Welcome to the ‘reaction economy’
In this guest post TCO’s Tom Phillips looks at how brands can best utilise earned media and why not to listen to social media gurus.
Welcome to the “reaction economy” where there’s a new currency in circulation. It’s called earned media.
The units of that currency are comments, shares, likes, badging and posts. And as in all economies, he who gathers the most currency wins.
The emergence of the reaction economy has resulted in a shift from the traditional idea of simply building a creative and pushing it out there via bought media.
Gone are the days when creatives could scramble to get the best director in town to produce the most beautiful TVC that goes onto win a Cannes Lion and that was enough to satisfy the client and their brand/communications objectives. Now, we are accountable for the outcomes generated by that content.
Reaction economy will prevent brands from being vanilla. No longer have you got a captured audience who will watch your commercials, but brands now need to create content that drags people to it.
Reactions are a good indication of how successful your content is at getting people to it.
I think the reaction economy helps to dispel a lot of the things that just didn’t feel right to marketers about social media. Social media gurus told you, you always had to be on and it’s about long-term relationships, whereas the reaction economy suggests that you can be a part of people’s life for a short time but make sure that you’re getting a reaction from those people in that time.
This means that in conceiving ideas in this space we need to first think about the reaction. How can we trigger a reaction and ensure it’s a positive one, or at least a positive outcome in terms of adding value? What value will we be adding to the user’s experience and how can we trigger a reaction as a result of being exposed to that piece of content?
Increasingly, creatives need to understand earned media and how – with audience engagement – they can leverage a client’s solar system of brand-owned platforms.
Crucial here is the ideation stage and the development of the idea. The people who are going to have the most success are those who think about how an idea can live and breathe beyond just bought media.
Two great examples have just made their mark. Google’s new web browser Google Chrome came to the digital ecosystem’s attention via a cleverly crafted piece of creative demonstrating speed in a series of elaborate, engaging experiments.
“Chrome versus Potato” is a beautiful piece of content. But in developing it, its creators really thought about making it amazing, intriguing and stimulating a debate. It marked a very different approach to traditional TVC content. It was made for the web environment and specifically made for reactions: I’m going to pass it on, going to like it, put it on Facebook, comment on it on YouTube, Tweet it.
All of that happened. The piece of content was a success by the standards of the reaction economy.
Another great local example was Yellow Pages’ “Hidden Pizza”. The brand embraced this whole idea of the reaction economy and created a fictional hidden pizza restaurant then used all its products to drive an audience to come to this hidden pizza night.
Yellow Pages’ Steve Ronchi said: “The primary reason for the Hidden Pizza Restaurant initiative was to highlight the value of Yellow Pages to small businesses. The secondary reason was to get people talking about our brand and to engage them in the use of our products.”
The end result did just that. Stats showed Yellow Pages’ effectiveness across search engines and in the web environment generally – a boon for small businesses – while the stunt produced a massive conversational reaction which was both good and bad. But controversy is good in the reaction economy.
It was a really smart idea that beautifully demonstrated the product in a highly engaging way and highlighted the simple truth about the reaction economy: When you put a video up on YouTube or Facebook it’s no longer just a video. It’s a currency generator. You want people to comment on it, talk about it, pass it on, share it.
It’s about making sure you are optimising these opportunities in the reaction economy and the only way to do that is to start out with the concept of engagement and follow it through.
- Compiled by The Conscience Organisation’s director of content and distribution, Tom Phillips… with a little bit of help from digital strategist, Julian Cole and founder, Clive Burcham.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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“Social media gurus told you, you always had to be on and it’s about long-term relationships…”
So instead it’s now all about reaction economies?
I think you’ll find balanced people who aren’t on an extreme end of either spectrum of Marketing Vs PR will say that it’s both. Nothing wrong with a reaction economy and generating a buzz (a great current example is the Clinkers Unicorn advert) but building customer relationships, authenticity and trust via social media also has a place too.
We are seeing peoples understanding maturing and a realisation that Social Media has a place in marketing and not just reactive risk management and PR. More importantly, the needs and tools for marketing are different than those used by PR.
