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What Can The Advertising Industry Learn From How The Public
               React To Digital Campaigns?



                      MA Advertising

                      Sarah Brookes

                     September 2012

                         Top Copy




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                    Bucks New University

            Faculty Design, Media & Management

                         MA Advertising



What Can The Advertising Industry Learn From How The Public
               React To Digital Campaigns?

                          Sarah Brookes

                           ID: 21200131

                        Dr Ray Batchelor

                        September 2012

                      Word count: 7,889

                     Module Code: AD705




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Contents:

Introduction.                               Pg. 4

Part One:

       1.1Digital is Social.                Pg. 6
       1.2Thought, Feelings, and Response   Pg. 9

Part Two: Case Studies

       2.1      Kony 2012                   Pg. 12
       2.2      The Best Job In the World   Pg. 19

Conclusion.                                 Pg. 23

Picture Credits                             Pg. 25

Bibliography                                Pg. 25




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Introduction:

       Emotion is critical to advertising because it is critical to all human
       thought (DuPlessis 2005, Pg.Xii).


Invisible Children’s recent Kony 2012 charity campaign was a 30-minute video presented
via social media,about Joseph Kony,leader of the LRA,whoallegedly used violence and
intimidation to recruit child soldiers and sex slaves for his military rebel group.

The success of this campaign and thesubsequent backlash against it is the reason that I
am writing this thesis.Itis what motivated me to initiate a deeper investigation into the
audience’s response to online campaigns.I want to explore the positive and negative
aspects of Invisible Children’s approach, how experience affects emotional response, and
analyse other campaigns (whether successful or disastrous), to gather insight into what
provokes participation online and conclude fundamentally what the advertising industry
can learn from this.

Both the positive and negative response to the Kony 2012 video pushed me to question
why this happened, and if other unsuccessfulcampaignshad made similar mistakes?What
can be learnt from the campaigns that got it right?Is there a generic formula for
success,and what can the advertising industry learn about communicating in a fast and
uncontrollable medium?How important is the role of emotion in social media, and how
much do we need to consciously consider these aspects when planning a campaign?

These questions are essential to answer because the digital space is expanding
rapidly.Digital marketing has the fastest growth area that we have ever seen, and
competes for a market share of 1 trillion dollars according to WPP(Ryan and Jones
2011).However, these changes are also naturally having an effect on our behaviours and
lifestyle.As the digital space becomes our second home how do we experience digital as
architecture?How does it affect response in a medium that is both still and moving?How
does group action affect the public’s response and a campaigns fate, as it unfolds
online,often with little commercial control?This offers the second reason to this
investigation’s relevance; understanding the way we receive and respond in cyberspace
will help us know if it is possible toproduce bettermarketing campaigns, particularly in
our real-time culture, where the fight for consumer engagement toughens.Since reading
Nick Hirst’s essay on Experience Architecture and The Future of Planning, I have begun
to question further the relevance of experience within the digital medium and what
contribution it can make to advertising campaigns (Hirst, 2012a).

As part of my research it will be essential to analyse human thought processes
andbehaviours; such as the work on Herd by Mark Earls(2009), and how this may have
an affect on sharing and the circulation of content.As advertising roots itself in our
culture, it will also be crucial to consider campaign timing in terms of what else is going
on in the audience’s lives.

My thesiswill provide anyone interested in the digital and social arena for marketing
purposes with a critical analysis of what can be learnt from some of the best and less
successful campaigns.I will map out my argument by analysing and applying theories
currently influencing industry today, which I have gathered from key books, industry
opinion and articles circulating online.I will also examine the campaigns in detail to
provide insight, which can be applied to the theory gathered.I will conclude my



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argument with some practical advice and innovative solutions for the advertising
industry.

What is essential to note is that these campaigns aren’t just digital they are also social,
which introduces the reason for my first chapter.It is vital to assess our current digital
cultures to help us understand and have clarity on where to go next.What follows this is
an introduction into where we are with digital, and current attitudes and behaviours so
that you may better understand why certain trends are emerging.I will go on to explain
current social theories of behaviour in an attempt to understand why people behave the
way they do.

Part two of this thesis analyses two case studies, each of which illustrates key aspects of
digital campaigns.Kony 2012is a fascinating case, and I’m reviewing it because it was a
campaign that experienced both huge success and failure and I have never known
another campaign like it.I will also examineThe Best Job in The World campaign,because
it was a superb idea, successful across the globe, and won industry awards.




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Part One: 1.1 Digital Is Social

Digital is a really interesting medium, and it has grown tremendously fast, shifting
notions of its own possibilities as well as that of people’s social behaviours too.It has
taught us more about us as human beings and has demonstrated just how important
belonging within a group is.‘Berners-Lee’s creation was fuelled by a highly personal
vision of the web as a powerful force for social change and individual creativity’ (W3,
1999).Web 1.0 linked web pages through hyperlinks allowing people to consume
content, and today, 2.0 connects people through the creation of content (AT&T,
2008).The development of the digital landscape has been driven by people’s desire to
search, browse, share, interact and review content, which gave rise to social media
networks in particular.Content and conversation are the new currency, and this is
changing the way commercial communicators engage with their audiences.Digital has
become an exciting and powerful platform and many marketers have been attracted to it
with the desire to experiment and earn vast and valuable returns on investments and, as
data capture has gained in sophistication too, there has been a lot to learn.But as
Damian Ryan and Calvin Jones in ‘The Best Digital Marketing Campaigns’(2011)
mention,as devices develop and trends shift, we are on a constant learning curve and
keeping on top of everything in digital is difficult.However, as we continue to make more
social connections and increasingly go mobile with 4G there is even more change to
come, and this comment from digital agency Dare conveys the implications:

       The Internet is becoming flatter, deeper and quicker.It’s reaching more people,
       on more occasions, on more devices, more speedily.Brands need to prepare for
       that future.Specifically, they need to ready themselves for an Internet that no
       longer lives on a desk and that is no longer run by institutions.Prepare for people
       and places (Digital Britain, 2012, Pg174).

As digital enables deeper social interactions and new behaviours form, does this
progression at such speed mean we need to continue experimenting?Should we have a
review into what exactly is forming, and what the behavioural implications are and
why?According to Dare’s report Digital Britain:

       Where all the new devices come together is where the new behaviours are
       emerging and arguably where some of the most important insights about the way
       people live through technology are today.This is where marketers need to be
       looking in greater detail, because understanding this can surely unlock a large
       commercial advantage (2012,Pg.166).

Our needs and desires haven’t changed, they have just found new environments, and
through digital they have become more evident and intense as the web has allowed our
actions to gain pace much more quickly, and subsequently this leads to further
strength.Over the fence conversations are now across the globe conversations.People
have always started movements, but a profound change is underway and more people
than ever are harnessing the web to band together around a shared passion or mission
and they are doing so daily.We are joining forces to rebuild communities, overthrow
politicians, rescue the rainforest and change institutions, and with facebook in particular,
if you can think of a cause or a passion or even just a hobby, chances are you will finda
group of people forming a community, having a conversation, sharing advice and rallying
around big ideas.Today it is often done via the web, and begins to explain why




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movement marketing could be the way forward.The trick for brands will be keeping them
spontaneous and authentic (Goodson, 2012).

Goodson in his book Uprisingalso agrees with author Clay Shirky, who observes that ‘this
confluence of new communications technology with a growing desire to engage and
make a statement is resulting in the most radical spread of expressive capability in
human history’(2012, pg18).But as brands hand over the power to the consumer in
order to gain powerful stories and stronger relationships, audiences begin to have their
own demands.Expectations form and as brands demand loyalty, consumers demand
trust.This is where I would argue that digital has far stronger emotional implications than
other media.

The Internet, in my mind, is essentially a new form of architecture.It is a space, which
just like buildings in the real world; provide a platform for experiences that form both an
object and anchor for feelings.Digital as a culture invites an investment of feelings
through interaction and today the generation who have never known an existence
without digital are obsessed with recording, storing, sharing and preserving the
emotionality of the everyday, which has begun to live a life of its own online.We start to
observe the circulation of affect as emotions work as a form of capital, and can
accumulate strength.Social networks in particular, such as Facebook with its Timeline
feature, become repositories of our past (Karatzogianni and Kuntsman, 2012).

Kuntsmanin his recent book Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotionsays:

       Thinking about feelings and emotions as they become digital archives, once
       vibrant but now ‘saved as’, seemingly still but always open to (re)
       emergence…call our attention to the work of emotion as they move.
       (Karatzogianni and Kuntsman, 2012 Pg7).

Exploring further, I notice how emotions can accumulate strength through postings of
comments as they move and spread between people’s ideas, subjects and opinions.As
ideas are posted and shared between friends and people outside of networks, invites us
to think about how structures of feelings are shaped and re-shaped in digital
environments.Our attention to movement and circulation allows us to consider change or
the persistence of emotions such as paranoia, compassion, or indifference (Karatzogianni
and Kuntsman, 2012).We will see examples of this in section two - Kony 2012 in
particular.

When interviewed, NeasaCunniffe, Senior Planner at RKCR / Y&Rmentioned‘I think
emotion in the online world is very pertinent too, as very few brands are nailing it at the
moment – utility yes, entertainment yes – but emotional connection in the way a great
TV Ad does it?That’s something which hasn’t been cracked yet by most’(Cunniffe, 2012).

However, this is not always true.In some cases digital campaigns have the potential to
elicit stronger emotions than TV because good campaigns rarely just present an emotion
like TV advertisements do, to family-sized groups of people, they provoke and allow an
interaction on a mass scale.The implication here is the movement and accumulation of
emotion and this is why I believe digital is so powerful(discussed later in case study
1).When an idea catches fire there can be little to stop it.Shirky in ‘Here Comes
Everybody’ explains this ‘as more people adapt simple social tools, and as those tools
allow increasingly rapid communication, the speed of group action also increases, and
just as more is different, faster is different’ (2009, Pg161).




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So, the digital route, which has completely surpassed our expectations; is fast, thrives
socially, and provides the potential for mass awareness through participation, spread
through conversation and ideas.However, I believe the advertising industry should be
aware of how sharing is motivated by feelings and emotion and how the digital space
invites an investment of these feelings.The speed and ability for everyone to join in a
conversation enablethese emotions to accumulate strength through movement, which
can have a huge impact on the shape and direction of a campaign.Also to learn is the
power of movements, and how the action could provide an answer to the future of
marketing.

So what leads to action?Next I consider our thought processes, social interaction and
how this affects our networks and what provokes people to participate.




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Part One: 1.2 Thought, Feeling,& Response.

