what seems like idle chatter.
BUILD A TROJAN HORSE
Stories thus give people an easy way to talk about products and ideas.
Subway might have low-fat subs, and Lands’ End might have great
customer service, but outside of triggers in a conversation, people need a
reason to bring that information up. And good stories provide that reason.
They provide a sort of psychological cover that allows people to talk about
a product or idea without seeming like an advertisement.
So how can we use stories to get people talking?
We need to build our own Trojan Horse—a carrier narrative that people
will share, while talking about our product or idea along the way.
—————
Tim Piper never had a sister. And he grew up going to an all-boys school.
So he had always thought it was a little ridiculous that so many of his
girlfriends had beauty issues. They were always worried that their hair was
too straight, their eyes were too light, or their complexion wasn’t clear
enough. Piper didn’t get it. They seemed pretty enough to him.
But after interviewing dozens of girls, Piper started to realize that the
media were to blame. Advertising, and the media in general, taught young
women that something was wrong with them. That they needed fixing. And
after years of being bombarded with those messages, women started to
believe them.
What would help women realize that these ads were fake? That the
images being shown didn’t reflect reality?
One night his girlfriend at the time was putting on makeup to go out
when it hit him. He realized that girls needed to be exposed to the before
before the after. What models look like before the makeup and hair styling
and retouching and Photoshop swoop in to make them “perfect.”
So he created a short film.
Stephanie stares into the camera and nods her head to the crew that she is
ready to begin. She is pretty, but not in a way that would make her stand out
in a crowd. Her hair is dark blond, feathered, and relatively straight. Her
skin is nice but a few blemishes mar it here and there. She looks as though
she could be anyone—your neighbor, your friend, your daughter.
A bright light turns on, and the process begins. As we watch, makeup
artists darken Stephanie’s eyes and highlight her lips with gloss. They apply
foundation to her skin and blush to color her cheeks. They groom her
eyebrows and lengthen her lashes. They curl and tease and style her hair.
Then the photographer appears with his camera. He takes dozens of
photos. Fans are turned on so her hair appears naturally tousled. Stephanie
alternately smiles and stares provocatively at the camera. Finally, the
photographer gets a shot he likes.
But getting the perfect snapshot is only the beginning. Next comes the
Photoshopping. Stephanie’s image is fed into a computer, and begins to
morph before our eyes. Her lips are inflated. Her neck is thinned and
lengthened. Her eyes are enlarged. These are only a handful of the dozens
of changes that are made.
You are now gazing at a snapshot of a supermodel. As the camera pans
backward, you can see that the image has been placed on a billboard for a
makeup campaign. The screen fades to black, and small words appear in
white writing. “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.”
Wow. This is a powerful clip. A great reminder of all that really goes on
behind the scenes in the beauty industry.
But in addition to being a great conversation piece, it’s also a clever
Trojan Horse for Dove products.
—————
The media in general, and the beauty industry in particular, tend to paint
a skewed picture of women. Models are usually tall and skinny. Magazines
show women with flawless complexions and perfect teeth. Ads scream that
their products can transform you into a better you. Younger face, fuller lips,
softer skin.
Not surprisingly, these messages have a hugely negative impact on how
women see themselves. Only 2 percent of women describe themselves as
beautiful. More than two-thirds believe that the media has set an unrealistic
standard of beauty that they’ll never be able to achieve. No matter how hard
they try. This feeling of not living up to expectations even affects young
girls. Dark-haired girls wish they were blond. Redheads hate their freckles.
Piper’s video, entitled “Evolution,” gives a behind-the-scenes look at
what goes into making the images we are bombarded with every day. It
reminds people that these stunning-looking women are not real. They are
fantasies, fictions only loosely based on actual people. Concocted using all
the magic that digital editing can provide. The clip is as raw and shocking
as it is thought provoking.
But the film wasn’t sponsored by concerned citizens or an industry
watchdog group. Piper made the film in coordination with Dove, maker of
health and beauty products, as part of its “Campaign for Real Beauty.” This
was Dove’s effort to celebrate the natural physical variations we all have
and then to inspire women to be confident and comfortable with
themselves. Another ad for soap featured real women of all shapes and
sizes, rather than the rail-thin models people are used to seeing.
Not surprisingly, the campaign sparked a great deal of discussion. What
does it mean to be beautiful? How are the media shaping these perceptions?
What can we do to make it better?
The campaign created more than just controversy. In addition to making
the issue more Public, and giving people an excuse to talk about a topic that
would have otherwise been private, the campaign also got them thinking,
and talking, about Dove.
The company was commended for using real people in its campaigns and
for getting people to talk about this complicated but important issue. And
“Evolution,” which cost only a little over one hundred thousand dollars to
make, got more than 16 million views. It netted the company hundreds of
millions of dollars in exposure. The clip won numerous industry awards and
more than tripled the website traffic the company received from Dove’s
2006 Super Bowl ad. Dove experienced double-digit sales growth.
“Evolution” was widely shared because Dove latched onto something
people already wanted to talk about: unrealistic beauty norms. It’s a highly
emotional issue, but something so controversial that people might have
been afraid to bring up otherwise. “Evolution” brought it out in the open. It
let people air their grievances and think about solutions. And along the way
the brand benefited. Dove got people talking by starting a conversation
about beauty norms—but the brand was smuggled in as part of the
discussion. By creating an emotional story, Dove created a vessel that
carried its brand along for the ride.
