It’s easy to forget that people who have had success in their craft had to start somewhere. Then on their journey, they continuously failed, made small adjustments and improved slowly over time.

If you listen to most of your favourite bands, I bet they have some terrible songs that you don’t like and you never listen to. I found that out with Queen – they have some shocking tunes that they made back in the day, but they had to create these in order to eventually make the good stuff.

You don’t have to start off with Bohemian Rhapsody, and if you try to, you will fail miserably, lose faith and probably quit.

Instead, start small, be persistent and make adjustments as you go.  Failure is a good thing!

“The first problem of any kind of even limited success is the unshakeable conviction that you’re getting away with something, and that any moment now they will discover you”

Love this – definitely worth a watch as a content creator…

CONTAGIOUS VIDEO CONTENT CREATION

Overview

It’s every filmmakers dream for their content to be loved and shared with as many people as possible. But how do you achieve this?

Why do some videos go viral while others disappear as fast as they were made – even though the latter seem just as funny, groundbreaking or ’viralesque’?

l used to think there was no real formula for a viral video and that it was a combination of timing and luck. It seemed the more shocking, unpredictable or cute a video was, then the more likely it was to spread around the internet like the plague.

After reading Contagious I realised I was wrong.

Contagious is based on the fact that ideas spread through word of mouth – We share content to particular people who will find the information most relevant. The book contains a set of specific actionable techniques for any content creator or entrepreneur who wants to leverage word of mouth to make their products and ideas succeed.

This post will outline the six factors and how I think that filmmakers and content creators can use these their advantage.

The six factors are: Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value and Stories (STEPPS)

Principle 1: Social Currency – We share things that make us look good

It’s quite simple.

We all want to look cool in front of our peers, so if your content helps people look good then people will talk about your content.

This is Social Currency: People share things that make them seem entertaining or clever to their friends/family/colleagues/fellow humans.

When I first read about Social Currency, all I could think about was Game of Thrones.

Whenever an episode went to air, the main conversational topic at work the following day would be Game of Thrones.  Was Jon Snow really dead? Did you see that crazy battle scene? People loved to talk about GOT to show that they were part of the elitist Game of Thrones watching club.

Another example more closer to home for me was when we made our first episode of ‘The Real Houseboys of Waiheke.’ At the time the show ‘The Real Housewives of Auckland’ was on air and all over the media.

People already loved talking about the RHOA show and how ridiculous it was, and so when our short video went out it was a fresh conversation topic and made people look good when they talked about it.

As a result of this Social Currency we went viral for a day or two  – then all of a sudden it dropped off, as it was no longer fresh or cool to talk about. Parodies and Satire are great for Social Currency as it makes people seem like insiders and they can leverage the content to get their own ideas and opinions across.

Contagious outlines that content that is remarkable is often the most contagious as it is worthy of mentioning.

Remarkability also shapes how stories evolve over time.

How often do you hear someone tell a story that you know is missing a few details, but they’ve told it so many times that they now only include the good parts and ignore the parts that aren’t deemed important.

If you can embed remarkability into your content from the start then people will be more likely to share it.

A great example of remarkability in the book is The Blair Witch Project.

The film is a documentary about a local legend called the Blair Witch, and the three student filmmakers supposedly disappear.

Viewers were told that film was pieced together from ‘recovered’ footage. This caused a huge amount of Social Currency as many people debated on whether it was true or not. The film spread like wild fire and went on to gross more than $248 million worldwide.

Questions to ask yourself about Social Currency and your content are:

• Does talking about your content make people look good?
• Can you find the inner remarkability? e.g What will make your content interesting, surprising or novel?
• Can you make people feel like insiders? e.g Do people feel cool knowing about your content?

Principle 2: Triggers – Top of mind, tip of tongue

Triggers are things that remind people to talk about our content. Triggers prompt people to think about related things. E.g Peanut Butter reminds us of Jelly.

People often talk about whatever comes to mind, so the more often people think about your content the more it will be talked about.