       Emotion governs all our behaviour: driving our unconscious reactions,
       but also determining what becomes conscious.Emotion feeds into, shapes
       and controls our conscious thought(Du Plessis, 2005, Pg4).

It is important to introduce and outline some of the current social and scientific theories
that are influencing thought in the advertising industry today.The overall aim of this
chapter is to examine how old and new theories can potentially explain why people think
and respond in the way they do.In particular, I consider the work of Daniel Kahneman,
and Mark Earls, who focus on emotional response and social influences on our
behaviour.What can advertising agencies actively apply to their digital campaign
strategies?

Kahnemanframes the way we think into two different systems.System 1 (emotional
brain), which is fast, automatic, rooted in habit and heuristics and requires little
effort.Research reveals this as our dominating decision-making behaviour.However, we
can and do engage in system 2 (rational brain), which is much slower, conscious, usually
verbal, and does require effort.Earls explainsKahneman’s work by saying that we can
think if we really have to but mostly we’ll do anything we can to avoid it, and ‘thinking is
to humans as swimming is to cats’(Earls, 2010).

Usually we manage with system 1 and therefore rarely bother with system 2.The result:
we think much less than we like to think we do!Sarah Carter, Strategy Director at DDB
explains that the order in which our brains react is usually

       ‘Feel – Do –Think,’ not ‘Think – Feel – Do.’ So if we think at all about anything –
       and remember that we often don’t – we are more often than not merely post-
       rationalizing what we have already decided via System 1’ (DDB, 2011, pg3).

Carter goes on to explain that since we are so good at post-rationalizing ‘we humans are
not rational creatures but rationalizing creatures’ (DDB, 2011, pg3).

We are a lot more social than we think and have evolved to be brilliant copiers of other
people (Earls, 2009).This supports Carters view, and although we like to think we are
free-thinking and independent people, we instead avoid thinking for ourselves at all
costs, and follow what is going on around us because it’s easy and likely sustains group
harmony(DDB, 2011).Naturally, we are more inclined to form groups because they offer
us protection, support and strength in numbers.Groups also enable us to solve problems
and face challenges, and the harmony we seek from these groups offers us the ability to
belong.This would explain why we are so influenced by what is going on around us and
why we are ‘more likely to adjust our behaviour based on what we are seeing, hearing,
and learning from the people who are close to us’ (Goodson, 2012, pg59).It will be
interesting to see whether the successful campaigns analysed in section twogot this
social aspect correct, rather than thinking on an individual scale, whether it was
intuitively planned or not.

Nicholas Christakis a renowned scientist, expands on the work of Earls, and explains that
when we have emotions, we are compelled to show them, which then enables people to
see them, process them, and then react by copying them, and this suggests how
emotional contagion takes place in human populations (Christakis, 2010).




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Figure 1: Illustrates Nicholas Christakis’ experiments, which explores how human
emotions are spread across physical social networks.



He questions if human emotion can be passed on in a much more sustained way across
time and involve large numbers of people?He continues to suggest how we share and
network socially, is actually a part of our genetics.For example some people have larger
networks because they introduce friends to other friends, and some people have smaller
networks because they tend to keep friends separate.The structure of the network
depends on the whole and not just the sum of its parts.It is how it is arranged.In figure
1 you can see how happiness (yellow) and sadness (blue) is spread contagiously
throughout networks.This immediately asks the question – are our digital networks
affected in the same way?Christakis continues to explain; ‘We form social networks
because the benefits of a connected life outweigh the costs’(Christakis, 2010).

He also describes how the spread of good and valuable things are required to nourish
and sustain social networks.If someone is violent or commits an unacceptable act then
we tend to cut ties with them.But does this happen in the digital space?Is it this
emotional contagion that affects the way a campaign can accumulate strength and even
change shape?Christakis concludes that positive and good emotions rely on social
networks, such as love and happiness.Brands haven’t quite realised the power of social
networks, and the strength they have for emotion overall, because otherwisethey would
spend more time nourishing and sustaining them because they are fundamentally
related to goodness(Christakis, 2010).

To understand cultural movements, we need to understand the people who start them,
join them and ultimately push them forward to change the world around us.Sociologist
Neil Smelser in Goodson’s book Uprising theorises that movements:

       comeabout for a combination of reasons, starting with social strain.In the most
       extreme cases this strain may take the form of oppression, which in turn can
       spark revolutionary uprisings…today’s mini-movements are more often a
       response to a sense of dissatisfaction, restlessness, and concerns about the
       future(Goodson, 2012 Pg29).




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So what can be learnt?We are more social than we think, and businesses that think they
are right to target consumers on an individual basis, with a targeted personal message,
should reconsider.Earls even goes as far as to suggest that it is a near impossible
task.Getting people to care about something they don’t know is very difficult, but when
we see, hear and learn about things around us we are more likely to act and this is
where marketers have the opportunity to receive a response.However Goodson
concludes this, looking to the future, that movements have the potential to
becomepersonalised, which could be the way to have the best of both worlds (Goodson,
2012).I would also argue a key point for the advertising industry to learn here is that
emotion clearly leads to motivation, and this would explain why creating participatory
movements through social media is successful.

The exchange of Tweets shown in Figure 2 sums up my chapter perfectly; emotions are
contagious, they motivate the spread of information and shape how social networks are
arranged.Good and valuable things nourish social networks and so people will use
content to do this.What brands need to do is provide this content and at the same time
relieve social strain.




Figure 2: A recent Twitter conversation with Earls (2012), who points out what is crucial
about advertising communications and people.




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Part Two:Case Study 1.

Kony 2012, Invisible Children

Part Two aims to support and provide context for what has been explored in Part
One.Continuing on from a review of digital as a platform and how we think, behave and
respond, this section applies theory to digital campaign results to offer practical advice
for the advertising industry.




Figure 3:Propaganda-style posters created as part of the kits for April 20th ‘cover the
night’; part of the campaign to make Kony famous in a bad way.

Over the past 9 years, Invisible Children, a small charitable organisation has been
working to find ways to grab the attention of policy makers worldwide, and form a
movement to take action to arrest Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in
Uganda.The highly emotive video Kony 2012went viral, it was watched globally with
enormous support.However,after mass debate surrounding the accuracy of the video’s
information, people responded with indifference.The campaign’s foundations were built
on emotion, and as a result experienced a dramatic turnaround in response and the
campaign fell flat on its face when the emotions became negative.

So how did the campaign get so big so quickly?They had been working for a good
number of years on Kony’s arrest; it just so happened that Kony 2012 ‘caught
fire’.Whilst visiting M&C Saatchi (2012) and speaking to Dusan Hamlin (joint CEO) he
mentioned how the best campaigns are rarely the first idea to be seeded.Infact it is often
highly recommended and practisedto ‘seed’ many small ideas in the hope that one will
catch on.Francis Bea who contributed to Digital Trendswrites how Invisible Children had
realised the potential of the campaign going viral, and reportedthat a Reddit moderator
discovered approximately 300 submissions of the video from various spam accounts
around one month before the film went viral(Digital Trends, 2012).What is interesting to
question is; what are the influences on our decision-making process that enable videos
like these to go viral?



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I would propose that a delicate combination of all theory examined in the previous
chapter contributes to this process and as Bea continues to suggest

       it’s clear that social media can be as potent for spreading opinions as for spreading
       information…We’re so inundated with information from differing sources that our
       opinions become highly contingent on what our friends or influencers say’ (Digital
       trends, 2012).

In our quick turnaround of news and real-time reporting, trusting our peers’ opinion is
not only easy, but also makes sense.It poses an opportunity for us to opt out of using
our rational thinking -system 2.Information couldtherefore spread throughout a network
quite successfully until it meets quite a strong opposing opinion, at which point it will
change direction or shape.As Christakis mentioned, social networks depend on being
nourished with positive emotions, and Kony did emerge with notions of sensationalism
(Emergingcritic, 2009).

At a staggering 30-minutes long, thevideo managed to maintain the engagement of
over104 million people.So what was it doing right?What struck me most about the
campaign was the quality of the video produced, the way the story was told and the
organisation that formed part of the message; they had dates, an outcome and even kits
to do so with (See figure 3).What is important overall is how the message is
delivered.The way the story is told, how it is directed using imagery, music and even the
tone of voice.These elicit our emotional response and impacts how the message is
received and remembered, and will impact how it is recalled if we see it again.We lay
down our memories with emotions tagged to them (Cunniffe, 2011) and (Du Plessis,
2005).In my opinion, Invisible Children delivered on these areas so well, that I think
they consciously made those decisions on their execution.The compromise in presenting
a slick production that would elicit emotion was the cost of losing their authenticity and
passion about the cause as a grassroots movement, through amateur messaging.

Kuntsman states that by telling the stories of the silenced and overlooked enabled the
lives of these victims to be spoken of as both a personal and a global plea.The video was
a very personal story introducing Jason, his son and their Ugandan friend Jacob.The
highly emotional video aimed to stir feelings of sadness, sympathy, disgust and even
horror in an audience who is not there and unaware of the realities of this regime.An
audience who it is hoped will take some responsibility and be incited into action onboth
local and global levels(Karatzogianni & Kuntsman 2012).

Kony 2012was an inspiring and motivating movement that captured people’s imagination
due to a sense of initial trust, and possibility.It was a movementthat offered small
tangible actionsfor everyone who were emotionally urged into pasting up posters,
wearing bracelets and sharing the video to make Kony infamous.It was easy to get
involved.Cunniffe (2012) also suggested a reason for motivation is pro-social
behaviour.This can be explained when a person voluntarily acts selflessly to help others,
and it is mainly the consequence of their action (not their motivation) and can include
behaviours such as sharing, rescuing, comforting, and helping (Knickerbocker, n.d).

When interviewing Hirst, he mentioned also how we are conditioned, like Kahneman
suggests, to think fast and ‘shout fire’ in order to ensure the survival of the rest of our
group, which is an example of prosocial behaviour.Kony 2012 could have provoked this
instinctivebehaviour by getting us to empathise with Jacob and his friends, feel concern



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for the welfare of the group and cooperate by digitally ‘shouting fire’ and sharing the
video with our friends.It adds to our self-representation on social networks such as
Facebook by projecting a notion of prosociality as part of our identity.This ultimately
shows ourselves as caring people aware of what’s going on around us with a desire to
protect others in danger (Hirst, 2012a).

Our choices are affected all the time.There is no such thing as a nudgeless choice.Our
irrational thinking happens when we see the benefits now, and the costs later.At the
time, it clearly seemed far more worthwhile for people to share, than not to.The
unknown cost later, was that the information sharedsurfaced as inaccurate (Thaler and
Sunstein, 2008).

