What Went Wrong With the Digital Death Campaign

Yesterday, I wrote a post about the celebrity Digital Death campaign that was intended to raise money for AIDS relief in India and Africa.  I had no idea that on the very same day, it all ended when Stewart Rahr, a pharmaceutical executive handed over $500,000 at the request of the celebs enabling them to jump back on Twitter.  I found out through Facebook when a friend,  Mateo Gutierrez , had posted a NY Post article about the news.

I don’t know why, but I often say or do things that are (by sheer coincidence) related to other events that I had no knowledge of.  I get this feedback from other people quite a bit.

The main site for the Digital Death campaign is Buylife.org. Today they were able to announce their accomplishment of reaching the $1,000,000 mark. 

With your help we raised over $1,000,000 to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa and India. Your generous donations will help bring critical care and medicine to the millions affected by this horrible disease. But so many more still need help. Please continue to BUY LIFE – the one thing none of us can alive without.

Here is a screenshot from their homepage today.

A Dose of Realism

The NY Post article mentioned that the stars were frustrated by how long it was taking to reach the 1M mark.  They thought it would take 24 hours to a week at the most.

I am not sure how they reached this conclusion. But this type of scenario is all too familiar in the world of marketing.  It’s natural for people to want to know how long it will take for a campaign to accomplish it’s goals. It’s also common for marketers to come up with projections that only amount to wishful thinking.

The truth is that most projects will experience delays, especially when it comes to getting people to act.

Because of this, I wrote a previous post about anticipating realistic outcomes.

Lesson Learned:  No one can serve as a fortune teller before the start of a campaign, unless the exact variables and results have been repeated numerous times in the past. Also there is a dynamic called the Law of Unintended Consequences, where “actions of people…always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended.”- Rob Norton, author and consultant.

Behaviorism Helps Explain

Most of what happens in the world of marketing and social media can be explained through the findings of research psychology. These arenas have yet to coalesce.

The word “research” is not one to be taken as sheer fluff.  Experiments in this area involve researchers who repeat trials over and over until a result is statistically reliable (not due to chance). The principles of behavior have been studied in this fashion. They weren’t just made up.

According to these theories, behaviors are universally driven by the consequences that follow. If you want to increase the frequency of a particular behavior,  it has to be met with a consequence that is valuable to the subject.

The Digital Death campaign wanted internet users to make donations within a short time frame.  In this scenario, there was no consequence for the targeted behavior (texting to donate).

“I am not going to tweet unless you donate” is contingency called extinction, when you with hold a consequence altogether.  According to research,  this will reduce the likelihood of a particular behavior, instead of increasing it.

A Celebrity Campaign That Illustrates Positive Reinforcement

Twitchange is a charity auction site powered by celebrity influence.  Participants donate. In exchange  their favorite celebrity retweets, follows or mentions them, depending on a bidding process.

So the behavior of donating receives the positive reinforcement of being acknowledged by a famous celeb. This works in alignment with behavioral laws.

This probably explains how the Haitian relief campaign managed to receive over $1.5 million for emergency tents after the earthquake in Port Au Prince. More

Lesson Learned:  Behavior operates according to dynamics that have been studied by researchers. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Create strategies that make sense according to behavior principles.

Final Thoughts

Yeah, I am a little disappointed that the celebrities of the Digital Death campaign didn’t hold their ground. But I guess there is a bright side to many things in life. Even if Stewart Rahr gave the pivotal contribution, at least the targeted level of donations became more quickly available to help AIDS victims.

What Marshmallow Can Teach You

Success is largely determined by one’s ability to delay gratification. This applies to just about any endeavor. Being the kind of person who likes to observe things, I noticed that social media and online marketing are no exceptions.

The Marshmallow Test & Delayed Gratification

Walter Mischel, a Standford psychologist, conducted a delayed gratification study in the 1960′s on a group of kids. He gave each of them a marshmallow. They were told they could earn another one for being patient, if they refrained from eating it (for 20 minutes) until the instructor came back.

Some of the kids ate their marshmallow right away. Others resisted their impulse and waited. Mischel followed up with both groups 14 years later.