This means we need to create content that is frequently triggered by the environment and create new triggers by linking our content to cues in the environment. It sounds confusing but bear with me…

The greatest example I could relate to in Contagious was the comparison of Disney World vs Honey Nut Cheerios (breakfast cereal).

When asked which of these products is most talked about you would assume it would be Disney World. Well, you would be wrong – People talk about Honey Nut Cheerios more than Disney World.

People don’t think about Disney World very often, whereas they think about Cheerios all the time.  Cheerios are seen everywhere in the supermarket (trigger) and thousands of people eat them every morning (another trigger).

People don’t go to Disney World very often and after they’ve been there aren’t many triggers that remind them of the experience.

Another great example is when NASA landed on Mars for the first time the sales of Mars bars increased. Why? Because Mars was featured everywhere on the news, and it triggered people to think about and purchase the chocolate bars.

Some ideas are great but the triggers aren’t in place – reusable shopping bags are a great example.

When you arrive at the supermarket it’s a great trigger for bringing reusable bags, but normally it’s too late! We need an earlier trigger to remind us.

An example more related to content creation is Rebecca Blacks song ‘Friday’. Widely known as the worst song ever made, the song went viral and each Friday it has a massive spike in its views, simply because Friday is a trigger for people to play the song.

The first content that came to mind when I thought about triggers was How to Dad. Everybody loves talking about their kids or funny parenting situations they have been in. Whoever the parent is, you can bet that their own child is at the top of their mind.

When How to Dad came up with funny parenting techniques it was a great topic of conservation whenever people shared stories about their kids. The cue in the environment was their own kid/friends kid/niece/nephew/grand child/ and the short engaging and hilarious parenting videos became an easy topic of conversation to chat about.

There needs to be frequent stimuli for triggers to be effective. In simpler terms, the more often people are reminded about your content, the more often they will talk about it.

Going back to our Real Houseboys of Waiheke example from earlier, the trigger for people to talk about our parody was the actual show The Real Housewives of Auckland. At the time the show was everywhere in the media, and as soon as our parody came out, it triggered people to talk about the real show, or when they watched the real show it triggered them to talk about us.

Pretty crazy stuff!

Questions to ask yourself about Triggers and your content are:

• What cues in peoples every day lives can make people think about your content?
• Are there existing audiences or content that can work as triggers to get people to watch your content?

Principle 3: Emotion – When we care, we share

How do we create content that makes people feel something? Why do we need to make people feel emotional? Because emotional things get shared.

The greatest example of this in Contagious is Susan Boyle. She looked pretty hideous when she walked out on stage on Britains Got Talent, but when she opened her mouth and sang she turned into an angel.

Her voice was incredible and everybody broke into wild applause – some people even cried and the video became one of the most viral videos on the internet. The reason: it’s emotional – and that makes people share it.

It’s not just awe-inspiring emotions that get shared.

Contagious outlines that high arousal emotions can have a big impact on peoples willingness to share. Positive emotions such as awe, excitement, or humour are shared the most, while negative emotions of anger and anxiety are also highly shared.

We all know a work colleague who loves to send out a funny joke. Or when a horrific event such as a terrorist attack happens people share it because they’re angry or upset.

Emotions drive people to take action. They make us laugh, shout and cry, and make us talk share and buy.

So when we’re creating content we need to focus on feelings.

One video that came to mind was the ‘Kony 012’’ video that went viral. It highlighted how bad a certain dictator in Africa was, who was recruiting child soldiers and committing hideous crimes. The video provoked so much anger and anxiety that it went viral all around the world.

A more light hearted example might be cute pet videos – people feel in awe and love to laugh at pets doing silly things. I still love watching the videos of pets getting in the way of people trying to do yoga.

Questions to ask yourself about Emotion and your content are:

• How can you make people care about your content: When we care, we share
• Focus on Feelings, Does talking about your content generate emotion?

Principle 4: Public – Built to show, built to grow

Can people see when others are watching your content?

Making things more observable and public means they are more likely to be imitated and therefore become successful.