Also interesting to note, while not yet proven is the power of oxytocin in marketing.Dr
Paul Zak calls it the ‘moral molecule’- the chemical that makes us good (Zak, 2012) and
could explain why humans are capable of being both compassionate and violent.Oxytocin
acts emotionally and even in our everyday lives can create feelings of trust, empathy,
and a sense of deep intimate bonding.Zak noticed in experiments at emotional events
such as weddings, high levels of oxytocin were released, which resulted in a stronger
bond between guests.

This suggests that an event, such as watching the Kony video alone, which speaks on a
peer-to-peer level could create empathy and cause the release of oxytocin, ‘which in its
turn increases the levels of trust leading to further empathy building behaviour’
(Adliterate, 2012).Zak et al(2012) have already shown that giving oxytocin to people
who are then exposed to fundraising communications increases their average
donationover untreated people.This not only assumes that a prior release of oxytocin
could increase the impact of an advertisement, but Huntingdon also ultimately raises the
samequestion (see Pg.10); does emotion lead to action(Adliterate, 2012)?

I asked Earls whether oxytocin could have been responsible for the initial trust in the
Kony 2012 campaign?Heresponded to my tweet (see figure 4) proposing that while it
was possible, the Kony campaign was most likely just lucky.I do agree to some extent,
however I’m sure Invisible Children realised the importance of eliciting a high level of
empathy to ensure the video had maximum viral potential.




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Figure 4: A conversation with Earls and Huntingdon on Twitter about the connection
between oxytocin and the trust people initially had in the information delivered by
Invisible Children about Joseph Kony.

Websites and platforms such as YouTube could form both objects & anchors of
feelings.‘Digital culture itself can be a location for the investment of feelings such as
anxiety and hope’ (Karatzogianni & Kuntsman, 2012, Pg6).This could explain why
websites have become digital hubs, like the Kony 2012 website, where people are able
to meet others who share and support their views.People join these groups because they
are able to become more themselves.Almost immediately people are able to bond within
these groups and can create digital archives of feelings (see figure 5) and use the groups
to help define their identity through an insiders versus outsiders mentality (Goodson,
2012).




Figure 5: Images posted to the Kony 2012 website after the April 20th ‘Cover the night’
action, which illustrates the group’s investment of feelings during the event.

When analysing the Kony website for signs of naming emotions and creating anchors of
feelings, I noticed figure 6, which shows the line ‘Our Liberty Is Bound Together’ eliciting
feelings of guilt and responsibility.Invisible Children had clearly invested time in the
branding of this movement, almost taking cue from how the US government brands their
own wars.Clough in ‘Digital Cultures and The Politics of Emotion’ analyses such
government tactics and I would argue that Kony 2012 had similar aims; interested in the
protection and or liberation of victims, to brand the charity as modern, progressive, civil
and democratic.This may have been to encourage US and other world leaders to get on
board with their movement (Karatzogianni & Kuntsman 2012).



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Figure 6: The slick Kony 2012 website is one example of why Invisible Children were
criticized for focusing more attention and budget to the marketing of the charity rather
than on-the-ground change.

Clough continues to explain how this leaves us to be ‘ever engaged in alleviating the
effects of war’ and ‘endlessly moving us within an effective circuit that gives us the
sensations of being both victimizing and victimized, accusing and accused, shaming and
shamed, guilty and innocent’ (Karatzogianni & Kuntsman 2012 pg.22).




Figure 6: shows Jason Russell’s son, who appeared in the Kony video and changed the
way the message was received by the viewer.

The Kony video was very much part of its dramatic rise and fall.Some viewers were
captured by the slick emotionality of the story told, others were left skeptical and
revolted.A response to the Jezebel blog stated ‘It doesn't really present itself as being
about the children as much as it presents itself as being about the movement.They are
not the same thing and can dangerously be confused I think’ (Jezebel, 2012).Yale
Professor, Chris Blattman says ‘The movie feels like it’s about the filmmakers, not the
cause.There might be something to the argument that American teenagers are more
likely to relate to an issue through the eyes of a peer’ (Jezebel, 2012).This would back
up why the video was so popular with students aged 18, and may have been purposely
directed to speak on a peer level in order to spark action through emotion in this age
group.

As the campaign spread across Facebook and Twitter and gained copious views on
YouTube, reactions and comments began to accumulate strength and opinion, and it
surfaced that Invisible Children’s facts were not entirely accurate and their charitable
actions not so squeaky clean.Ahmed in The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2004) raises the



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insightful notion of texts having emotionality, and explores emotions as the point of
contact between the individual and the social.Kuntsman adds to this, the concept of
reverberation as opposed to representation and evaluates it as

       a concept that makes us attentive to the simultaneous presence of speed and
       stillness in online sites; to distortions, and resonance, intensification and
       dissolution in the process of moving through digital terrains…It can allow us to
       see how the movement of violent words online can intensify hatred and
       hostility’…where the power of emotions accumulate through the circulation of
       texts’(Karatzogianni & Kuntsman, 2012 pg.2).

This can be interpreted as emotionally charged comments were made; reverse emotions
were experienced such as embarrassment, disappointment, confusion and
indifference.This was a movement that was slowly unraveling in momentum, as more
informed opinions interrupted its flow.Trust and possibility turned into anger and
disillusion.Unlike conversation in the physical world, digital environments preserve and
archive thoughts and feelings.In addition because of the speed at which people
participate, comments can become difficult to delete.Something I believe is troubling our
fast and emotional response mechanisms.In today’s digital terrain, how necessary is it
for us to use system 2, to maintain our desired self-representation and nourish social
networks appropriately?

Kuntsman extends her concept of reverberation with the notion of ‘cybertouch and
affective fabrics’ and examines how some digital assets that circulate online create a
‘regime of suspicion’ where people are skeptical of digitalized evidence that is at risk of
being ‘fabricated’ and therefore fails to move, and causes annoyance or mockery instead
of compassion.She continues to explain that it is not only the digital technology itself
that causes skeptical disbelief, but also the endless versions of videos, texts and images
that are posted online.It can be hard to know what is true and real (Karatzogianni &
Kuntsman, 2012, pg3).Jenkins (2006) explains this effect by:

       The Internet has not only brought about new demands to participate but new
       demands for knowledge and information too.As we develop a participatory culture
       we also create knowledge sharing communities, where groups of people with
       similar interests are held together through the mutual production and reciprocal
       exchange of knowledge(Pg.27).

Jenkins continues to explain that more importantly they serve as places for ‘collective
discussion, negotiation and development’.Individual members in some cases are
encouraged to seek out new information for the common good.Whether this be
discussing future television series, commercial products, news, politics or even
organisations.It provokes us to ‘know what can be known’ (Jenkins 2006).

Some of the comments found in response to the Kony 2012 video, convey Jenkin’s
notion, but also show the emotionality of their texts and their indifferent response to the
inaccurate information discovered: ‘PLEASE ON NEXT VIDEO TELL HOW YOU LEARNED
THE RUSSEL EARNINGS AND THE INVISIBLE'S…EARNINGS ,TELL MORE OF COUNTRYMEN
RESPONSE’ (aggabus, 2012). Also, ‘YO NOBODY GIVES A FUCK ABOUT THIS SHIT
ANYMORE LOL!!!!!’ (Ballboy 101, 2012), and ‘I hope this Kony 2012 makes people
smarter so now they think twice before someone says there is some bad guy out there
(RagingDemon99, 2012).



                                                                                          17
As people begin to realise the exaggerated facts of the emotional campaign, opinion
reverses and becomes realigned, and in my mind acts out just like the Mexican wave; an
action that Earls highlights as an example of Herd behaviour (Earls, 2009).

Overall, what needs to be considered consciously when planning a campaign is why and
what pushes people to click ‘share’.Invisible Children’s biggest downfall was Hollywood-
polished communications, too much focus on themselves, and inaccurate information -
all unexpected ingredients of a grassroots movement, passionate about positive
change.However, it provoked an unprecedented emotional response through apersonal
story and is a good example that shows digital is not about faceless communications,
and that ultimately your main goal is to drive an action with the help of your fans that
encourage others to copy their behaviour.What it got right, that many don’t, is what
Gensemer suggests as vital is not to use‘digital as another channel for direct mail’
(Gensemer, 2012).

What follows is afinal case analysis of The Best Job In The World campaign, but I will
also draw on the successful digital campaign Obama 2008 to support my evaluation of
what can sustain action and engagement, and which strategies can elicit desirable
responses from the public.




                                                                                         18
Case Study 2: The Best Job in the World.

Named the ‘Best Marketing Campaign Ever’ (Fast Company, 2009), The Queensland
Tourist Boardcreated international awareness of the islands of the Great Barrier Reef to
global experience seekers (See figures 7 & 8).They wanted to offer something priceless;
a prize that wasn’t a prize that would capture the imagination of people around the
world, this prize was a job.A caretaker was required for the idyllic Hamilton Island
offering a rent-free luxury apartment and a salary of $80k and anyone could apply!

Figure 7 shows how the campaign started offline with worldwide classified advertising
before it went online to recruitment websites and social networks.An engaging website
was built, social networks such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter were used, as well as
online banners to build an on and offline ecology (See Figure 8).




Figure 7: The classified advertising was distributed to the 8 leading markets, whose
populations showed most potential to visit Australia.




Figure 8: The website and other Media channels used to drive traffic and awareness of
the Best Job campaign.



                                                                                        19
The rest was down to applicant video submissions and ‘fortuitous PR and word of mouth’
(Fast company, 2009).Applicants also began to initiate their own mini campaigns to gain
votes and support from friends and their friends on Facebook, creating a swarm effect on
behalf of the Queensland Tourist Board (Goodson, 2012).

The campaign quickly earned global media attention, which totalled $80 million in
value.It‘achieved stunning results, including over 34,000 video entries from applicants in
200 countries, and more than 7 million visitors to the site who generated nearly 500,000
votes’(Fast Company, 2009).So what did it do right?

Apart from being a really simple yet inspiring idea, it was apparently highly orchestrated
from the top down, because the agency had big targets to meet; global awareness on a
relatively paltry budget of less than 2 million pounds.Therefore timing was crucial, and
so were structured phases of participation.It was important to launch the campaign
before the Obama inauguration to avoid getting lost, but to also ride off the film release
Australia.They needed, just like the Obama campaign itself, to be agile and able to alter
their plans whenever opportunities arose (Wanderlust, 2009).The idea was proactive,
valuable, and offered water-cooler conversations on and offline.The initial classified
advertising was unexpected and refreshing and is a perfect example of how a brand can
allowthe consumer to effectively become the story and tell it on their behalf.This created
authentic messaging and trust,as it was told on a peer-to-peer level.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb might suggest that the campaign’s success was down to luck
rather than planned and pre-meditated skill.He coined the Black Swan theory, which
proposes that random events that are a surprise to the observer can produce huge and
unexpected results, which are often inappropriately rationalised with hindsight.This
would pose that Nitro had no way of knowing that the campaign would be a success and
that a formula for such large impacts are impossible (Taleb, 2012).Other cultural ‘Black
Swans’ include the computer, religion, and Harry Potter.This theory explains the need to
‘seed’ content due to the unpredictable nature of what can go viral.

