Cognitive arousal

Viral Marketing Agency

Data driven, results oriented, scientific approach

We make people feel

People nowadays pay money to avoid advertisements, so unless you make them feel something (cognitive or affective arousal), they’ll ignore you.

Viral marketing isn’t about ‘getting lucky’ with a YouTube video. It’s about the strategic creation and seeding of super-engaging content that gets people talking.

We’re a data-driven creative agency that creates word of mouth.

What is a ‘Viral Campaign’?

A Viral Campaign is where we create content that gets shared organically. The emphasis is on creating compelling or uber-entertaining content (featuring your brand of course), rather than traditional ad spend (the ‘old world’ way).

Why does it matter? Because you need to get noticed. Every brand is using social media advertising now – and it’s a slog getting noticed above the rest. Let’s face it – traditional ad spend advertising has it’s place – but it’s not going to get people talking about you, nor will it necessarily build your brand.

The Old World way of advertising

our process

The Viral Marketing Campaign Process

01Affinity
The first step when creating a viral campaign is to identify a relevant source of affinity tied to your brand. Affinity is a concept or belief tied to people’s value systems, and is critical for content engagement.
02Arousal
Arousal is the biological source of sharing motives, and is the second key driver of content engagement. We use behavioural science techniques, such as combining emotions and ‘chunking’, to activate sufficient arousal to maximise sharing motives.
03Method
After we’ve identified the core elements of affinity and arousal, we work on the delivery method. Whatever the aims of your project, we can advise you on what would work best.
04Content Seeding
The process of seeding involves the optimisation of content, and strategic initial push to plant the content in fertile ground. We carefully select the best influencers to get your campaign rolling, so the internet can do the rest.

Our Process
Affinity
Arousal
Method
Content Seeding

The Viral Marketing Campaign Process

Step 1: Affinity

Affinity is a concept or belief tied to people’s value systems. The first step when creating a viral campaign is to identify a relevant source of affinity tied to your brand. For some brands, the source of affinity is straightforward. For example, we worked with a life jacket Startup where the source of affinity was drowning (‘the taste of drowning’).

For other brands however, identifying the source of affinity requires more work. A well known surf brand here in Australia discovered the source of affinity for their customers wasn’t riding the perfect wave, but rather the health of the ocean in iconic surf locations.

We’re experts at finding the right source of affinity for your brand, and incorporating it into world class viral campaigns.

Step 2: Arousal

Arousal is the biological source of sharing motives, and works on a primitive part of the brain known as the ‘limbic’ system. It’s a key driver of content engagement, and critical to the success of viral content sharing. We use behavioural science techniques, such as combining emotions and ‘chunking’, to activate sufficient arousal to maximise sharing motives.

This step includes many nuances, from screenwriting and shot lists, through to editing and sound design.

Step 3: Method

After we’ve identified the core elements of affinity and arousal. We work on the delivery method. For some brands it works best to combine PR with Influencer Marketing. For others, optimising the content and carefully seeding it is sufficient. Whatever the aims of your project, we can advise you on what would work best.

Step 4: Content Seeding

In an ideal world, we’d post great content on social media and it would reach critical mass on it’s own. But it’s a slow way of doing things – we usually need to get the ball rolling fast before the social media algorithms realise the content is special and takes over.

The process of seeding involves the optimisation of content, and strategic initial push to plant the content in fertile ground. This is where our expertise at influencer marketing comes into play.

We carefully select the best influencers to get your campaign rolling, so the internet can do the rest.

Case Study 1

The WILB study!

2.9 million media mentions

The Challenge

Restricting free internet access in the workplace was surprisingly common, and we wanted it stopped. To do so we needed to break social norms that workers couldn’t be trusted to monitor their personal internet usage themselves, and destroy the myth that workers spend too much time ‘goofing off’ on the internet when they should be working.

The Solution

Using psychometrics, we ran a nationwide research study to discover how much productivity was lost each day in Australia from workers using the internet for fun when they should have been working. Our preliminary investigation suggested there was no loss in productivity.

The data panned out – and in fact it turned out that corporations who were restricting free internet access in the workplace had LESS productive employees than workplaces that had no restrictions.

We discovered that workers in overly restrictive workplaces were less loyal, resentful of tight internet rules, and more likely to feel burnt out.

The Results

Our findings got picked up by all the major news media sites around the world, including the New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, the BBC to name a few. And enjoyed months of social interest stories as a result in serious publications – reaching millions of people around the world.

2.9 million media mentions

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