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Interesting post, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I have to disagree about the Yellow Pages case study, however. I think it goes again to show that you can’t just dress mutton up as lamb and fool people. Good products market themselves and at the end of the day, no ‘great’ campaign will trump that.
The concept of the initiative was to prove that Yellow Pages is a worth while investment for small businesses to make. But proof that most people found there way to the hidden shop by searching on Yellowpages.com.au is a stretch. It would have been interesting to have conducted an exit-poll of all the people who made their way to the store, to find out how they got there. I certainly heard about it (in Sydney) through Twitter. There we’re a number of blog posts, tweets and facebook pings revealing the address. One good example…
http://myachinghead.net/2010/0.....t-fitzroy/
To me, whilst this got people talking about the ‘brand’ and perhaps even reacting – it only goes to show just how inadequate Yellowpages is compared to these new options. I would guess (no data here, so happy to be proven wrong) that most people finding the store found out through word of mouth, and social media, with the occasional person having searched for it on yellowpages.com.au
And, more to the point, the campaign highlighted to me exactly WHY I would rather invest my ad spend in Google Adwords, SEO and more social mediums rather than yellowpages.com.au. To me, whilst it got my reaction – the reaction I had only further damaged the clients brand.
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I think the Hidden Pizza restaurant campaign actually did a great job of highlighting why yellow pages was becoming redundant, and why not to advertise in the Yellow pages….
There was some great article follow up on that here: http://anthillonline.com/hidde.....-strategy/
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It’s obviously hard to say what the guys at YellowPages were hoping for with the Hidden Pizza campaign. As far as a “buzz” marketing campaign goes they would have to be happy with it’s success.
I’ve seen 8000 unique visitors to my blog post about it and the recent advertising is certainly still piquing people’s interest. I find the numbers they quote on the website pretty much irrelevant considering that people were clearly turning to Google as their first “way of finding” a business and then through constant prompting and hints turning to the Yellow Pages.
The question remains though, is it effective as a mechanism for promoting Yellow Pages? Like Sarah I think it has only served to prove why NOT to advertise with Yellow Pages when a well executed promotion + social media campaign can drive a huge amount of attention to an unknown product.
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I was with you right up until ‘hidden pizza’ and ‘good’ were used in the same paragraph. But also agree with a commenter that there needs to be a balance between short term ‘look at me’ stunts and long term ‘love me’ branding efforts.
Google Speed Test worked as it was a great way to launch a new product.
Hidden Pizza failed because it was new packaging for an old sales pitch no one believes anymore.
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Great post Tom. Your point that we first need to consider the reaction in creating any piece of content is spot on. And I hope it isn’t news to too many people reading this. Business objectives have always been at the heart of the communications industry (although you’re probably right in that they’re not the creative’s priority).
You mention that “we are accountable for the outcomes generated by that content”. Yet I still see it as a huge failing of the industry that we have not yet conceived valid metrics on which to report even a ballpark ROI.
Content is indeed a currency generator, but I’m still not sure we’ve nailed what the exchange rate is.
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I get it, we need an ‘idea’ at the core of our campaign that serves as a device that starts a chain reaction and/or generates talkability. Not just in the digital environment, but across all forms of media.
I’m sure most of us get it, I’m just not sure how many of us actually execute this. I for one, struggle with my client base, it’s not that they don’t believe in what we’re saying, it’s more that it doesn’t come with a measurement system like TARPS, that are easily taken up the line for sign off. Very frustrating, VERY frustrated!
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Content/currency still often involves “creatives scrambling for the best director in town to produce the most beautiful TVC.”
Just ask the team at Wieden & Kennedy
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Really, you just seem to be talking about video, and delivering that through social media. Great way for those creatives who love making TVCs to keep doing a lot of video, and charging a lot for it. Sometimes it fits well with what the client might need. There’s a lot more to social media than this thouugh. You are only talking about one aspect. There is a place for long term relationships too, just ask clients.
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