Neil Mortensonet al who contributed to IPA@ConnectedUK (2012) explains that we not
only want to be heard by brands but by our peers too, and is the reason why audiences
continue to evolve around conversation and sharing.When the public form part of the
brand’s story it is a way for others to get closer to the action using ‘friendly technology’
such as social networks.The audience’s voice through votes and conversation enable
them to be ‘acknowledged and accepted’ as well as become ‘part of the messaging’
(Infovision, 2012).

Best Job In The World offered different types of action in the form of creating content
through video applications, votes and comments, which are important when speaking to
large audiences.Gensemer did exactly the same with the Obama campaign and admits
that at one time he had 300 different messages going out to different states in the U.S.
Some of the things he mentions that are key are: audience segmentation, finding timely
opportunities to engage through different types of action (E.g.votes or donations),built
around people’s interests, and what people around them are doing.This supports what
Earls suggested previously in Figure 2 (Gensemer, 2012).

Figure 9 shows a wonderful example of Blue State Digital acting on timely opportunities
to use super fans actions to encourage others of similar interests to mimicits behaviour,
which was possible through audience database segmentation.



                                                                                           20
Figure 9: Shows replicated Obama logos across barns in rural states.

The Obama campaign enlisted a group of ‘watchdogs’ to report any negative or wrong
news to enable BSD to react to this as soon as possible to knock any negativity on the
head.In my view this makes alliances with super fans and thanks them, it enables the
fan to feel closer to the action and build advocates who can help pass on positive
feelings throughout the networks (Gensemer, 2012).

However, The Best Job In The Worlddid experience a minor setback, when they too
began to seed fake material.A video story about a woman, who tattooed an
advertisement on her arm for the Great Barrier Reef,was posted.Agency Cummins Nitro
had the intention of hinting to viewers the kinds of people and applications they were
hoping for.But they were soon found out and people began to complain.The second
audience complaint came when they found out how Ben Southall (the winner) had been
so busy keeping up a ‘wish you were here’ image through blogging, tweeting and
interviews, it left him exhausted and unable to relax and explore the island as initially
advertised (Telegraph, 2012).The lesson here is transparency, and delivering what you
advertised.Ruin the investment of feelings that people put into your idea, and a like-
minded group has the power to bring yourcampaign crashing down.

But why were people attracted to the idea of the campaign in the first
place?Cunniffe(2012), proposed self-schemas as one possible reason; the tourism board
had specifically identified ‘experience seekers’ as their target audience, and through a
psychological belief or idea about oneselfschemas can lead to a self-perpetuating
bias.They are used to guide relevant information processing towards the self, and are
important to a person’s overall self-concept.The campaign would have appealed to
people who had self-schemas similar to experience seeking, and they may even
haveapplied out of expectation than desire (Wilderdom, 2003).

The innovation of digital as a platformhas allowed the co-creation of content by fans and
followers and has facilitated story telling on the brands behalf.The Best Job in The World
campaign had two phases – the initial video applications and Ben’s final diaries.Not only
were the videos on the level of peer recommendations, offering positive reasons to



                                                                                         21
spend time on the island, they had relevant and engaging content for other people in the
group with experience seeking self-schemas too.This offers a reason as to why people
continued to engage in the campaign after the position had been filled.

The following can be deduced from the Best Job in the World campaign: when
communicating with large audiences; it is important to segment them into perhaps
location and interests, and usemultiple messaging to allow different actions within
smaller groups.The campaign also demonstrated the ability to have greater amounts of
control through structured participation in social media.We have also seen success when
including audiences as part of the messaging, due to a desire to be acknowledged and
accepted.The power of PRcan often be far more valuable than a full-time dedicated
community manager particularly with small budgets to spend.

What follows this is a final and overall conclusion to all of my research on the digital
medium, our social behaviour, response mechanisms and campaign analysis.




                                                                                           22
Conclusion:

The subject of my thesis; how the public respond to digital campaigns, is a relatively
new one for the advertising industry. Therefore, I felt it was important to look at both
concrete theory and new thinking, as a way of making connections and progress, to offer
something credible and provoking for the advertising industry to learn from.

When interviewing Hirst, he confirmed that the government were very much attempting
to implement new theory into their communications.In his opinion, a vast majority of the
commercial industry is reading the books and isaware of what could be improved, but
has not yet integrated theseideas into their brand strategiesandplanning (Hirst, 2012b).I
do believe that planners will need to consciously consider aspects of my thesis when
planning campaigns in order to use the digital medium to its full potential, particularly
the idea that emotions lead to action, as well as our need to spread positive emotions
and content.Audiences will facilitate the spread of a campaign positively in order to
nourish and sustain their networks, which is good news for the advertising industry and
illustrates the importance of emotion in social media.

The future of commercial digital communications, in my opinion, certainly lies around
emotion, people, places and big passionate ideas, but these must be kept authentic and
most importantlyof all, socially interactive and transparent.Kony 2012and The Best Job
in The World campaigns were successful in that they had a social perspective; they
weren’t faceless direct marketing communications.They both spoke on a peer-to-peer
level and, whether intuitive or not, their producers ‘got’ social media.It is hard to make
people really care and after that take action, but I can’t help questionat what point will
people begin to tire of it?I think future movements which emulate the style of the Kony
2012 campaign are going to have to be more fun and imaginative, because as
movement marketing becomes more widely used, not only will people become more
sceptical over footage they will also become more selective in how and what they
participate in.

Digital architectures become highly emotionally charged sites of expression, as they
preserve the feelings and emotions of people’s opinions and actions.Kony 2012 and The
Best Job in The World have taught us that audiences look for co-collaboration and
platforms with tools that encourage the replication of behaviours to express
themselves.Advertisers need to be aware of this and should capitalise on this energy
with segmented phases of action to channel emotions appropriately and positively.We
cannot change the way the medium moves or becomes archived, which makes timing
and content strategies important as ever.This is why digital and the potential for mass
scale interaction is so much more powerful than TV, movements can change history.I
don’t think we will be able to change our fast emotional thinking, but I do think we are
learning from our mistakes, and becoming more cautious of what we do not fully
understand.As digital sites become hubs of emotion, I begin to question if engagement
leads to happy audiences?But what if brands were to make people happy?Would this
earn them further engagement?

It’s time to forget the word ‘individual’ and replace this with ‘personal’.I can only guess
the structure of our digital networks are a macrocosm of our physical social
networks.Will our social networks become more niche and intimate as audiences are
segmented for targeted actions and opinions or will the future of personalised
movements mean they just feel more intimate?



                                                                                              23
So what else can the advertising industry learn?The web is a social revolution that is
enabling ideas to take shape and spread.It’s a wonderful time for human creativity and
advertisers should embrace this potential.Don’t be foolish enough to fake content, lie or
be out-of-date, biased or offensive, the truth should be more interesting.Both Kony 2012
and The Best Job in The World made a least one of these mistakes.We live in a culture
now where ‘you are what you share’.Be social on and offline, the audience is taking to
the stage, as everyone has the ability to participate and access to the web.Timing is
more crucial than ever, as campaigns live and breathe in real-time, everyone can speak
at once and the sheer volume of information is becoming confusing.It isn’t really a
surprise that random ideas take-off.Whether Kony 2012 and The Best Job in The World
were Black Swansor not, the unexpected is refreshing and unusual and suggest that
there is no generic formula for success.When planning a digital campaign, consider the
implications of the emotion it will elicit, curate an experience around this and personalise
call-to-action messaging, to ensure structured and desirable responses.




                                                                                          24
Picture Credits:

Figure 1:Pg.9Nicholas Christakis, diagram of emotional contagion theory. Screen grab [video online]

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U-tOghblfE

Figure 2: Pg.11 Kony 2012 posters

Source: http://yinnyang.co.uk/2012/03/kony-2012/kony-2012/

Figure 3: Pg. 13 Screen grab of my Twitter feed

Source: https://twitter.com/sarahgenkihai

Figure 4: Pg. 14 Screen grab of the Kony 2012 website

Source: www.kony2012.com

Figure 5: Pg. xx Shows the photos uploaded to the Kony 2012 website for ‘Cover the Night’.

Source: http://ctn.kony2012.com/

Figure 6: Pg.14 Image of Jason Russel’s son who appeared in Kony 2012 video

Source: http://blogs.channel4.com/world-news-blog/kony-2012-inaccuracies-aside-this-is-how-to-spread-
message/20728

Figure 7: Pg. 18 shows the classified newspaper advertisement for Best Job in the World campaign.

Source: http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/tourism_queensland_best_job_in_the_world?size=_original

Figure 8: Pg. 18 shows the media channels used inBest Job in World campaign

Source: http://www.casestudiesonline.com/bestjob

Figure 9: Pg. 18 Shows screen grab [video online] the replication of the Obama logo across barns in rural states

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZTrcipW8Sk



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                                                                                                                26
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Social Networks:

aggabus, (2012) Kony 2012. YouTube [online] Available from http://www.youtube.com/> (Accessed August
2012).




                                                                                                               27
Ballboy 101, (2012) Kony 2012. YouTube [online] Available from http://www.youtube.com/> (Accessed August
2012).

RagingDemon99, (2012) Kony 2012 YouTube [online] Available from<http://www.youtube.com/> (Accessed
August 2012).

