✔ SOCIAL MEDIA CASE STUDIES [GB_V80]

Hertz's most recent Facebook campaign brought 145,000 interactions and 800 new likes in the first week and won them Travel + Leisure magazine's first-ever Social Media + Tourism Award for best use of a social media platform -  PR Daily

NASA is using Twitter and YouTube to help build buzz and excitement online for the Curiosity rover's upcoming visit to Mars -  The NY Times

Pepsi, BOS Ice Tea, and The Coca-Cola Company are combining social media with vending machines to create a new experience for customers -  Social Commerce Today

Qatar Airways has launched their global "Tweet a Meet" social media campaign that gives their Twitter followers the chance to team up and win travel miles and plane tickets -  Creativity Online

Tide is running a social campaign through the 2012 Olympic Games that encourages fans to submit their own stories about what the American flag means to them on Facebook and Twitter -  Chief Marketer

Citi discuss how they use social media to deliver better customer service -  Useful Social Media

Starbucks, 7-Eleven, Chick-fil-A, and Dippin' Dots are using social media to drive buzz around their giveaways this summer -  USA TODAY

Revlon's talk about their new Facebook initiative that offers monthly beauty tasks and allows participants to post and share their experiences with friends -  WWD.com

Virgin America is looking to increase their Facebook and Twitter engagement with the announcement that Boo, the Internet's cutest dog, has become their official pet liaison -  Socialbakers

THE TAKEAWAY

BE FOUND - Search is still the killer app. It’s more location-based (knows where you are), personalized (offers to you), visual (Google Goggles) and real-time (price, availability, news) than ever. Roy’s Restaurants introduced hyperlocal ads, delivering clickable, down-to-the-block level information about a business at the right place and at the right moment – and got an 800 percent ROI on their advertising investment.

BE ENGAGING - You could be dull in another era. Not this one. For creativity, look at American Express mastering the art of the live stream – a newly potent medium. Their live-streamed concerts, ‘Unstaged: An Original Series from American Express,’ created an absorbing environment on the web and in the arena, engaging users with the music of Arcade Fire and John Legend – and with their brand.

BE RELEVANT - Real-world, real-time relevance matters more than ever. A Google client in the auto insurance business uses click-to-call so that when a potential customer searches their mobile phone for car insurance, the company shows them an ad that can immediately connect the customer to its call center and begin the application process on the spot. The consumer, right there on the lot, could get their insurance before they drive away.

BE ACCOUNTABLE - Ford has identified five key buying actions based on closely measured online behavior. If someone configures a car online, Ford now knows they are more likely to buy one. The car company uses this information to target digital advertising, generating high-value leads and test-drive registrations for its dealers. Unlike traditional local media, Ford can measure the exact return on this investment. Accountability pays.

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✔ Characteristics of Highly Persuasive Brand Stories

Compared to convincing a jury in a courtroom of something, car salespeople have it easy – as they control the environment and have the undivided attention of the customer.  

Just imagine for example that you were in a Lexus showroom listening to why you should buy one of their vehicles, and at your elbow was a BMW salesperson, periodically objecting to the Lexus pitch and then delivering her own. That’s the situation a lawyer must deal with in a courtroom.  Arguments are presented by one side and will be directly (and often mercilessly) attacked by the other side.   So what’s an effective way to make your point?  One trial-proven persuasion strategy is the use of stories.  

Researchers Philip Mazzocco and Melanie Green draw a contrast between rhetorical persuasion, in essence arguing with facts and logic, and the use of narratives to influence decisions. They concluded that stories are far more effective at changing those emotional beliefs that logical arguments have difficulty reaching.  There are also a number of other relevant takeaways to make stories more persuasive including:

Delivery Counts

For spoken narratives (as one normally finds in a courtroom), a good storyteller is more persuasive than a mediocre one. Dramatic pacing, use of imagery, and other factors affect the impact the story has on the listener. (If your story will be told in written form, it’s safe to assume that effective use of language and an appropirate narrative style will have that same effect.) And when a story is told properly, there’s a sort of mind-meld connection between the teller and listener.

Vivid Imagery

Immersive images will enable the audience to “see” the characters and scenes being described, and will trump dry factual information that lacks that impact. (If you have any doubts, brain scans show vivid action imagery lights up the readers or listener’s brain as if he were performing those same actions.  Even if you are painting a fictional picture with the story, its elements need to relate to the reality that the audience is familiar with, for example, basic human motivations. The audience must be able to understand the story.  Shakespeare, for example, resonates with many readers because he was so in tune with human nature.  So it’s clear that stories must be coherent (“narrative probability”) and consistent with the listeners past experiences (“narrative fidelity”) to be effective.

Structure

Stories need to flow in a logical manner, and therefore usually have a beginning, middle, and end. Suspense can keep an audience tuned in.  Starting with a provocative question or curious situation is a good example -as it makes listeners want to hear what comes next.

Context and Surroundings

The same story may vary in its persuasive impact depending on the context in which it is told. A story told by a pushy salesperson will be less believable because listeners will attribute ulterior motives to the person telling it. At a more basic level, problematic surroundings (like a noisy environment, or, presumably, a web page with distracting elements near the text) can also reduce the story’s effectiveness.

Audience

This is one factor you may not have direct control over: people vary in their ability to be transported by stories. Stories will obviously be less likely to persuade audience members who lack the imagination to visualize what they are hearing or reading. If you could identify your less imaginative prospects, though, you could attempt to persuade them with logic and argument rather than a narrative.

Rational vs. Experiential

Researchers Mazzocco and Green found evidence that human brains process information in two ways, rational appraisal and “experiential.” The first includes digesting facts, comparing new information to one’s knowledge and past experience, etc. The second, in contrast, “involves the construction of an imaginary world filled with quasi-experiences.” It’s the experiential processing – creating the experience (that didn’t really happen) in the customer’s mind that can be reached most effectively by stories. 

The authors suggest that we can only think in one mode at a time, so the persuader should shift approaches depending on which style would be most effective in supporting each phase of the argument.  There’s another way to look at this duality: We make our decision emotionally (and, to varying degrees, unconsciously), and then let our rational processes justify that decision with facts.

Takeaway

Even if you can persuade at the emotional level with a story, you may still need to provide factual persuasion elements to keep the customer’s entire brain happy.   

[ Original article by Roger Dooley.  Roger writes and speaks about marketing, and in particular the use of neuroscience and behavioral research. ]

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