制造无病毒的病毒营销效果
星期五, 七月 9, 2010
我们每天沉浸在iPad广告的枪林弹雨中，几乎每块广告牌，每本杂志的封底都有它的广告，这看上去是个反思广告与产品，市场与革新的好时机。苹果公司不是不花钱在广告上——实际上它斥资5亿为iPod做广告。但不同的是苹果市场不需要绝对的灵活创新，事实也是这样，令人吃惊。没有重点使用的社交媒体，没有保存的用户名录。那些横行的半开玩笑般反对微软的广告并没有起到启示作用。“1984”这样的日子已经一去不复返了。如今，苹果已经有足够的吸引力，不必再做哗众取宠的事了。实际上，一个精心编排的广告活动只会偏离品牌而不是推进。公司只是简单地把产品陈列出来——仅此而已。苹果产品达到了无病毒的病毒营销效果。
病毒与“传染式”
在深入讨论这个话题前，让我们先来了解下“病毒”这个术语。这个名词并不是第一次被关注，自从传播媒体预言大师亨瑞.詹金斯对病毒媒介表示反对后大家就开始关注了，只是现在更具批评性。詹金斯说：“除非营销者理解消费者的中介关系，社会结构引导信息的传播，否则他们注定会失去那些本来想要吸引的人。”詹金斯建议我们替换“病毒媒介”——长远来看，病毒营销产生病毒媒介——而“传染式”这个概念则使得病毒媒介恰当地形容了消费者间的媒介关系和信息共享的原动力。合情合理，但是充满学术热情的詹金斯，低估了实践者的能力。他们知道社会分享机构十分清楚产品自身的传染式分布和文化基因累积式传播的区别。但创新的营销者同时使用者两者观念，并得到了相似的结果。原因是什么？简单说来，在这篇文章中，我支持“病毒”这个概念。
拥护与扩增
回过来看苹果的产品与市场革新之间的关系。今年春天在巴黎的营销2.3会议上，我有幸听斯蒂夫.诺克斯，宝洁口碑营销的一把手阐述病毒营销的基础认知原则。他认为，起作用的是拥护与扩增两种局面，如果你拥有良好的品牌拥护度却没有适当的渠道扩增它们，那么你没有充分发挥病毒营销的作用。你与先前的实践者一样，追随了社会学家埃弗雷特.罗杰斯“创新扩散”的理论并完全被他在纽约时报杂志专栏中的“Rob Walker”所描绘。不过不到临界状态，它们是不可能成为主流成就的。另一方面，即使你进行了强力扩增，没有良好的口碑拥护，你会陷入过度扩增的困境：你会意识到产品将很快过气，或更糟的是过度的产品曝光会反而使产品的缺陷凸显出来，因为可见度与用户拥护度之间的脱节会制造一个等着被那些喋血的博主们开采的信任漏洞。简而言之就是，如果你说得太多了，就等于什么多没说。你很可能使用喋喋不休的结束语，而不是真正有用的社交沟通——因此起不了病毒营销的作用。
打破常规与超越
是什么让一件产品值得被讨论？福克斯的理论很有趣：他指出病毒效应的两大原则效仿了认知模型。首先，产品需要打破认识模式，头脑的认知将两种不同的信息融合进同一种世界观。我们是懒惰和胆小的生物，容易受到恐吓和打击，所以认知模式为了使我们弄清周围的世界，将它们都简化成模板。这些模板方便我们理解数量庞大的信息。举个例子：飞机在天上飞符合我们对于飞机的认知，而飞机在哈得孙河里飞就与我们的理解相悖，这会吸引我们对已经习以为常的飞机的关注。这就是——打破。
这些认知模型让我们显得正常，毫无疑问破坏性创新会造成“太疯狂了”的反应。“太疯狂了”其实就是“这违背了我的认知模型”。“即时消息——很普通，最多只容纳140字的即时消息，不可思议。在线支付信用卡账单，方便好用，把信用卡使用历史和公众分享？疯了！边走边看的视频播放器？疯狂！你为什么要那样做？因为你可以，因为它不同，因为它出乎意料，因为它打破常规——就像Roberto Verganti形容的那样“彻底改变事物的本意。”也就是斯蒂夫.诺克斯说的“从根本上打破认知平衡”
很明显，打破思维常规成了有效广告的标志：断章取义，解构事物原本的含义并赋予其一个新的意思，突破预期等等。但不同的是，广告总是在产品已经上市后出现的。广告是为了中断产品的衰落，掩饰某个缺乏新意的产品理念，但总是出现得太晚了。“广告意味着产品的失败”Jeff Jarvis尖锐地指出。
病毒效应的第二法则是将两种认知合并成第三种，超越前者的新概念。比如iPhone苹果手机将“移动电话”和“电脑”合二为一，iPod将“阅读器”和“电脑”合二为一。再如Cirque du Soleil，加拿大的娱乐电脑，自我定义为“歌剧与街头娱乐的戏剧结合”——维塔斯与戏曲的混合物。又或者星巴克，快餐店与社区会所的混合产物（或从更高水平上说，是咖啡与空间的结合，在英国，酒吧就意味着啤酒和空间）。
展示与说明
真正创新的产品符合此两条原则中的任意一条。他们或打破常规，或将两个概念合二为一产生一个新的。无论如何，你以你能想象到的最满意的产品作为结束，一个突破常规的作品。它所带来的病毒效应是盲从的，但值得讨论的是，作为一个营销人，你所要做的就是使这个产品可视并促使那些产品的热烈拥护者们扩大产品的影响力。
成功的创新产品都具有病毒效应，因为它超越或增加了它原本的意义。这种超越会蔓延开来，随着时间的流逝而演变成一种文化模式，这是无价的。
当然了，这也解决了产品开发和走向市场过程中的无形的困难，如产品设计和品牌建设，产品创新和市场革新。产品就是故事，故事就是产品，这比病毒好多了。
原文：http://news.cnet.com/8301-13641_3-10474823-44.html
