Improvised marketing interventions (IMIs)—social media actions that are composed and executed in real-time proximal to an external event —through quick wit and, in particular, the interaction between humor paired with timeliness and humor paired with unanticipation—enables firms to drive virality and enhance firm value.

1. From:
Improvised Marketing
Interventions in Social Media
Borah, Banerjee, Lin, Jain and Eisingerich 2020

2. From:From:
Improvised Marketing Interventions (IMIs): Social media actions that
are composed and executed in real-time, proximal to an external event
What are IMIs?
Borah, Banerjee, Lin, Jain and Eisingerich 2020
Power outage during Super
Bowl XLVII in 2013
Oreo’s IMI in response to the
external event

3. From:From:
Do IMIs impact the virality of marketing
messages?
Borah, Banerjee, Lin, Jain and Eisingerich 2020
 Virality: Marketing
communication which
prompt social media
users to pass it on to
others at no cost to the
advertiser
 Study 1 finds that
immediately after
OreoDunk IMI, there is a
rise in virality for Oreo

4. From:From:
Quick wit: situational humor that relies on timeliness and
unanticipation
Timeliness: the extent to which a firm responds to an event
quickly
Unanticipation: unexpected way in which an advertiser responds
to an external event
Borah, Banerjee, Lin, Jain and Eisingerich 2020
Concepts Important to Understanding
the IMIs

5. From:From:
Why Do Improvised Marketing Interventions
Increase Virality and Firm Value?
Borah, Banerjee, Lin, Jain and Eisingerich 2020
 Quick wit drives virality because…
- Both humor and timeliness attraction attention
- Attention initiates further conversation
- Sharing humorous and unexpected content makes social media
users look good to other users.
 Quick wit increases stock price because…
- Investors’ belief that the IMIs virality itself will increase brand
attitudes
- It signals company is confident enough about its own brand
reputation and its employees’ judgment to empower them to create
IMIs

6. From:From:
 Managers should consider not only what they say, but, importantly, how
and when they say it using social media to successfully cut through the
clutter
 Such characteristics of IMIs affect not only perceptual metrics like virality
but also the objective metrics of a firm’s stock returns
 An IMI with high humor and high unanticipation can generate USD 5.1
million on average in market capitalization
 An IMI with high humor and high timeliness can generate USD 3.1
million on average in market capitalization
Benefits of this IMI strategy
Borah, Banerjee, Lin, Jain and Eisingerich 2020