Emotional Sharing and viral videos: creating unique video advertisements

Lindsey LeBaron

Florida International University

PUR-6005 Strategic Communication Theories

Professor Jessica Vega-Centeno

Literature Review Paper - Master's of Global Strategic Communications

Throughout history, the media has created different channels of communication that people have used to interact with each other. As the years have gone by, the channels we use to communicate have adapted to reflect new ways of life. Through the creation of the printing press, print media became the major source of giving and receiving information until the age of social media and technology. Social media and its many networks (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc) have made communicating with multiple audiences easier and faster. Information from any part of the world is now accessible to everyone in possession of a smart device. With this influx of knowledge comes a plethora of opinions. It is no longer the responsibility of the media to present information, rather, it is now the media’s responsibility to filter the correct messages to the masses. Social media, through its ability to build connections, has allowed businesses the opportunity to market their products to global audiences within a matter of seconds. There are many ways in which businesses can market to their consumers, one of which is video advertising.

The use of video is seen as a powerful tool the media can use to build brand awareness and foster relationships with consumers in social media. Social video advertising is one of the fastest-growing channels for advertising today with an increase of 230 percent, “over nine times the growth in online search and display advertising” (Tucker, 2015) and “viral advertising online has a higher speed of propagation, wider range of influence and more intimate sense of communication.” (Bader, 2016) The cost of advertising online is also significantly cheaper to run and easier to share with consumers. Instead of traditionally paying for advertisement placement, modern advertisements can be transmitted by the consumer through posts on social media or YouTube. The biggest question that communications professionals have had for the past couple of years is; how can our advertisements effectively influence our audiences so that they will be inspired to share our videos with their peers? A video can become viral when they receive high numbers of shares on social media. (Nikolinakou et.al, 2018) Viral video advertising is, “a video produced by a brand with a direct or indirect commercial goal” (Dafonte-Gomez, 2014) and is “a persuasive message distributed by an advertiser through an unpaid channel among peers on interactive digital platforms.” (Eckler & Rogers, 2010) Kulkarni (2019) also defined viral video advertising as “persuasive messages by an identified sponsor distributed through unpaid communications among peers on interactive digital platforms.” Over the past couple of years, digital marketing strategy has shifted from paid media to earned media where the channel of delivery is the customer. Taking this effect into account, social media advertising is “among the fastest-growing segments in advertising today” (Tucker, 2015) and “very successful viral video ads have an ‘infectious effect;’as they can reach and engage a vast audience.” (Nikolinakou, 2018) As the world of technology and social media continues to grow, how we advertise and market our goods and services also needs to advance. “Viral messages are playing an increasingly important role in influencing and shifting public opinion on corporate reputations, brands, and products as well as political parties and public personalities.” (Botha & Reyneke, 2013) To fuel business practices and establish greater brand awareness, marketers need to understand what makes a video advertisement unique and shareable to our audiences. For this purpose, the following review of the literature will investigate the concept of flow and emotional sharing on viral video advertising in the United States. The review will likewise explore how involving social attention can make a video unique to vast audiences. To preface this concept, a conversation on how to inspire consumers to share content and how positive and negative emotional responses will provide context for this discussion.

Inspiring consumers to share content

There are many reasons why people share content and advertisements with their peers. Berger & Milkman (2013) stated that people generally share stories and news due to the act of sharing. Sharing content provides useful information that may help others or can enhance a consumer’s self-image by appearing more knowledgeable. Tellis et al. (2019) stated that individuals share content for the following reasons: for self-serving motivations, to engage with the community, to learn about community interests, to socialize with community members, to instill feelings of belonging, and to show concern or empathy for others. Further studies by Berger & Milkman (2013) indicate that positive news tends to be more viral despite reports that negative news tends to be passed along at a quicker pace. Other authors suggest that word-of-mouth (WOM) communication from friends and family has continually been an important factor in influencing the purchasing decisions of consumers. WOM communication has an even greater capacity to reach audiences through the expansion of social networks. (Henke, 2013) Interpersonal communication and contagious content also play an influential role in determining a positive sharing response. (Bader, 2016)

The act of sharing can also occur because the consumer is invested in the product or brand or they liked the video content. It is the responsibility of the marketer to decide how to reach out to their audiences and persuade them to invest in their products. Some elements of the video have to be sacrificed due to elements like time duration and the overall cost of the advertisement. Marketers have to be strategic with their advertisement campaigns to reach and persuade the greatest number of consumers with the least amount of time and cost possible. One way to effectively create a successful advertisement is to create “ads that either attract a lot of comments or which attract comments that mention the product by name.” (Tucker, 2015) Positive comments about the company or product can inspire other readers to learn more about and potentially buy products while negative comments can instill disapproval for the brand in general. “Ads that receive the most views are relatively less able to persuade consumers to purchase the product.” (Tucker, 2015) Managers who track user-generated content are more able to persuasively achieve high reachability. While creating strategic initiatives can increase sharing, using positive and negative emotions can also play an important role in making advertisements more shareable.