Personal Communication:
                                                                                                        th
    1.   Dr Paul Springer, Head of Research at Bucks New University, [conversation] ‘Thesis ideas’ 4 May,
         2012.
    2.   Brookes,S. sarah.brookes@yahoo.com (2012) MA Creative Planning thesis chat [Email] message to
                                                                                                                  th
         Cunniffe, N. Neasa.cunniffe@gmail.com received Tuesday June 10 2012 at 4.42pm Accessed June 10
         2012.
                                                                                                     th
    3.   Nick Hirst, Associate Planning Director, Dare, [Interview] ‘Emotion in the digital space’ 19 June 2012b.
    4.   Dusan Hamlin (joint CEO), M&C Saatchi, [Agency visit] March, 2012.
                                                                       th
    5.   Mark Earls, author and strategy consultant, [Twitter] August 8 2012 Available
         at:https://twitter.com/sarahgenkihai




                                                                                                                 28

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Sarah Brookes MA Thesis

  • 1. What Can The Advertising Industry Learn From How The Public React To Digital Campaigns? MA Advertising Sarah Brookes September 2012 Top Copy 1
  • 2. 815268 Please mark according to Guidelines http://bucks.ac.uk/registrydocs/ aq_GDMarkSpLD_Oct07.pdf Bucks New University Faculty Design, Media & Management MA Advertising What Can The Advertising Industry Learn From How The Public React To Digital Campaigns? Sarah Brookes ID: 21200131 Dr Ray Batchelor September 2012 Word count: 7,889 Module Code: AD705 2
  • 3. Contents: Introduction. Pg. 4 Part One: 1.1Digital is Social. Pg. 6 1.2Thought, Feelings, and Response Pg. 9 Part Two: Case Studies 2.1 Kony 2012 Pg. 12 2.2 The Best Job In the World Pg. 19 Conclusion. Pg. 23 Picture Credits Pg. 25 Bibliography Pg. 25 3
  • 4. Introduction: Emotion is critical to advertising because it is critical to all human thought (DuPlessis 2005, Pg.Xii). Invisible Children’s recent Kony 2012 charity campaign was a 30-minute video presented via social media,about Joseph Kony,leader of the LRA,whoallegedly used violence and intimidation to recruit child soldiers and sex slaves for his military rebel group. The success of this campaign and thesubsequent backlash against it is the reason that I am writing this thesis.Itis what motivated me to initiate a deeper investigation into the audience’s response to online campaigns.I want to explore the positive and negative aspects of Invisible Children’s approach, how experience affects emotional response, and analyse other campaigns (whether successful or disastrous), to gather insight into what provokes participation online and conclude fundamentally what the advertising industry can learn from this. Both the positive and negative response to the Kony 2012 video pushed me to question why this happened, and if other unsuccessfulcampaignshad made similar mistakes?What can be learnt from the campaigns that got it right?Is there a generic formula for success,and what can the advertising industry learn about communicating in a fast and uncontrollable medium?How important is the role of emotion in social media, and how much do we need to consciously consider these aspects when planning a campaign? These questions are essential to answer because the digital space is expanding rapidly.Digital marketing has the fastest growth area that we have ever seen, and competes for a market share of 1 trillion dollars according to WPP(Ryan and Jones 2011).However, these changes are also naturally having an effect on our behaviours and lifestyle.As the digital space becomes our second home how do we experience digital as architecture?How does it affect response in a medium that is both still and moving?How does group action affect the public’s response and a campaigns fate, as it unfolds online,often with little commercial control?This offers the second reason to this investigation’s relevance; understanding the way we receive and respond in cyberspace will help us know if it is possible toproduce bettermarketing campaigns, particularly in our real-time culture, where the fight for consumer engagement toughens.Since reading Nick Hirst’s essay on Experience Architecture and The Future of Planning, I have begun to question further the relevance of experience within the digital medium and what contribution it can make to advertising campaigns (Hirst, 2012a). As part of my research it will be essential to analyse human thought processes andbehaviours; such as the work on Herd by Mark Earls(2009), and how this may have an affect on sharing and the circulation of content.As advertising roots itself in our culture, it will also be crucial to consider campaign timing in terms of what else is going on in the audience’s lives. My thesiswill provide anyone interested in the digital and social arena for marketing purposes with a critical analysis of what can be learnt from some of the best and less successful campaigns.I will map out my argument by analysing and applying theories currently influencing industry today, which I have gathered from key books, industry opinion and articles circulating online.I will also examine the campaigns in detail to provide insight, which can be applied to the theory gathered.I will conclude my 4
  • 5. argument with some practical advice and innovative solutions for the advertising industry. What is essential to note is that these campaigns aren’t just digital they are also social, which introduces the reason for my first chapter.It is vital to assess our current digital cultures to help us understand and have clarity on where to go next.What follows this is an introduction into where we are with digital, and current attitudes and behaviours so that you may better understand why certain trends are emerging.I will go on to explain current social theories of behaviour in an attempt to understand why people behave the way they do. Part two of this thesis analyses two case studies, each of which illustrates key aspects of digital campaigns.Kony 2012is a fascinating case, and I’m reviewing it because it was a campaign that experienced both huge success and failure and I have never known another campaign like it.I will also examineThe Best Job in The World campaign,because it was a superb idea, successful across the globe, and won industry awards. 5
  • 6. Part One: 1.1 Digital Is Social Digital is a really interesting medium, and it has grown tremendously fast, shifting notions of its own possibilities as well as that of people’s social behaviours too.It has taught us more about us as human beings and has demonstrated just how important belonging within a group is.‘Berners-Lee’s creation was fuelled by a highly personal vision of the web as a powerful force for social change and individual creativity’ (W3, 1999).Web 1.0 linked web pages through hyperlinks allowing people to consume content, and today, 2.0 connects people through the creation of content (AT&T, 2008).The development of the digital landscape has been driven by people’s desire to search, browse, share, interact and review content, which gave rise to social media networks in particular.Content and conversation are the new currency, and this is changing the way commercial communicators engage with their audiences.Digital has become an exciting and powerful platform and many marketers have been attracted to it with the desire to experiment and earn vast and valuable returns on investments and, as data capture has gained in sophistication too, there has been a lot to learn.But as Damian Ryan and Calvin Jones in ‘The Best Digital Marketing Campaigns’(2011) mention,as devices develop and trends shift, we are on a constant learning curve and keeping on top of everything in digital is difficult.However, as we continue to make more social connections and increasingly go mobile with 4G there is even more change to come, and this comment from digital agency Dare conveys the implications: The Internet is becoming flatter, deeper and quicker.It’s reaching more people, on more occasions, on more devices, more speedily.Brands need to prepare for that future.Specifically, they need to ready themselves for an Internet that no longer lives on a desk and that is no longer run by institutions.Prepare for people and places (Digital Britain, 2012, Pg174). As digital enables deeper social interactions and new behaviours form, does this progression at such speed mean we need to continue experimenting?Should we have a review into what exactly is forming, and what the behavioural implications are and why?According to Dare’s report Digital Britain: Where all the new devices come together is where the new behaviours are emerging and arguably where some of the most important insights about the way people live through technology are today.This is where marketers need to be looking in greater detail, because understanding this can surely unlock a large commercial advantage (2012,Pg.166). Our needs and desires haven’t changed, they have just found new environments, and through digital they have become more evident and intense as the web has allowed our actions to gain pace much more quickly, and subsequently this leads to further strength.Over the fence conversations are now across the globe conversations.People have always started movements, but a profound change is underway and more people than ever are harnessing the web to band together around a shared passion or mission and they are doing so daily.We are joining forces to rebuild communities, overthrow politicians, rescue the rainforest and change institutions, and with facebook in particular, if you can think of a cause or a passion or even just a hobby, chances are you will finda group of people forming a community, having a conversation, sharing advice and rallying around big ideas.Today it is often done via the web, and begins to explain why 6
  • 7. movement marketing could be the way forward.The trick for brands will be keeping them spontaneous and authentic (Goodson, 2012). Goodson in his book Uprisingalso agrees with author Clay Shirky, who observes that ‘this confluence of new communications technology with a growing desire to engage and make a statement is resulting in the most radical spread of expressive capability in human history’(2012, pg18).But as brands hand over the power to the consumer in order to gain powerful stories and stronger relationships, audiences begin to have their own demands.Expectations form and as brands demand loyalty, consumers demand trust.This is where I would argue that digital has far stronger emotional implications than other media. The Internet, in my mind, is essentially a new form of architecture.It is a space, which just like buildings in the real world; provide a platform for experiences that form both an object and anchor for feelings.Digital as a culture invites an investment of feelings through interaction and today the generation who have never known an existence without digital are obsessed with recording, storing, sharing and preserving the emotionality of the everyday, which has begun to live a life of its own online.We start to observe the circulation of affect as emotions work as a form of capital, and can accumulate strength.Social networks in particular, such as Facebook with its Timeline feature, become repositories of our past (Karatzogianni and Kuntsman, 2012). Kuntsmanin his recent book Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotionsays: Thinking about feelings and emotions as they become digital archives, once vibrant but now ‘saved as’, seemingly still but always open to (re) emergence…call our attention to the work of emotion as they move. (Karatzogianni and Kuntsman, 2012 Pg7). Exploring further, I notice how emotions can accumulate strength through postings of comments as they move and spread between people’s ideas, subjects and opinions.As ideas are posted and shared between friends and people outside of networks, invites us to think about how structures of feelings are shaped and re-shaped in digital environments.Our attention to movement and circulation allows us to consider change or the persistence of emotions such as paranoia, compassion, or indifference (Karatzogianni and Kuntsman, 2012).We will see examples of this in section two - Kony 2012 in particular. When interviewed, NeasaCunniffe, Senior Planner at RKCR / Y&Rmentioned‘I think emotion in the online world is very pertinent too, as very few brands are nailing it at the moment – utility yes, entertainment yes – but emotional connection in the way a great TV Ad does it?That’s something which hasn’t been cracked yet by most’(Cunniffe, 2012). However, this is not always true.In some cases digital campaigns have the potential to elicit stronger emotions than TV because good campaigns rarely just present an emotion like TV advertisements do, to family-sized groups of people, they provoke and allow an interaction on a mass scale.The implication here is the movement and accumulation of emotion and this is why I believe digital is so powerful(discussed later in case study 1).When an idea catches fire there can be little to stop it.Shirky in ‘Here Comes Everybody’ explains this ‘as more people adapt simple social tools, and as those tools allow increasingly rapid communication, the speed of group action also increases, and just as more is different, faster is different’ (2009, Pg161). 7