We need to create content that advertises itself and create behavioural residue that sticks around even after people have watched the content.

One example of behavioural residue that came to mind was NZ’s social media superstar Johnny Danger. He made his own funny symbolic gesture whenever he drinks a beer and filmed it in one of his videos.

This gesture caught on like wildfire and was soon done by All Blacks and even spread around the world. This is a great example of behavioural residue – a simple beer drinking gesture that is funny but also keeps Johnny Dangers content constantly in the public eye.

Discussing imitation Contagious uses the example of travelling. Say you’re in a new city strolling the streets and looking for a place to dine. Are you going to stop at a place that is empty with no patrons, or stop at a place that looks busy? Of course you will go for the busy place.

Another fascinating example of the Public Principle is kidney transplants. In USA there are hundreds of thousands of people waiting on donors for kidney transplants, which has resulted in a huge waiting list.

Surprisingly 97.1% of kidneys are refused – even when people are desperate and have been waiting for months.

The reason is that when people are low down on the list and finally offered a kidney they believe there must be something wrong with it, as it’s already been offered and rejected by people above them on the list.

This is the concept of social proof.

Social Proof is crucial if you want your videos to be successful.  Videos with likes, shares and comments on Facebook or YouTube are more likely to be watched.

There’s simply too much content online and people don’t have the time to sit through videos that are no good. Instead we choose to watch something if it already has the approval of our peers or the public.

Questions to ask yourself about Pubic and your content are:

• Does your content or idea advertise itself?
• Can you create behaviour residue that sticks around even after people use it?
• Do you know influencers who would like your content and share it to their audience – thus providing the momentum and social proof that you need.

Principle 5: Practical Value: News you can use

Can our content be useful as well as entertaining?

People like to help others, so if we can show them how our content will save time, improve health or save money then they will spread the word. We need to package our knowledge and expertise so that people can easily pass it on.

While Social Currency helps the ‘information sender’ look good, Practical Value is mostly about the ‘information receiver’ – Helping people do things they want to do, or encouraging people to do things they should do, faster, better and easier.

Practical Value can obviously work well in non-fictional videos, and often the most viral videos are the ones that contain useful information but are presented in an entertaining way.

I recently watched That Sugar Film and learned several interesting facts about eating sugar that I now pass along to people.

Interestingly Contagious highlights that content that is more relevant to a narrow audience is more likely to go viral than content that is relevant to a broad audience – Just because people can share a video with more people, it doesn’t mean that they will.

For example, if I saw a video on ‘How to cook a BBQ’ I wouldn’t share it with my friends even though they all love BBQs, but if I saw a video on ‘How to make the best Pad Thai ever’ I would share it with a few select friends who I know love cooking Thai food. This is something to keep in mind for content creators – focusing and serving a niche can make your content stronger and cut through the noise.

Questions to ask yourself about Practical Value and your content are:

• Does talking about your content help people help others?
• How can you highlight incredible value, packaging your information and expertise into useful information others will want to watch?

Principle 6: Stories: Information Travels Under the Guise of Idle Chatter

Hanging out with my one year old nephew and niece the last few days I’ve realised just how much humans love stories. We grow up with stories so it’s no wonder we all love them so much.

Stories capture our imagination and keep us entertained. People don’t think in terms of information, they think in terms of narratives.

Contagious uses the story of The Three Little Pigs to illustrate that good stories carry an underlying message.

In the story of The Three Little Pigs we hear how two piggies quickly build shoddy houses out of straw, while the third pig takes his time and builds his house out of bricks.

Then, the Big Bad Wolf comes along and blows down the first two straw houses with ease. When he gets to the third house he huffs and he puffs, but he fails to blow the house down as it’s been made carefully with  bricks.

The moral of the story is effort pays off. The story is still told to this day and the underlying message is as important as ever. They could have taught that underlying message in a faster way but it wouldn’t have been as effective.

While people focus on the story, the information comes along for the ride.

If you can make your stories relate to everyday morals, lessons and themes then they are more likely to be talked about. A great example is Jared from Subway – the American fella who lost 245 pounds eating subway sandwiches.