Positive and negative emotional responses

To properly discuss how the concepts of flow and emotional sharing can potentially increase virality in video advertisements, a discussion regarding positive and negative emotional responses is necessary. Emotions tend to influence their behavior whether for good or bad. “Consumers with negative product-related emotions are more likely to generate word-of-mouth. However, users with general positive emotion seem more likely to diffuse messages.” (Bader, 2016) Much of the research conducted in recent years has been centered around the emotional response of the intended audience. Kulkarni (2020) concluded that individuals had higher sharing intentions for viral video advertisements when there is an emotional appeal even when the brand is not well known. While emotions are not the key factor in producing viral videos, the emotional approach to viral video advertisements has importance in this discussion. Many researchers (Phelps 2004; Doebele et al., 2007) believe that videos that have gone viral have some emotional resonance in its viewers. Other research suggests that engagement and surprise are key content characteristics that can increase the virality of online video advertisements. (Knossenburg et al., 2016) However, Botha & Reyneke (2013) found that the role emotions can have on the virality of emotions has not yet been fully explored.

The reason why consumers share videos with others, causing a video to go viral is still a topic that needs to be more fully explored in academia. In talking about emotions, Botha and Reyneke (2013) presented two models: first, emotions lie on a continuum and second, emotions are defined as discrete events. Discrete emotions are emotions that are decomposed into distinct regions that represent fundamental emotions (joy, love, anger, fear, sadness, disgust, and surprise.) The discrete approach also aims at a specific target and is linked to action. The second model, the dimensional approach, suggests that emotions are two-dimensional: “one dimension accounts for whether the emotion is positive or negative and the other for the intensity with which the emotion is felt.” (Botha & Reyneke, 2013)

Emotions are not just individual reactions. Emotions can be a result of something someone else has said or done. People can cause anger, joy, love, fear and other emotions through the things that they say and do. For this reason, emotions are not just an individual experience, but rather a social phenomenon. Many authors such as Tahtinen and Blois (2011) and Chakrabarti and Berthon (2012) state that “emotions should be studied at the social level” and that a person’s emotions affect the people around them. They further argued that social emotions directly affect the exchanges we have with each other on social media and that viral marketing must build emotional connections between the campaign and the viewers to ensure virality. This idea was not officially tested and more empirical research needs to be done to understand how emotions truly affect viral marketing. While emotions play a key part in influencing sharing, much of the research conducted on the role of emotions on sharing behavior and diffusion are conflicting. (Berger & Milkman, 2012)

Flow and emotional sharing

While emotions play an important part in building and maintaining relationships between the consumer and the brand, both positive and negative emotions do not provide adequate research to support viral sharing. “Although back-end technical issues, content attributes, emotions and so on may play a role in virality, still human agency, connections and interpersonal ties play a major role in shaping the process that leads to content spreadability, hence virality.” (Mansour & Olsen, 2017) Henke (2013) also stated that it is “the level of engagement, rather than its emotional valence, which is significant in viral marketing.” Micu and Plummer (2010) conducted physiological measures to understand how the emotional response relates to viral advertising but their results were not able to successfully create a correlation between viral advertisements and emotions. Their results did find that the level of engagement and intense experiences are more important than the emotions prompted by the advertisement regardless of whether the emotional response was positive or negative.

The concept of flow was first introduced by Csikszentmihalyi in 1990. Csikszentmihalyi described flow as an optimal experience that is characterized by total involvement with life or “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter.” (Henke, 2013) Consumers who have been introduced to flow in advertisements are drastically more likely to share, download, and purchase the content or product and were more likely to recommend the brand to others. Further results conducted by Henke (2013) discovered that despite varying treatments that exhibited both pleasant or unpleasant emotions, flow occurred in both treatment conditions and more often gave respondents positive attitudes and intentions related to the viral marketing campaign. Although flow offers marketers a greater chance of having a positive reaction to videos, it is not related to the emotional engagement experienced by each participant.