As we’re inundated with hero shots of the iPad every day, on every billboard and the back of every magazine cover, it appears to be a good time to rethink the relationship between advertising and product, between marketing and innovation. It’s not that Apple doesn’t spend any money on advertising–no, it was pouring a whopping $500 million into its launch campaign for the iPad. But what is different is that Apple’s marketing doesn’t have to be clever or utterly creative. In fact, it is stunningly not so. No major social media campaign needed to be sparked, no user-generated content contest needed to be held. And while the ongoing tongue-in-cheek anti-Microsoft ads are undeniably cute, they are not really an advertising revelation. Gone are the days of the bold “1984″ campaigns. Today, Apple earns enough attention to forgo any ostentatious marketing, in fact, so much that a cleverly orchestrated campaign would distract from the brand rather than boosting it. The company simply displays its products–that’s all it takes. Apple’s products are viral without any viral marketing.
Viral and ‘spreadable’
Before digging more into this, let’s pause for a moment to examine the term “viral.” The term has come under scrutiny recently, not for the first time but more critically, since transmedia augur Henry Jenkins, in ever-so-dramatic fashion, declared war on viral media. Jenkins wrote: “Until marketers understand the consumer’s active agency and the social mechanisms shaping their circulation of content, they are doomed to insult and alienate the very people they are hoping to attract.” Jenkins suggests we replace “viral media”–and, by extension, “viral marketing” as the discipline that produces “viral media”–with the new term “spreadable” arguing that this would more accurately reflect the consumer’s agency and the dynamics of content-sharing. Fair enough, yet Jenkins, in his academic fervor, underestimates practitioners. They know the social mechanisms of sharing all too well and are perfectly capable of distinguishing between the built-in contagious distribution of a product and the spreading of cultural memes as content that accumulates meaning as it is passed on. They are not one and the same, but innovative marketers use both notions and the outcome is similar, which is why, for the sake of simplicity, I will stick with the catch-all “viral” in this post.