And that brings us to the story of Ron Bensimhon.
MAKING VIRALITY VALUABLE
On August 16, 2004, Canadian Ron Bensimhon carefully shed his warm-up
pants and stepped to the edge of the three-meter springboard. He had
attempted dives from this height many times before, but never during an
event of this magnitude. It was the Athens Olympics. The world’s biggest
stage for sport and the pinnacle of athletic competition. But Ron did not
seem fazed. He shook off the jitters and raised his hands high above his
head. As the crowd roared, he leapt off the end of the board and completed
a full belly flop.
A belly flop? In the Olympics? Surely Ron must have been devastated.
But as he emerged from the water he seemed calm, happy even. He swam
around for a few moments, hamming it up for the audience and then slowly
swam to the side of the pool, where he was met by a platoon of Olympic
officials and security guards.
Ron had broken into the Olympics. He wasn’t actually on the Canadian
swim team. In fact, he wasn’t an Olympic athlete at all. He was the self-
proclaimed most famous streaker in the world, and he had crashed the
Olympics as part of a publicity stunt.
—————
When Ron jumped off the springboard, he wasn’t naked, but he wasn’t
wearing swim trunks either. He wore a blue tutu and white polka dot tights.
And emblazoned across his chest was the name of an Internet casino,
GoldenPalace.com
.
This wasn’t the first Golden Palace publicity stunt (though the company
did say that Ron’s stunt was done without its knowledge). In 2004 it bid
$28,000 on eBay for a grilled cheese sandwich that some people believed
displayed an image of the Virgin Mary. In 2005 it gave a woman $15,000 to
change her name to
GoldenPalace.com
. But the stunt with the “fool in the
pool,” as Bensimhon has been called, was one of the biggest. Millions of
people were watching, and the story got picked up by news outlets around
the world. It also got a huge amount of word-of-mouth chatter. Someone
crashing the Olympics and diving into a pool in a tutu? What a story. Pretty
remarkable.
But as the days ticked by, people didn’t talk about the casino. Sure, some
people who saw Bensimhon’s jump went to the website to try to figure out
what was going on. But most people who shared the story talked about the
stunt, not the website. They talked about whether the interruption threw off
the Chinese divers, who flubbed their final dive right after the trick and lost
the gold medal. They talked about security at the Olympics and how
someone could slip through so easily at such a major event. And they talked
about Bensimhon’s trial and whether he would serve jail time.
What they didn’t talk about was
GoldenPalace.com
. Why?
—————
Marketing experts talk about “the fool in the pool” as one of the worst
guerrilla marketing failures of all time. Usually they deride it for having
disrupted the competition and ruining the moment for athletes who had
trained all their lives. They also point out that it led to Bensimhon being
arrested and fined. These are all good reasons to consider Bensimhon’s
belly flop, well, a flop.
But I’d like to add another one to the list. The stunt had nothing to do
with the product it was trying to promote.
Yes, people talked about the stunt, but they didn’t talk about the casino.
Polka dot tights, tutus, and breaking into the Olympics to dive into a pool
are all great story material. That’s why people talked about them. So if the
goal was to get people to think more about security at the Olympics or get
attention for a new style of tights, the stunt succeeded.
But it had nothing to do with casinos. Not even in the slightest.
So people talked about the remarkable story but left the casino out
because it was irrelevant. They might have mentioned that Bensimhon was
sponsored by someone but didn’t mention the casino either because it was
so irrelevant that they forgot, or because it didn’t make the story any better.
It’s like building a magnificent Trojan Horse but forgetting to put anything
inside.
—————
When trying to generate word of mouth, many people forget one
important detail. They focus so much on getting people to talk that they
ignore the part that really matters: what people are talking about.
That’s the problem with creating content that is unrelated to the product
or idea it is meant to promote. There’s a big difference between people
talking about content and people talking about the company, organization,
or person that created that content.
Evian’s famous “Roller Babies” video had the same problem. The clip
shows what appear to be diaper-wearing babies doing tricks on roller skates.
They jump over one another, hop over fences, and do synchronized moves,
all to the beat of the song “Rapper’s Delight.” The babies’ bodies are
clearly animated, but their faces look real, making the video remarkable to
watch. The video got more than 50 million views, and Guinness World
Records declared it the most viewed online advertisement in history.
But while you might think that all this attention would benefit the brand,
it didn’t. That same year Evian lost market share and sales dropped almost
25 percent.
The problem? Roller-skating babies are cute, but they have nothing to do
with Evian. So people shared the clip, but that didn’t benefit the brand.
—————
The key, then, is to not only make something viral, but also make it
valuable to the sponsoring company or organization. Not just virality but
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