As people experience flow in video advertisements, it instills a powerful enough response to inspire the respondent to share the video. The focus of marketing campaigns is to inspire action in viewers; to elicit support, inspire them to purchase the product, or motivate friends and family of the viewer to purchase goods or services. Emotional contagion theory is the idea that the emotional state can be transferred, meaning that the person experiencing the emotion can cause others to experience an emotional change. As communication is no longer so much face-to-face interaction, many researchers have wondered if the emotional contagion theory can also be displayed during computer-mediated communication. Fusing both the concept of flow and emotional contagion theory (emotional sharing) could potentially create videos that involve consumers in the video in such a new unique way that it will inspire the viewer to have an emotional response that they will want to share. Marketers can accomplish this feat by creating advertisements that take viewers on a journey or creates a full story.

Creating unique videos

The concept of flow and emotional sharing can inspire more virality but adding uniqueness to a video not only inspires sharing, but it can leave a lasting impression. With so many varying opinions, experiences, and personalities it can be difficult to reach large audiences especially in the United States where there is a melting pot of cultures and traditions. Creating a fully developed story can generate greater reachability to larger audiences, and instill great persuasive capability to share the advertisement. Many authors have stated that the creation of a dramatic arc (creating an obstacle the characters have to overcome) can generate more likability for the entire story and the advertisement and “enjoyment of that story influenced attitude toward the ad and forwarding intention.” (Chen and Lee, 2014) Quensenberry & Coolsen (2019) analyzed 155 viral video advertisements and found that average shares and views were higher for videos with full story development. In a former study regarding Super Bowl TV ads, Quensenberry and Coolsen (2014) found that telling stories with a five-act story arc were more likable and have higher scores in Super Bowl rating polls than ads with no story development. Shehu, Bijmolt, and Clement (2016) found that video ads that have a beginning, peak, and end promote more likeability and virality. Studies have also shown that the more creative a video is, the more capable the video is to stir the conversation on social media. Quesenberry & Coolsen (2019) concluded that telling fully-developed stories does drive virality and produces higher shares and views.

To achieve unique viral videos requires more than developing story arcs; it also involves social attention and creating experiences that consumers can share with their friends. Rawat & Mann (2016) define experience as a tool to “engage individual customers in a way that creates an event memorable.” Social attention involves a psychological ability to connect to someone else through touch, eye contact or other channels. Bader (2016) specified that involving the consumer in the story development as much as possible can instill more virality and sharing. As an organization creates engaging experiences with their customers, positive impressions are formed when they encounter the brand through other marketing channels (i.e billboards, flyers, other advertisements, etc.) The experience should not be one-sided. Companies need to create new opportunities for consumers to interact with the brand and discover emotional and physical attachments with the product. Creating brand experiences with consumers not only creates positive emotion attachments, but it can also create loyalty.

Conclusion

Research shows that the more engaged consumers are with the advertisement, the greater chance the ad will have to go viral. While emotions play a role in creating a positive or negative view of the advertisement or brand, it only plays a role in making videos unique enough for consumers to share it with their communities. Videos become unique when they involve the audience in the story being told and allow the consumer to participate in an experience. An increase in sharing can occur when the concept of flow and emotional sharing is attached to a dramatized advertisement with a story arc. Story arcs can attract the attention of viewers and make the video contagious. For consumers that live in the United States, flow and emotional sharing can create comradery in a nation full of varying cultures, opinions and political affiliations as stories that relate to everyday experiences will relate to multiple audiences.

While there have been many studies conducted that have individually focused on the topics discussed in this review, it is in the opinion of this author that further research needs to be conducted regarding the parts that storytelling and social attention have on creating viral video advertisements. There are not many studies in current academia about storytelling and virality. Further studies that fuse communications and general psychology can also offer necessary information about the human psyche that will benefit human interaction via social media channels.

