So, rumor has it that Shopify a really cool canadian ecommerce platform used
kittens as the core to their to their content
marketing strategy to win new business. Who doesn't love kittens, right?
The story goes like this: they were looking for innovative ways to capture
people's attention on Facebook, and someone - as a joke - said
"People love kittens!" So they thought, "Why not?"
and used a series of adorable baby cats to draw attention to their ads, most
likely running an impression-based campaign that led to oodles of
click-throughs and even signups. OK, let's stop here and acknowledge
something right up front. Using adorable baby animals isn't really a strategy,
it's a classic bait-and-switch tactic. And yes, with a volume play like this,
there will be a certain number of people that click through and actually
find themselves thinking "Hey Shopify is pretty cool!
Now I can start that business, I've always wanted to!"
Today, I'll cover the law of diminishing returns on cuteness, talk about what you can do in
lieu of kittens, and, hopefully, give you enough insight into the kitten-tactic so you
can apply better thinking to your own strategy...which isn't about kittens.
Hi, my name is Tara and this is...Truly Social.
First...diminishing returns on cuteness. This type of tactic is pretty much the
reason that Facebook has choked off all branded content on the newsfeed today.
For a while, everyone from grocers to gaming sites were using adorable animals
to get us to click, like, and share their posts. And, it pretty much worked for a while
until people started complaining that their news feeds were full of garbage content.
Facebook took a hard stand and penalized ALL brands by reducing their
exposure to our news feeds drastically "This is why we can't have nice things."
Today, it's pretty much a pay-to-play scenario for brands, and, frankly, i'm relieved as a
Facebook denizen. Generally, I don't advise clients to focus on Facebook at all any
longer. It's an advertising platform now. But that is also why it's important not to
ruin all other social platforms. Thankfully most of them don't have something
similar to a news feed that brands can pollute with their short-term thinking.
But, let's get back to those kittens, shall we? Kittens worked for Shopify and some others
for a while because they appealed to our emotions. And emotion is one of the
strongest drivers behind why we share. In his 2013 book, Contagious: why things
catch on, Jonah Berger outlines six basic principles that drive word-of-mouth:
Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Knowledge, and Stories.
Emotion has been manipulated as a marketing tool since the days of Ernest
Dichter, "the father of motivational research." Throughout the decades,
marketing has viewed customers as a mass of irrational, unconscious urge-wielding consumers.
And yes, we are all guilty of emotional irrationality from time-to-time, but the
internet and social media have revealed that we are much more complex than that.
Facebook realized in the nick of time that the "Kittening of content" would chase off
the more quality social-seeking denizens, so they put a stop to it. And, yes, you may still
have that Uncle or cousin that shares ridiculous motivational quotes constantly,
but thankfully, they've been contained. "I'm just expressing myself."
"No no no, not like that you're not." Instead of appealing to our most base emotions,
brands have five other principles that should be explored. I urge you to pick up
Berger's book and explore them, and I'll also cover how you can come up
with an awesome, more suitable content theme in another video.
So, until then, my name is Tara and this has been...Truly Social.