Advocacy and amplification
But back to Apple and the relationship between product and marketing innovation. At the Marketing 2.0 conference in Paris this spring, I had the pleasure of hearing Steve Knox from Tremor, Procter & Gamble’s word-of-mouth marketing arm, illustrate the underlying cognitive principles of viral marketing. In his view, there are two dimensions that matter: advocacy and amplification. If you have a strong brand advocate (a passionate user) but lack the appropriate channels to amplify their evangelism, you won’t have much of a viral effect. You are stuck with early adopters, derived from sociologist Everett Rogers’s “diffusion of innovations” theory and so perfectly portrayed by Rob Walker in his New York Times Magazine column, but without critical mass they will not convert into mainstream success. On the other hand, if you muster strong amplification, yet for a product without vocal advocates, you will fall into the over-amplification trap: Awareness of the product will quickly dissipate or, worse, the over-exposure might backfire and inadvertently shed light on the product’s flaws as the gap between visibility and user advocacy will create a suspicious gap just waiting for the blood-sucking blogosphere to be exploited. Simply put: If you generate a lot of talk, but there’s nothing to really talk about, you may end up with a lot of chatter, but no true social conversation–and thus no viral, no networked distribution.
Disruption and transcendence
So what makes a product worth talking about? Fox’s theory is intriguing: he points to two main principles of viral effects that emulate cognitive models. First, the product needs to disrupt a cognitive schema, a mental model that the mind produces to consolidate divergent information into one convergent worldview. We’re lazy and fearful creatures, easily intimidated and overwhelmed, so cognitive schemata help us make sense of the world around us by simplifying it into templates. They let us take shortcuts in interpreting a vast amount of information. Here’s an example: A plane in the air matches our mental model of a plane but a plane on the Hudson River presents a stark violation to our cognitive schema of a plane. It will therefore create much more attention than the routine plane picture we’re used to. It is–in other words–disruptive.
As these mental models keep us sane, it goes without saying that any truly disruptive innovation will often prompt a “This is crazy!” response. “This is crazy,” as in “This disrupts my cognitive schema.” An instant messaging service–that’s familiar. An instant-messaging service that only allows up to 140 characters? That’s crazy. Paying credit card bills online. Nice and convenient. Sharing one’s credit card history with others in public? Crazy! An audio player you can walk with? Crazy! Why would you do that? Because you can. Because it’s different. Because it’s unexpected. Because it’s disruptive–and exactly what Roberto Verganti meant by describing innovation as “radically changing the meaning of things.” Steve Knox would call it “radically disrupting the cognitive equilibrium.” The surplus is (new) meaning.
Now, granted, this kind of cognitive schema violation has always been the hallmark of effective advertising: tearing objects out of context, deconstructing their original meaning, and giving them a new one, breaching expectations, and so on. However, the difference is that advertising does it after the fact, after the product is made or hit the market. Advertising must interrupt to disrupt, and it usually comes too late, when it is only needed as a cover-up for the lack for a truly disruptive product idea. Jeff Jarvis boiled it down to the stinging claim: “Advertising means product failure.”
The second principle of a viral effect is to take two existing cognitive schemata and combine them into a third, transcendent notion. The iPhone, for example, blended the mental models “mobile phone” and “computer.” The iPad blends “book reader” and “computer.” Or take Cirque du Soleil, the Canadian entertainment company, self-described as a “dramatic mix of circus arts and street entertainment”–a blend of Vegas and traditional circus. Or Starbucks: a blend of fast-food shop and community hangout (or, on a higher level, an amalgam of coffee and social space, as the British pub is one of beer and space).
Show and tell
Truly innovative products apply either of these principles–they are disruptive as they violate cognitive schemata, or they blend two different schemata into a third, transcendent one. In any case, you end up with the most desirable product you can imagine: a category killer. Its viral effect is implicit, and as it is genuinely disruptive, that is, worth talking about, all you have to is as a marketer is to make the product visible and provide the means for amplifying the evangelism of the most zealous product advocates. That’s exactly what Apple does.
Successful innovative products are always viral because they disrupt or transcend and accumulate meaning as they are being shared. Their distribution will be contagious, and by being passed on by advocates they become a cultural meme that is more powerful than anything your marketing dollars could ever buy.
Of course, this also removes the artificial barriers between product development and go-to-market, between product design and branding, between product innovation and innovative marketing. They are inexorably intertwined. The product is the story. The story is the product, and it’d better be viral.