References

Bader, O. (2016). Attending to emotions is sharing of emotions – A multidisciplinary perspective to social attention and emotional sharing. Comment on Zahavi and Rochat (2015). Consciousness and Cognition, 42, 382–395. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2016.04.012

Baraybar-Fernández, A., Baños-González, M., Barquero-Pérez, Ó., Goya-Esteban, R., & De-La-Morena-Gómez, A. (2017). Evaluation of Emotional Responses to Television Advertising through Neuromarketing. Comunicar, 25(52), 19–28. doi: 10.3916/c52-2017-02

Berger, J., & Milkman, K. L. (2013). Emotion and Virality: What Makes Online Content Go Viral? GfK Marketing Intelligence Review, 5(1), 18–23. doi: 10.2478/gfkmir-2014-0022

Botha, E., & Reyneke, M. (2013). To share or not to share: the role of content and emotion in viral marketing. Journal of Public Affairs, 13(2), 160–171. doi: 10.1002/pa.1471

Chakrabarti, R., & Berthon, P. (2012). Gift giving and social emotions: experience as content. Journal of Public Affairs, 12(2), 154–161. doi: 10.1002/pa.1417

Dafonte-Gómez, A. (2014). The Key Elements of Viral Advertising. From Motivation to Emotion in the Most Shared Videos. Comunicar, 22(43), 199–207. doi: 10.3916/c43-2014-20

Eckler, P. & Bolls, P. (2011). Spreading the Virus: Emotional Tone of Viral Advertising and its Effect on Forwarding Intention and Attitudes. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 11, 2, 1-11. (DOI: 10.1080/15252019.2011.10722180).

Hayes, J. L., & King, K. W. (2014). The Social Exchange of Viral Ads: Referral and Coreferral of Ads Among College Students. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 14(2), 98–109. doi: 10.1080/15252019.2014.942473

Henke , L. L. (2013). Breaking through the clutter: The impact of emotions and flow on viral marketing. Academy of Marketing Studies Journal, 2013, 111–118.

Knossenburg, Y., Nogueira, R., & Chimenti, P. (2016). Contagious Content: Viral Video Ads Identification of Content Characteristics that Help Online Video Advertisements Go Viral. Revista Brasileira De Marketing, 15(4), 448–458. doi: 10.5585/remark.v15i4.3385

Kulkarni, K. K., Kalro, A. D., & Sharma, D. (2019). Sharing of branded viral advertisements by young consumers: the interplay between personality traits and ad appeal. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 36(6), 846–857. doi: 10.1108/jcm-11-2017-2428

Kulkarni, K. K., Kalro, A. D., & Sharma, D. (2020). The interaction effect of ad appeal and need for cognition on consumers intentions to share viral advertisements. Journal of Consumer Behaviour. doi: 10.1002/cb.1809

Li, B., Yee-Loong Chong, A., & Ch'ng, E. (2015). WHAT TRIGGERS SHARING IN VIRAL MARKETING? THE ROLE OF EMOTION AND SOCIAL FEATURE. The University of Nottingham.

Mansour, O., & Olson, N. (2017). Interpersonal Influence in Viral Social Media. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Communities and Technologies - C&T 17. doi: 10.1145/3083671.3083681

Micu, A. C., & Plummer, J. T. (2010). Measurable Emotions: How Television Ads Really Work. Journal of Advertising Research, 50(2), 137–153. doi: 10.2501/s0021849910091300

Nikolinakou, A., & King, K. W. (2018). Viral video ads: Emotional triggers and social media virality. Psychology & Marketing, 35(10), 715–726. doi: 10.1002/mar.21129

Quesenberry, K. A., & Coolsen, M. K. (2019). Drama Goes Viral: Effects of Story Development on Shares and Views of Online Advertising Videos. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 48, 1–16. doi: 10.1016/j.intmar.2019.05.001

Rawat, J., & Mann, B. J. S. (2016). Role of consumer personality and involvement in understanding customer experience. Innovative Marketing, 12(3), 19–33. doi: 10.21511/im.12(3).2016.02

Shehu, E., Bijmolt, T. H., & Clement, M. (2016). Effects of Likeability Dynamics on Consumers Intention to Share Online Video Advertisements. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 35, 27–43. doi: 10.1016/j.intmar.2016.01.001

Tellis, G. J., Macinnis, D. J., Tirunillai, S., & Zhang, Y. (2019). What Drives Virality (Sharing) of Online Digital Content? The Critical Role of Information, Emotion, and Brand Prominence. Journal of Marketing, 83(4), 1–20. doi: 10.1177/0022242919841034

Tsekouropoulos, G. (2019). Viral advertising: message quality, trust and consumers intention to share the content in social media. International Journal of Technology Marketing, 13(2), 111. doi: 10.1504/ijtmkt.2019.102244

Tucker, C. E. (2015). The Reach and Persuasiveness of Viral Video Ads. Marketing Science, 34(2), 281–296. doi: 10.1287/mksc.2014.0874