor of Marketing
The Wharton School

We've talked about how social influence leads people to do the same as others,

to imitate those around them.

But does it always lead people to conform,

or does social influence sometimes lead us to do something different?

A number of years ago, Unilever released a new deodorant brand called Axe.

They did a lot of market research and they segmented men.

And they found that there was a certain group of men that the brand should

particularly appeal to.

They describe them as insecure novices, people that lack self-esteem and

experience and

could be easily persuaded that Axe would be key to their success with women.

They were looking at young guys, 13 and 14 years old and they found that these young

guys would really use deodorant to ramp up their self confidence.

They came out with a series of 30 second commercials that played on exactly this

idea, how using the brand Axe would make these teenagers irresistible to women.

Now, the ads were pretty effective.

Axe became an instant hit and

soon became the number one male brand deodorant in the category.

This early success though, soon began to backfire.

The ads actually worked too well, because what they did is lead geeks and

dorks everywhere to buy Axe by the caseload.

Lots of geeks were saying, I wanna be irresistible to women and

that was hurting the brand's image.

Because if only geeks were using the brand,

lots of other people said well maybe it's not for me.

And the important point here is that social influence is really just

like a magnet.

It can attract or lead people to do the same as others, but it can also repel or

lead people to avoid what others are doing.

So let's spend a couple minutes talking about when social influence might lead

people to do the opposite of their peers.

Imagine, for example, you met someone at a party and

they tell you that they drive a BMW.

What might you think about them?

What inferences might you make about who they are, what they like, and

what they enjoy doing in their spare time?

You might think they listen to a certain type of music or

potentially drink wine rather than beer.

Now imagine for a moment I told you that, that person drives a Toyota.

Would you make the same inferences about them or

might you make different inferences about who they are?

We do this all the time.

Whether at a party or at work when we meet a new person for the first time, or

even talking to someone we've met before, we make inferences about

who they are based on how they're dressed and what they do.

If someone told you they're a lawyer, for example, versus an art historian you'd

make different inferences about what they might do with their spare time.

And so importantly, consumption, the things we buy and what we do has meaning.

What we buy, say, and do can act as a signal of our identity to others.

It can communicate unobservable things to us about others around us.

Someone drives a BMW, might assume that they're wealthy, or showy,

or drink wine again, rather than beer.

They drive a Toyota,

maybe they're a little bit more functional, a little bit more utilitarian.

Maybe they care a little bit more potentially about their family.

And so importantly, we buy products not just for what they do or their functional

benefit, but also what they mean, what they symbolize or communicate about us.

So one question is, well, where do products or ideas get that identity from?

Where does meaning come from in the first place?

One way consumption gains meaning is through brand positioning,

what the brand puts out there on the world.

Whether it's an ad or the store experience.

Take Abercrombie and Fitch, for example, they use lots of black and

white photos with attractive young men and

women seeming like they're having a huge amount of fun wearing the clothes.

Or you walk into the store, and it has a certain smell and

feel to it that associates the brand with particular things.

The brand has spent a lot of time and

money associating them with a particular identity.

BMW's done the same, their ads show attractive people driving fast cars around

beautiful scenery, encouraging a certain image to be associated with the brand.

But importantly the brand doesn't totally control what it means to use that product.

Take for example the Honda Element.

Honda built this car to appeal to people in their mid-20s.

They built ads that showed people using the car, surfing and

skiing and snowboarding.

And they played fun music in the background,

showing young people having a great time using the brand.

All of this was to get that target market to buy the car.

But that isn't exactly what happened.

Because just like Axe meant to appeal to a certain segment but

attracted another one, the Honda element did the same.

Senior citizens ending up loving the car because it had lots of headroom and

was easy to get into.

And as a result, younger people became less interested in buying the brand.

Because if lots of seniors are using it, they didn't wanna use it as well.

And so the signal values depends a lot not only what the brand says, but

who else is using it.

If people wanna convey a certain meaning,

they may adopt things that signal that meaning to others.

We all wanna seem wealthier, smarter, and fitter than we actually are, so

we may buy products or use brands that communicate those desired identities.

But importantly, adoption by outsiders can change the meaning of a particular brand.

Burberry, for

example, is a very high-end brand associated with lots of wealthy Brits.

But lots of soccer hooligans in Britain were also buying knockoff Burberry to show

themselves to seem wealthy to others.

And so as a result, it shifted the meaning of consumption.

It changed what the brand meant from a signal of wealth

to a set of wannabes who wanted to seem wealthy.

And a result, lots of true wealthy people ended up abandoning the brand and

moving to something else.

But it's not just Burberry, people diverge all the time.

The jocks don't want to look like the geeks.

Kids don't want to look like their parents.

And Republicans don't want to look like Democrats and vice versa.

Often, groups will avoid what other people are doing to

avoid sending undesired signals.

Teenagers don't want to look like they're like their parents.

The jocks don't want to look like they're geeks.

And Republicans don't wanna adopt the same policy if it's associated with Democrats.

So they avoid what the others are doing to avoid sending undesired identity signals.

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