His story is so interesting that people bring it up when they are talking about weight loss.

We need to make our message so integral to the narrative that people can’t tell the story without it.

Questions to ask yourself about Stories and your content are:

• Is your content embedded in a broader narrative that people want to share?
• Is the story not only viral, bit also valuable?

Contagious and Our Show Misadventures

We have now shot the bulk of our Misadventures series and are super stoked with the content. We think the footage is beautiful, funny and entertaining.

Although we shaped the stories as we went as well as the overall series arc, there is still a huge amount of scope for adding elements to make it more ‘contagious’ and thus more successful.

Here are some ideas I’ve had on how we can implement some of the principles outlined in Contagious into the post-production and marketing of Misadventures.

Social Currency Principle

In Blade NZ, our first travel series we found that one of the most talked about topics were the eccentric characters that we met along the way. For this reason we will makeMisadventures have a strong focus on characters. Hopefully this will create a talking point and increase Social Currency.

Another way to increase Social Currency for our series could be the places that we show throughout NZ. Kiwis are proud of their country and love seeing how beautiful it is.

The vibe of the show will be very uplifting and highlight the amazing locations that NZ has to offer, which we hope will make kiwis proud and add another element that people talk about. This also relates to the next point.

Triggers Principle

One of the triggers we are hoping to use is NZ’s beauty. It’s often talked about how stunning New Zealand is – international audiences in particular love our clean and green image.

Our show is going to highlight how incredibly stunning NZ is, and if we can get enough traction we may be able to use NZ’s beauty as a trigger. We want people to see footage of New Zealand and then immediately think of our show.

People also love the kiwi sense of humour and we’ve tried to keep the humour in line with what people have come to expect from NZ – dry, sarcastic and self-deprecating.

Hopefully this means that whenever people talk about NZ humour, such as Flight of the Conchords or newer comedy influencers like How to Dad, they will think of us too.

Emotion Principle

As I mentioned many people are proud of New Zealand (for good reason!).

During the show Josh and I often talk about how proud we are of our stunning country and its awesome people.  Hopefully our emotions and feelings about NZ translate through the show and will be amplified through storytelling and music.

Another key part of the emotion in our show is humour. We love our sense of humour, and we think that this combined with epic scenery and interesting people will create a winning combination and hopefully generate emotion from the viewers.

Public Principle

We have used Social Proof a lot in the marketing of our previous videos. For Misadventureswe will leverage our existing fan base to generate social proof. Then we will use Facebook Advertising to send new audiences our content with social proof attached, thus making people more likely to watch and engage.

Another strategy that I hope we can do it is to get influencers to share our content. This means we can reach new audiences that we couldn’t reach by ourselves.

Another marketing idea I had was that we could make posters and funny short clips of the most interesting character soundbites from the show. This could create triggers to help people talk about our series and it might even become quotable – creating behavioural residue.

Practical Value Principle

Although our series is a comedy it will still show local places and stories. It will be giving value, but with a comedic twist.

People love the long running show Country Calendar – a show that highlights local characters and stories around New Zealand. We like to think of Misadventures as ‘Country Calendar on Crack’ – in the way that it takes local characters to a whole new level.

As we will use humour to share information on travelling in New Zealand we think there will be a significant amount of practical value in our series.

Stories Principle

One of the main narratives of our series is that we all need to appreciate where we’re from. There is an underlying theme that no matter what we go through, we are lucky to be alive and have the privilege to travel in beautiful New Zealand.

From a marketing perspective we see the Stories Principle being applied in our series through the branding of ourselves as ‘Josh and Mearle’. The content is travel and interesting people and places, but the underlying story is our friendship and humour which we see as ‘our brand’.

Hopefully people will enjoy our way of telling stories, and we can continue to tell more stories in the future.

Conclusion

I learned a lot from this book and I found it super fascinating. Not all of it was relevant to my current situation, but if you are on the verge of creating a product or if you are a content creator I think it is 100% worth a read.

Chur!