The kids who immediately ate their marshmallow were described in these later years, by parents and teachers as “stubborn, prone to envy and easily frustrated.” (fitzvillafuerte.com)

The kids who waited were “more self-motivated, educationally successful and emotionally  intelligent.” (fitzvillafuerte.com) They even scored higher on their SAT’s. You can read more details  about their career success as adults in newyorker.com.

Here is a reproduction of the marshmallow test:

Gratification Delay and Online Marketing

There are 2 ways to acquire new business/ traffic. Please note, I am not saying that one is better than the other. I am  just saying that there are 2 routes for marketing. Ideally, both should  be done for optimal results.

1. short term tactics
2. long term tactics.

Patience for number 2 is obviously needed.

The Short Term Path
Examples of short term tactics include:

• email marketing
• pay per click
• SEO

Short term tactics give you fast  results. But guess what? They are done by practically everyone. Eventually, these do hit a point of diminishing returns. When you rely too heavily on them, you lose opportunities to develop and differentiate your brand. In the eyes of your target market, you are just a name in a sea of comparative companies.

The Long Term Path
What I call long term tactics are those things that strike most companies as frivolous, fluffy, nice to haves.  At first, they seem like a waste of time. But they are all ways to present unique philosophies & perspectives.  And they allow you to entertain, engage and develop quality relationships that motivate brand loyalty & greater visibility and recognition. Sounds fluffy? Maybe at first. But long term strategies are certainly not fruitless.

Examples:

• regular blogging
• team brainstorming
• white papers
• person to person networking
• professional photography
• thoughtfully produced video content
• feedback gathering to evolve your offerings
• podcasts
• social network tools, community building etc

Oh I can hear the groans and moans already. After all, most businesses just want to eat their marshmallows RIGHT NOW. Many of them don’t want to wait for more candy at a later point in time.

When done correctly with the needs of customers fully in mind, these kind of strategies build valuable sentiment. I can just imagine some readers vehemently resisting this concept. What does touchy-feely, sentiment have to do with business?

Here is a quote by Maya Angelou which sum up the answer really well.

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said,  people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you  made them feel.

And if the sentiment is strong and compelling enough, they might even refer you to their friends. Remember, this is where word of mouth, viral marketing starts.

In the eyes of prospective customers, users, members etc, do you want to be remembered or forgotten?

Again, I am not saying you should ditch all short term marketing strategies. They just need to be balanced out with the foundation building that long term strategies require. When you reach the point of diminishing returns, there will be no need to worry if you’ve laid the groundwork for increasing returns to come your way.

On this final note, here are more words of wisdom by Maya Angelou.

“All great achievements take time.”

 

What Does Psychology Have To Do With Social Media?

 

 

“Psychology is the study of the mind, thought, feeling and behavior”-Wikipedia

 

My major in college was Psychobiology. For the purposes of this blog, I am not going to talk about biology. But I’d like to discuss different topics in Psychology and how research in this area matters for social media.

 

Sure, there are many supposed experts in this social sphere. But does their collective knowledge represent all that ever needs to be known about harnessing the mysterious (I’m being facetious) powers of social media?

 

It surprises me that research findings in Psychology have yet to really interface with the realm of social media. This does take place to some extent. But applying academic research does not seem to be common practice.

 

Basic Questions in Psychology

 

The area of psychology is divided into branches. There basic inquiries are very much relevant to online marketing campaigns.

 

• Cognitive Psychology:  How people solve problems, think, remember, forget and utilize language.

• Perceptual Psychology- How people make sense out of the information they come across

• Social Psychology- “How people think, influence and relate to one another.” (socialpsychology.org)

• Psychology of Behavior-What causes people to behave in a certain way?

• Psychology of Learning- How people learn. What factors optimize learning experiences?

 

Why Research Findings Are Useful

 

Research experiments involve large numbers of subjects. Therefore the findings are not whimsical guesses. Statistics are used to determine whether or not the outcome of these experiments are due to chance or the variable in question. These two factors help ensure that conclusions are reliable. Reliable conclusions allow us to make predictions on a broad range of situations.

 

Being familiar with research literature is extremely useful if you want to make better decisions with social media strategies, instead of falling for various myths.