There is an old saying on Wall Street that the market is driven by just two emotions: fear and greed.
What drives people to your digital campaign are two different emotions: curiosity and surprise. I’ll leave the surprise part for later and focus on curiosity here.
For some it’s easy. If you’re Nike and you had a commercial directed by Michael Mann featuring Kobe Briant, that’s basically all you have to say. People will want to see that. If you’re some P&G product and had a commercial directed by Joe Blow you’ll have to put in a lot more effort to tickle one’s curiosity.
People don’t wake up in the morning thinking “Hey, I wonder if -P&G product #786- has a new campaign online.” then flock to google to find out. Nope, they read about it on a news site, in their email, on a blog, on facebook, wherever.
Between them finding out about it and going there themselves lays the gaping abyss called The Curiosity Gap.
Millions of people might read _about_ your campaign, and that might have been enough if the whole message is in there, but in the end you’re going to get judged on how many visits/views you got. So you want people to bridge that gap, click on the link, visit your site/video/etc. Unfortunately getting them to do that is not a science, but a walk on a tightrope. You want to give away enough to tickle their curiosity but not so much as they’d think there’s no further use to go on and click.
It starts with how people refer to your campaign. It’s best to give it a name that’s easy to adopt by others. If you don’t they’ll give it a different name, and then it’s out of your control, “their” name might not incite to clicking (on the other hand, maybe more so).
The never ending web page or jealous computers are good names, easy to remember and they made me curious enough to go and find out if the page is really never ending and what a jealous computer might look like.
The good examples just popped to mind, to come up with bad examples I had to go through Adverblog, because, of course, they didn’t stick.
Here’s a random pick:
Save your sensible.
And the premise, according to Adverblog is:
you’re elected to receive one package in which you’ll find what is called a Neglected Sensible Shelter, a sort of Tamagotchi creature you have to feed with Spring Valley products.
So on top of having picked a name that doesn’t really mean anything, they have a premise that I don’t get or don’t care to get. The campaign behind it might well be truly wonderful, it’s just that name+premise didn’t make me want to find out.
You can also be too descriptive. A local campaign here was “Save your name to Gerolsteiner and win a Porche.” Which is, admittedly, a bad example because it’s obviously a PR stunt, but if it wasn’t it would have been the pinnacle of being too descriptive. If I read that somewhere I wouldn’t visit the site because, I feel I already know everything there is to find out.
The curiosity emotion also works on whole different level.
You want the people who did click, visit, engage, to feel their curiosity was rewarded. Rewarding enough to feel good about the brand and the campaign. You don’t want them to feel tricked into wasting their time on some brand site. Ultimately you want them to feel that the act of giving in to their curiosity was so rewarding that they’ll incite people they know to do the same.
Tricking them into a visit is easy. Just use a teasing campaign.
The lure of a teasing campaign, or brand-campaign-pretending-it-isn’t-one, is a shiny one.
Though one I would avoid at all costs.
Here’s how it works:
1. You launch a website/video/fake blog that’s completely wacko but of who’s behind it and why is unclear.
2. You send press releases, seed to advertising blogs and “easy” bloggers.
3. You wait for traffic to build, which it will, because the premise is intriguing/completely bonkers.
4. Conversations will take place, ranging from “Okay, who’s behind this one” via “Oh no, not another viral campaign” to “Whatever brand is behind this I vow to never buy it again.”
5. After 2 months you reveal who/what is behind the campaign.
Only after one week everybody stopped caring and this goes completely unnoticed. Or, it was so annoying that people go out of their way to once again mention your campaign, how much they hate it and how much they now hate the brand behind it.
6. You show the stats to your client. They are okay, but you don’t mention that all the hits came from before the reveal so people never got the commercial message and certainly don’t mention the negative publicity.
This is a tactic that’s often used by creatives teams who are new to digital and traditional agencies who have a stab at digital.
It’s easy and there’s nothing to it. You got stats, but you abused people’s curiosity resulting in negative feelings towards your brand.
So curiosity is a powerful emotion you should learn how to play when doing digital campaigns. It’s what makes people want to check out your campaign, but it’s also what might make them dislike your campaign. In between them is a thin line and it’s with experience you learn where exactly it lies.
Related:
Digital advertising tip #1: Strange attractors
Tags: curiosity gap, digital marketing, Interactive advertising Tips
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