  • 8. So, the digital route, which has completely surpassed our expectations; is fast, thrives socially, and provides the potential for mass awareness through participation, spread through conversation and ideas.However, I believe the advertising industry should be aware of how sharing is motivated by feelings and emotion and how the digital space invites an investment of these feelings.The speed and ability for everyone to join in a conversation enablethese emotions to accumulate strength through movement, which can have a huge impact on the shape and direction of a campaign.Also to learn is the power of movements, and how the action could provide an answer to the future of marketing. So what leads to action?Next I consider our thought processes, social interaction and how this affects our networks and what provokes people to participate. 8
  • 9. Part One: 1.2 Thought, Feeling,& Response. Emotion governs all our behaviour: driving our unconscious reactions, but also determining what becomes conscious.Emotion feeds into, shapes and controls our conscious thought(Du Plessis, 2005, Pg4). It is important to introduce and outline some of the current social and scientific theories that are influencing thought in the advertising industry today.The overall aim of this chapter is to examine how old and new theories can potentially explain why people think and respond in the way they do.In particular, I consider the work of Daniel Kahneman, and Mark Earls, who focus on emotional response and social influences on our behaviour.What can advertising agencies actively apply to their digital campaign strategies? Kahnemanframes the way we think into two different systems.System 1 (emotional brain), which is fast, automatic, rooted in habit and heuristics and requires little effort.Research reveals this as our dominating decision-making behaviour.However, we can and do engage in system 2 (rational brain), which is much slower, conscious, usually verbal, and does require effort.Earls explainsKahneman’s work by saying that we can think if we really have to but mostly we’ll do anything we can to avoid it, and ‘thinking is to humans as swimming is to cats’(Earls, 2010). Usually we manage with system 1 and therefore rarely bother with system 2.The result: we think much less than we like to think we do!Sarah Carter, Strategy Director at DDB explains that the order in which our brains react is usually ‘Feel – Do –Think,’ not ‘Think – Feel – Do.’ So if we think at all about anything – and remember that we often don’t – we are more often than not merely post- rationalizing what we have already decided via System 1’ (DDB, 2011, pg3). Carter goes on to explain that since we are so good at post-rationalizing ‘we humans are not rational creatures but rationalizing creatures’ (DDB, 2011, pg3). We are a lot more social than we think and have evolved to be brilliant copiers of other people (Earls, 2009).This supports Carters view, and although we like to think we are free-thinking and independent people, we instead avoid thinking for ourselves at all costs, and follow what is going on around us because it’s easy and likely sustains group harmony(DDB, 2011).Naturally, we are more inclined to form groups because they offer us protection, support and strength in numbers.Groups also enable us to solve problems and face challenges, and the harmony we seek from these groups offers us the ability to belong.This would explain why we are so influenced by what is going on around us and why we are ‘more likely to adjust our behaviour based on what we are seeing, hearing, and learning from the people who are close to us’ (Goodson, 2012, pg59).It will be interesting to see whether the successful campaigns analysed in section twogot this social aspect correct, rather than thinking on an individual scale, whether it was intuitively planned or not. Nicholas Christakis a renowned scientist, expands on the work of Earls, and explains that when we have emotions, we are compelled to show them, which then enables people to see them, process them, and then react by copying them, and this suggests how emotional contagion takes place in human populations (Christakis, 2010). 9
  • 10. Figure 1: Illustrates Nicholas Christakis’ experiments, which explores how human emotions are spread across physical social networks. He questions if human emotion can be passed on in a much more sustained way across time and involve large numbers of people?He continues to suggest how we share and network socially, is actually a part of our genetics.For example some people have larger networks because they introduce friends to other friends, and some people have smaller networks because they tend to keep friends separate.The structure of the network depends on the whole and not just the sum of its parts.It is how it is arranged.In figure 1 you can see how happiness (yellow) and sadness (blue) is spread contagiously throughout networks.This immediately asks the question – are our digital networks affected in the same way?Christakis continues to explain; ‘We form social networks because the benefits of a connected life outweigh the costs’(Christakis, 2010). He also describes how the spread of good and valuable things are required to nourish and sustain social networks.If someone is violent or commits an unacceptable act then we tend to cut ties with them.But does this happen in the digital space?Is it this emotional contagion that affects the way a campaign can accumulate strength and even change shape?Christakis concludes that positive and good emotions rely on social networks, such as love and happiness.Brands haven’t quite realised the power of social networks, and the strength they have for emotion overall, because otherwisethey would spend more time nourishing and sustaining them because they are fundamentally related to goodness(Christakis, 2010). To understand cultural movements, we need to understand the people who start them, join them and ultimately push them forward to change the world around us.Sociologist Neil Smelser in Goodson’s book Uprising theorises that movements: comeabout for a combination of reasons, starting with social strain.In the most extreme cases this strain may take the form of oppression, which in turn can spark revolutionary uprisings…today’s mini-movements are more often a response to a sense of dissatisfaction, restlessness, and concerns about the future(Goodson, 2012 Pg29). 10
  • 11. So what can be learnt?We are more social than we think, and businesses that think they are right to target consumers on an individual basis, with a targeted personal message, should reconsider.Earls even goes as far as to suggest that it is a near impossible task.Getting people to care about something they don’t know is very difficult, but when we see, hear and learn about things around us we are more likely to act and this is where marketers have the opportunity to receive a response.However Goodson concludes this, looking to the future, that movements have the potential to becomepersonalised, which could be the way to have the best of both worlds (Goodson, 2012).I would also argue a key point for the advertising industry to learn here is that emotion clearly leads to motivation, and this would explain why creating participatory movements through social media is successful. The exchange of Tweets shown in Figure 2 sums up my chapter perfectly; emotions are contagious, they motivate the spread of information and shape how social networks are arranged.Good and valuable things nourish social networks and so people will use content to do this.What brands need to do is provide this content and at the same time relieve social strain. Figure 2: A recent Twitter conversation with Earls (2012), who points out what is crucial about advertising communications and people. 11
  • 12. Part Two:Case Study 1. Kony 2012, Invisible Children Part Two aims to support and provide context for what has been explored in Part One.Continuing on from a review of digital as a platform and how we think, behave and respond, this section applies theory to digital campaign results to offer practical advice for the advertising industry. Figure 3:Propaganda-style posters created as part of the kits for April 20th ‘cover the night’; part of the campaign to make Kony famous in a bad way. Over the past 9 years, Invisible Children, a small charitable organisation has been working to find ways to grab the attention of policy makers worldwide, and form a movement to take action to arrest Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda.The highly emotive video Kony 2012went viral, it was watched globally with enormous support.However,after mass debate surrounding the accuracy of the video’s information, people responded with indifference.The campaign’s foundations were built on emotion, and as a result experienced a dramatic turnaround in response and the campaign fell flat on its face when the emotions became negative. So how did the campaign get so big so quickly?They had been working for a good number of years on Kony’s arrest; it just so happened that Kony 2012 ‘caught fire’.Whilst visiting M&C Saatchi (2012) and speaking to Dusan Hamlin (joint CEO) he mentioned how the best campaigns are rarely the first idea to be seeded.Infact it is often highly recommended and practisedto ‘seed’ many small ideas in the hope that one will catch on.Francis Bea who contributed to Digital Trendswrites how Invisible Children had realised the potential of the campaign going viral, and reportedthat a Reddit moderator discovered approximately 300 submissions of the video from various spam accounts around one month before the film went viral(Digital Trends, 2012).What is interesting to question is; what are the influences on our decision-making process that enable videos like these to go viral? 12
  • 13. I would propose that a delicate combination of all theory examined in the previous chapter contributes to this process and as Bea continues to suggest it’s clear that social media can be as potent for spreading opinions as for spreading information…We’re so inundated with information from differing sources that our opinions become highly contingent on what our friends or influencers say’ (Digital trends, 2012). In our quick turnaround of news and real-time reporting, trusting our peers’ opinion is not only easy, but also makes sense.It poses an opportunity for us to opt out of using our rational thinking -system 2.Information couldtherefore spread throughout a network quite successfully until it meets quite a strong opposing opinion, at which point it will change direction or shape.As Christakis mentioned, social networks depend on being nourished with positive emotions, and Kony did emerge with notions of sensationalism (Emergingcritic, 2009). At a staggering 30-minutes long, thevideo managed to maintain the engagement of over104 million people.So what was it doing right?What struck me most about the campaign was the quality of the video produced, the way the story was told and the organisation that formed part of the message; they had dates, an outcome and even kits to do so with (See figure 3).What is important overall is how the message is delivered.The way the story is told, how it is directed using imagery, music and even the tone of voice.These elicit our emotional response and impacts how the message is received and remembered, and will impact how it is recalled if we see it again.We lay down our memories with emotions tagged to them (Cunniffe, 2011) and (Du Plessis, 2005).In my opinion, Invisible Children delivered on these areas so well, that I think they consciously made those decisions on their execution.The compromise in presenting a slick production that would elicit emotion was the cost of losing their authenticity and passion about the cause as a grassroots movement, through amateur messaging. Kuntsman states that by telling the stories of the silenced and overlooked enabled the lives of these victims to be spoken of as both a personal and a global plea.The video was a very personal story introducing Jason, his son and their Ugandan friend Jacob.The highly emotional video aimed to stir feelings of sadness, sympathy, disgust and even horror in an audience who is not there and unaware of the realities of this regime.An audience who it is hoped will take some responsibility and be incited into action onboth local and global levels(Karatzogianni & Kuntsman 2012). Kony 2012was an inspiring and motivating movement that captured people’s imagination due to a sense of initial trust, and possibility.It was a movementthat offered small tangible actionsfor everyone who were emotionally urged into pasting up posters, wearing bracelets and sharing the video to make Kony infamous.It was easy to get involved.Cunniffe (2012) also suggested a reason for motivation is pro-social behaviour.This can be explained when a person voluntarily acts selflessly to help others, and it is mainly the consequence of their action (not their motivation) and can include behaviours such as sharing, rescuing, comforting, and helping (Knickerbocker, n.d). When interviewing Hirst, he mentioned also how we are conditioned, like Kahneman suggests, to think fast and ‘shout fire’ in order to ensure the survival of the rest of our group, which is an example of prosocial behaviour.Kony 2012 could have provoked this instinctivebehaviour by getting us to empathise with Jacob and his friends, feel concern 13
  • 14. for the welfare of the group and cooperate by digitally ‘shouting fire’ and sharing the video with our friends.It adds to our self-representation on social networks such as Facebook by projecting a notion of prosociality as part of our identity.This ultimately shows ourselves as caring people aware of what’s going on around us with a desire to protect others in danger (Hirst, 2012a). Our choices are affected all the time.There is no such thing as a nudgeless choice.Our irrational thinking happens when we see the benefits now, and the costs later.At the time, it clearly seemed far more worthwhile for people to share, than not to.The unknown cost later, was that the information sharedsurfaced as inaccurate (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008). Also interesting to note, while not yet proven is the power of oxytocin in marketing.Dr Paul Zak calls it the ‘moral molecule’- the chemical that makes us good (Zak, 2012) and could explain why humans are capable of being both compassionate and violent.Oxytocin acts emotionally and even in our everyday lives can create feelings of trust, empathy, and a sense of deep intimate bonding.Zak noticed in experiments at emotional events such as weddings, high levels of oxytocin were released, which resulted in a stronger bond between guests. This suggests that an event, such as watching the Kony video alone, which speaks on a peer-to-peer level could create empathy and cause the release of oxytocin, ‘which in its turn increases the levels of trust leading to further empathy building behaviour’ (Adliterate, 2012).Zak et al(2012) have already shown that giving oxytocin to people who are then exposed to fundraising communications increases their average donationover untreated people.This not only assumes that a prior release of oxytocin could increase the impact of an advertisement, but Huntingdon also ultimately raises the samequestion (see Pg.10); does emotion lead to action(Adliterate, 2012)? I asked Earls whether oxytocin could have been responsible for the initial trust in the Kony 2012 campaign?Heresponded to my tweet (see figure 4) proposing that while it was possible, the Kony campaign was most likely just lucky.I do agree to some extent, however I’m sure Invisible Children realised the importance of eliciting a high level of empathy to ensure the video had maximum viral potential. 14
  • 15. Figure 4: A conversation with Earls and Huntingdon on Twitter about the connection between oxytocin and the trust people initially had in the information delivered by Invisible Children about Joseph Kony. Websites and platforms such as YouTube could form both objects & anchors of feelings.‘Digital culture itself can be a location for the investment of feelings such as anxiety and hope’ (Karatzogianni & Kuntsman, 2012, Pg6).This could explain why websites have become digital hubs, like the Kony 2012 website, where people are able to meet others who share and support their views.People join these groups because they are able to become more themselves.Almost immediately people are able to bond within these groups and can create digital archives of feelings (see figure 5) and use the groups to help define their identity through an insiders versus outsiders mentality (Goodson, 2012). Figure 5: Images posted to the Kony 2012 website after the April 20th ‘Cover the night’ action, which illustrates the group’s investment of feelings during the event. When analysing the Kony website for signs of naming emotions and creating anchors of feelings, I noticed figure 6, which shows the line ‘Our Liberty Is Bound Together’ eliciting feelings of guilt and responsibility.Invisible Children had clearly invested time in the branding of this movement, almost taking cue from how the US government brands their own wars.Clough in ‘Digital Cultures and The Politics of Emotion’ analyses such government tactics and I would argue that Kony 2012 had similar aims; interested in the protection and or liberation of victims, to brand the charity as modern, progressive, civil and democratic.This may have been to encourage US and other world leaders to get on board with their movement (Karatzogianni & Kuntsman 2012). 15
  • 16. Figure 6: The slick Kony 2012 website is one example of why Invisible Children were criticized for focusing more attention and budget to the marketing of the charity rather than on-the-ground change. Clough continues to explain how this leaves us to be ‘ever engaged in alleviating the effects of war’ and ‘endlessly moving us within an effective circuit that gives us the sensations of being both victimizing and victimized, accusing and accused, shaming and shamed, guilty and innocent’ (Karatzogianni & Kuntsman 2012 pg.22). Figure 6: shows Jason Russell’s son, who appeared in the Kony video and changed the way the message was received by the viewer. The Kony video was very much part of its dramatic rise and fall.Some viewers were captured by the slick emotionality of the story told, others were left skeptical and revolted.A response to the Jezebel blog stated ‘It doesn't really present itself as being about the children as much as it presents itself as being about the movement.They are not the same thing and can dangerously be confused I think’ (Jezebel, 2012).Yale Professor, Chris Blattman says ‘The movie feels like it’s about the filmmakers, not the cause.There might be something to the argument that American teenagers are more likely to relate to an issue through the eyes of a peer’ (Jezebel, 2012).This would back up why the video was so popular with students aged 18, and may have been purposely directed to speak on a peer level in order to spark action through emotion in this age group. As the campaign spread across Facebook and Twitter and gained copious views on YouTube, reactions and comments began to accumulate strength and opinion, and it surfaced that Invisible Children’s facts were not entirely accurate and their charitable actions not so squeaky clean.Ahmed in The Cultural Politics of Emotion (2004) raises the 16
  • 17. insightful notion of texts having emotionality, and explores emotions as the point of contact between the individual and the social.Kuntsman adds to this, the concept of reverberation as opposed to representation and evaluates it as a concept that makes us attentive to the simultaneous presence of speed and stillness in online sites; to distortions, and resonance, intensification and dissolution in the process of moving through digital terrains…It can allow us to see how the movement of violent words online can intensify hatred and hostility’…where the power of emotions accumulate through the circulation of texts’(Karatzogianni & Kuntsman, 2012 pg.2). This can be interpreted as emotionally charged comments were made; reverse emotions were experienced such as embarrassment, disappointment, confusion and indifference.This was a movement that was slowly unraveling in momentum, as more informed opinions interrupted its flow.Trust and possibility turned into anger and disillusion.Unlike conversation in the physical world, digital environments preserve and archive thoughts and feelings.In addition because of the speed at which people participate, comments can become difficult to delete.Something I believe is troubling our fast and emotional response mechanisms.In today’s digital terrain, how necessary is it for us to use system 2, to maintain our desired self-representation and nourish social networks appropriately? Kuntsman extends her concept of reverberation with the notion of ‘cybertouch and affective fabrics’ and examines how some digital assets that circulate online create a ‘regime of suspicion’ where people are skeptical of digitalized evidence that is at risk of being ‘fabricated’ and therefore fails to move, and causes annoyance or mockery instead of compassion.She continues to explain that it is not only the digital technology itself that causes skeptical disbelief, but also the endless versions of videos, texts and images that are posted online.It can be hard to know what is true and real (Karatzogianni & Kuntsman, 2012, pg3).Jenkins (2006) explains this effect by: The Internet has not only brought about new demands to participate but new demands for knowledge and information too.As we develop a participatory culture we also create knowledge sharing communities, where groups of people with similar interests are held together through the mutual production and reciprocal exchange of knowledge(Pg.27). Jenkins continues to explain that more importantly they serve as places for ‘collective discussion, negotiation and development’.Individual members in some cases are encouraged to seek out new information for the common good.Whether this be discussing future television series, commercial products, news, politics or even organisations.It provokes us to ‘know what can be known’ (Jenkins 2006). Some of the comments found in response to the Kony 2012 video, convey Jenkin’s notion, but also show the emotionality of their texts and their indifferent response to the inaccurate information discovered: ‘PLEASE ON NEXT VIDEO TELL HOW YOU LEARNED THE RUSSEL EARNINGS AND THE INVISIBLE'S…EARNINGS ,TELL MORE OF COUNTRYMEN RESPONSE’ (aggabus, 2012). Also, ‘YO NOBODY GIVES A FUCK ABOUT THIS SHIT ANYMORE LOL!!!!!’ (Ballboy 101, 2012), and ‘I hope this Kony 2012 makes people smarter so now they think twice before someone says there is some bad guy out there (RagingDemon99, 2012). 17
  • 18. As people begin to realise the exaggerated facts of the emotional campaign, opinion reverses and becomes realigned, and in my mind acts out just like the Mexican wave; an action that Earls highlights as an example of Herd behaviour (Earls, 2009). Overall, what needs to be considered consciously when planning a campaign is why and what pushes people to click ‘share’.Invisible Children’s biggest downfall was Hollywood- polished communications, too much focus on themselves, and inaccurate information - all unexpected ingredients of a grassroots movement, passionate about positive change.However, it provoked an unprecedented emotional response through apersonal story and is a good example that shows digital is not about faceless communications, and that ultimately your main goal is to drive an action with the help of your fans that encourage others to copy their behaviour.What it got right, that many don’t, is what Gensemer suggests as vital is not to use‘digital as another channel for direct mail’ (Gensemer, 2012). What follows is afinal case analysis of The Best Job In The World campaign, but I will also draw on the successful digital campaign Obama 2008 to support my evaluation of what can sustain action and engagement, and which strategies can elicit desirable responses from the public. 18
  • 19. Case Study 2: The Best Job in the World. Named the ‘Best Marketing Campaign Ever’ (Fast Company, 2009), The Queensland Tourist Boardcreated international awareness of the islands of the Great Barrier Reef to global experience seekers (See figures 7 & 8).They wanted to offer something priceless; a prize that wasn’t a prize that would capture the imagination of people around the world, this prize was a job.A caretaker was required for the idyllic Hamilton Island offering a rent-free luxury apartment and a salary of $80k and anyone could apply! Figure 7 shows how the campaign started offline with worldwide classified advertising before it went online to recruitment websites and social networks.An engaging website was built, social networks such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter were used, as well as online banners to build an on and offline ecology (See Figure 8). Figure 7: The classified advertising was distributed to the 8 leading markets, whose populations showed most potential to visit Australia. Figure 8: The website and other Media channels used to drive traffic and awareness of the Best Job campaign. 19
  • 20. The rest was down to applicant video submissions and ‘fortuitous PR and word of mouth’ (Fast company, 2009).Applicants also began to initiate their own mini campaigns to gain votes and support from friends and their friends on Facebook, creating a swarm effect on behalf of the Queensland Tourist Board (Goodson, 2012). The campaign quickly earned global media attention, which totalled $80 million in value.It‘achieved stunning results, including over 34,000 video entries from applicants in 200 countries, and more than 7 million visitors to the site who generated nearly 500,000 votes’(Fast Company, 2009).So what did it do right? Apart from being a really simple yet inspiring idea, it was apparently highly orchestrated from the top down, because the agency had big targets to meet; global awareness on a relatively paltry budget of less than 2 million pounds.Therefore timing was crucial, and so were structured phases of participation.It was important to launch the campaign before the Obama inauguration to avoid getting lost, but to also ride off the film release Australia.They needed, just like the Obama campaign itself, to be agile and able to alter their plans whenever opportunities arose (Wanderlust, 2009).The idea was proactive, valuable, and offered water-cooler conversations on and offline.The initial classified advertising was unexpected and refreshing and is a perfect example of how a brand can allowthe consumer to effectively become the story and tell it on their behalf.This created authentic messaging and trust,as it was told on a peer-to-peer level. Nassim Nicholas Taleb might suggest that the campaign’s success was down to luck rather than planned and pre-meditated skill.He coined the Black Swan theory, which proposes that random events that are a surprise to the observer can produce huge and unexpected results, which are often inappropriately rationalised with hindsight.This would pose that Nitro had no way of knowing that the campaign would be a success and that a formula for such large impacts are impossible (Taleb, 2012).Other cultural ‘Black Swans’ include the computer, religion, and Harry Potter.This theory explains the need to ‘seed’ content due to the unpredictable nature of what can go viral. Neil Mortensonet al who contributed to IPA@ConnectedUK (2012) explains that we not only want to be heard by brands but by our peers too, and is the reason why audiences continue to evolve around conversation and sharing.When the public form part of the brand’s story it is a way for others to get closer to the action using ‘friendly technology’ such as social networks.The audience’s voice through votes and conversation enable them to be ‘acknowledged and accepted’ as well as become ‘part of the messaging’ (Infovision, 2012). Best Job In The World offered different types of action in the form of creating content through video applications, votes and comments, which are important when speaking to large audiences.Gensemer did exactly the same with the Obama campaign and admits that at one time he had 300 different messages going out to different states in the U.S. Some of the things he mentions that are key are: audience segmentation, finding timely opportunities to engage through different types of action (E.g.votes or donations),built around people’s interests, and what people around them are doing.This supports what Earls suggested previously in Figure 2 (Gensemer, 2012). Figure 9 shows a wonderful example of Blue State Digital acting on timely opportunities to use super fans actions to encourage others of similar interests to mimicits behaviour, which was possible through audience database segmentation. 20
  • 21. Figure 9: Shows replicated Obama logos across barns in rural states. The Obama campaign enlisted a group of ‘watchdogs’ to report any negative or wrong news to enable BSD to react to this as soon as possible to knock any negativity on the head.In my view this makes alliances with super fans and thanks them, it enables the fan to feel closer to the action and build advocates who can help pass on positive feelings throughout the networks (Gensemer, 2012). However, The Best Job In The Worlddid experience a minor setback, when they too began to seed fake material.A video story about a woman, who tattooed an advertisement on her arm for the Great Barrier Reef,was posted.Agency Cummins Nitro had the intention of hinting to viewers the kinds of people and applications they were hoping for.But they were soon found out and people began to complain.The second audience complaint came when they found out how Ben Southall (the winner) had been so busy keeping up a ‘wish you were here’ image through blogging, tweeting and interviews, it left him exhausted and unable to relax and explore the island as initially advertised (Telegraph, 2012).The lesson here is transparency, and delivering what you advertised.Ruin the investment of feelings that people put into your idea, and a like- minded group has the power to bring yourcampaign crashing down. But why were people attracted to the idea of the campaign in the first place?Cunniffe(2012), proposed self-schemas as one possible reason; the tourism board had specifically identified ‘experience seekers’ as their target audience, and through a psychological belief or idea about oneselfschemas can lead to a self-perpetuating bias.They are used to guide relevant information processing towards the self, and are important to a person’s overall self-concept.The campaign would have appealed to people who had self-schemas similar to experience seeking, and they may even haveapplied out of expectation than desire (Wilderdom, 2003). The innovation of digital as a platformhas allowed the co-creation of content by fans and followers and has facilitated story telling on the brands behalf.The Best Job in The World campaign had two phases – the initial video applications and Ben’s final diaries.Not only were the videos on the level of peer recommendations, offering positive reasons to 21
  • 22. spend time on the island, they had relevant and engaging content for other people in the group with experience seeking self-schemas too.This offers a reason as to why people continued to engage in the campaign after the position had been filled. The following can be deduced from the Best Job in the World campaign: when communicating with large audiences; it is important to segment them into perhaps location and interests, and usemultiple messaging to allow different actions within smaller groups.The campaign also demonstrated the ability to have greater amounts of control through structured participation in social media.We have also seen success when including audiences as part of the messaging, due to a desire to be acknowledged and accepted.The power of PRcan often be far more valuable than a full-time dedicated community manager particularly with small budgets to spend. What follows this is a final and overall conclusion to all of my research on the digital medium, our social behaviour, response mechanisms and campaign analysis. 22
  • 23. Conclusion: The subject of my thesis; how the public respond to digital campaigns, is a relatively new one for the advertising industry. Therefore, I felt it was important to look at both concrete theory and new thinking, as a way of making connections and progress, to offer something credible and provoking for the advertising industry to learn from. When interviewing Hirst, he confirmed that the government were very much attempting to implement new theory into their communications.In his opinion, a vast majority of the commercial industry is reading the books and isaware of what could be improved, but has not yet integrated theseideas into their brand strategiesandplanning (Hirst, 2012b).I do believe that planners will need to consciously consider aspects of my thesis when planning campaigns in order to use the digital medium to its full potential, particularly the idea that emotions lead to action, as well as our need to spread positive emotions and content.Audiences will facilitate the spread of a campaign positively in order to nourish and sustain their networks, which is good news for the advertising industry and illustrates the importance of emotion in social media. The future of commercial digital communications, in my opinion, certainly lies around emotion, people, places and big passionate ideas, but these must be kept authentic and most importantlyof all, socially interactive and transparent.Kony 2012and The Best Job in The World campaigns were successful in that they had a social perspective; they weren’t faceless direct marketing communications.They both spoke on a peer-to-peer level and, whether intuitive or not, their producers ‘got’ social media.It is hard to make people really care and after that take action, but I can’t help questionat what point will people begin to tire of it?I think future movements which emulate the style of the Kony 2012 campaign are going to have to be more fun and imaginative, because as movement marketing becomes more widely used, not only will people become more sceptical over footage they will also become more selective in how and what they participate in. Digital architectures become highly emotionally charged sites of expression, as they preserve the feelings and emotions of people’s opinions and actions.Kony 2012 and The Best Job in The World have taught us that audiences look for co-collaboration and platforms with tools that encourage the replication of behaviours to express themselves.Advertisers need to be aware of this and should capitalise on this energy with segmented phases of action to channel emotions appropriately and positively.We cannot change the way the medium moves or becomes archived, which makes timing and content strategies important as ever.This is why digital and the potential for mass scale interaction is so much more powerful than TV, movements can change history.I don’t think we will be able to change our fast emotional thinking, but I do think we are learning from our mistakes, and becoming more cautious of what we do not fully understand.As digital sites become hubs of emotion, I begin to question if engagement leads to happy audiences?But what if brands were to make people happy?Would this earn them further engagement? It’s time to forget the word ‘individual’ and replace this with ‘personal’.I can only guess the structure of our digital networks are a macrocosm of our physical social networks.Will our social networks become more niche and intimate as audiences are segmented for targeted actions and opinions or will the future of personalised movements mean they just feel more intimate? 23
  • 24. So what else can the advertising industry learn?The web is a social revolution that is enabling ideas to take shape and spread.It’s a wonderful time for human creativity and advertisers should embrace this potential.Don’t be foolish enough to fake content, lie or be out-of-date, biased or offensive, the truth should be more interesting.Both Kony 2012 and The Best Job in The World made a least one of these mistakes.We live in a culture now where ‘you are what you share’.Be social on and offline, the audience is taking to the stage, as everyone has the ability to participate and access to the web.Timing is more crucial than ever, as campaigns live and breathe in real-time, everyone can speak at once and the sheer volume of information is becoming confusing.It isn’t really a surprise that random ideas take-off.Whether Kony 2012 and The Best Job in The World were Black Swansor not, the unexpected is refreshing and unusual and suggest that there is no generic formula for success.When planning a digital campaign, consider the implications of the emotion it will elicit, curate an experience around this and personalise call-to-action messaging, to ensure structured and desirable responses. 24
  • 25. Picture Credits: Figure 1:Pg.9Nicholas Christakis, diagram of emotional contagion theory. Screen grab [video online] Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U-tOghblfE Figure 2: Pg.11 Kony 2012 posters Source: http://yinnyang.co.uk/2012/03/kony-2012/kony-2012/ Figure 3: Pg. 13 Screen grab of my Twitter feed Source: https://twitter.com/sarahgenkihai Figure 4: Pg. 14 Screen grab of the Kony 2012 website Source: www.kony2012.com Figure 5: Pg. xx Shows the photos uploaded to the Kony 2012 website for ‘Cover the Night’. Source: http://ctn.kony2012.com/ Figure 6: Pg.14 Image of Jason Russel’s son who appeared in Kony 2012 video Source: http://blogs.channel4.com/world-news-blog/kony-2012-inaccuracies-aside-this-is-how-to-spread- message/20728 Figure 7: Pg. 18 shows the classified newspaper advertisement for Best Job in the World campaign. Source: http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/tourism_queensland_best_job_in_the_world?size=_original Figure 8: Pg. 18 shows the media channels used inBest Job in World campaign Source: http://www.casestudiesonline.com/bestjob Figure 9: Pg. 18 Shows screen grab [video online] the replication of the Obama logo across barns in rural states Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZTrcipW8Sk Bibliography. Books: 1. Ahmed, S. (2004) The Cultural Politics Of Emotion. USA, Routledge. 2. Airely, D. (2009) Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions. USA, Harper Collins. 3. Doveling, K. (2012)The Routledge Handbook of Emotions and Mass Media. USA, Taylor & Francis. 4. Du Plessis, E. (2005) The Advertised Mind: Groundbreaking Insights Into How Our Brains Respond To Advertising. London, Millward Brown. 5. Earls, M. (2009)Herd: How To Change Mass Behaviour By Harnessing Our True Nature. England, Whiley Ltd. 6. Goodson, S. (2012) Uprising: How To Build A Brand – And Change The World- By Sparking Cultural Movements. USA, McGraw Hill. 7. Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture: Where old and new media collide. New York. NYU Press. 8. Kahneman, D. (2011) Thinking Fast and Slow. UK. Penguin Books 9. Karatzogianni, A.& Kuntsman, A. (2012) Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion: feelings, affect and technological change. London, Palgrave Macmillan. 10. Reis, A. & Trout, J. (2001) Positioning: The Battle for your mind. USA, McGraw-Hill. 11. Ryan, D & Jones, C. (2011) The Best Digital Marketing Campaigns in the world. Kogan-Page, UK. 25
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  • 28. Ballboy 101, (2012) Kony 2012. YouTube [online] Available from http://www.youtube.com/> (Accessed August 2012). RagingDemon99, (2012) Kony 2012 YouTube [online] Available from<http://www.youtube.com/> (Accessed August 2012). Personal Communication: th 1. Dr Paul Springer, Head of Research at Bucks New University, [conversation] ‘Thesis ideas’ 4 May, 2012. 2. Brookes,S. sarah.brookes@yahoo.com (2012) MA Creative Planning thesis chat [Email] message to th Cunniffe, N. Neasa.cunniffe@gmail.com received Tuesday June 10 2012 at 4.42pm Accessed June 10 2012. th 3. Nick Hirst, Associate Planning Director, Dare, [Interview] ‘Emotion in the digital space’ 19 June 2012b. 4. Dusan Hamlin (joint CEO), M&C Saatchi, [Agency visit] March, 2012. th 5. Mark Earls, author and strategy consultant, [Twitter] August 8 2012 Available at:https://twitter.com/sarahgenkihai 28