DRUGS DATA & TECH Has marketing utopia arrived?

Traditional marketing is being turned on its head Conventionally, brands have relied heavily on great creative to evoke consumer emotion. However, the ability to uncover the ‘right now’ emotional state of consumers is now the key for brands to activate successful advertising that truly connects. Three factors are emerging as the key to realising marketing utopia: drugs, data and technology.

The drug is dopamine It stimulates a consumer’s heightened emotional state of desire.

The data is social sharing data

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Neuromarketing research is proving that emotions are the most powerful drivers of consumer decision-making.

What, when and how consumers share the things that really matter to them.

RadiumOne has partnered with Dr Peter Steidl, renowned brand marketing strategist at Neurothinking, to explore his work as it applies to the ‘sharing economy’ – where consumer interests and passions are shared across all online platforms.

The technology is real-time media delivery

This paper explores the relationship between sharing online, and a consumer’s emotional state. It looks at what a consumer feels at the time of sharing and receiving content of interest, and then, what drives them to engage with shared content.

The ability to activate marketing in the ‘right now’ – the exact moment consumers are showing us their emotional state and passion points.

RadiumOne | Drugs, data and tech. Has marketing utopia arrived?

We then bring these insights into the world of marketing and examine the opportunity for marketers to align their advertising with the mood of consumers in the ‘right now’. This project demonstrates that social sharing is more than an indicator of advertising receptiveness, it is a powerful trigger for marketers to connect with consumers in their ultimate moment of openness.

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THE DRUG: DOPAMINE Why do you, your friends, your partner, your family and your colleagues spend so much time on social media? Why do we become loyal to certain brands yet have no affection for others? Why do we buy things that we don’t need?

RadiumOne | Drugs, data and tech. Has marketing utopia arrived?

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Humans are driven by dopamine; a naturally occurring ‘feel good’ transmitter. While dopamine is not actually a drug, it behaves like one by driving addictive and pleasureseeking behaviour. Neuroscience tells us that dopamine releasing in the brain is at its strongest when we are expecting something positive to occur. Our expectations – our ability to imagine the reward – typically have more impact than the actual experience itself.

Every time a person responds, writes on our Facebook wall, likes something, invites us to an event or comments on our post, we receive a dopamine ‘hit’. When we experience a dopamine release we feel good and once this feeling subsides we have a desire to trigger it again. But, as with many forms of addiction, we are never quite satisfied. When we experience dopamine, we are hungry for more. What is social sharing in this context?

This is why people share information online and post on social media. Social sharing provides the same release of dopamine that we get from other pleasurable experiences such as sex, eating and exercise. Every time we post, share, like, comment or send an invitation online, we are creating an expectation. We expect a response, we expect recognition, we expect to be valued and acknowledged by others. We like to be involved in sharing and engaging with the latest news and the most interesting stories that are relevant to our lives. We feel a sense of belonging and advance our concept of self through sharing.

The sharing of online content across all social networks and ‘Dark Social’ channels – links and articles shared via email and instant messaging services.

Dopamine is the reason people visit their social site of choice as soon as they wake up in the morning, before they go to sleep at night and hundreds of times in between. Fifty per cent of Australians check social media first thing in the morning, and last thing at night1.

Sensis Social Media Report May 2015

1

RadiumOne | Drugs, data and tech. Has marketing utopia arrived?

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Why and how Australians share online Males

Females

Neuroscience has found evidence that males and females differ in terms of what drives their online behaviour. Without gender stereotyping, let’s briefly look at some of the characteristics:

Reasons for sharing content online in Australia Photos/images

M F

To share something of emotional value

M F

Tweets/status updates

M F

To answer a question

M F

To obtain advice from others

M F

To define myself to others and say something about my values and personality

M F

To share something of financial value

M F

80% 89% 37% 55% 19% 25% 42% 35% 27% 22% 16% 23% 6%

14%

Females, on the other hand, have higher levels of oestrogen and oxytocin and feel emotions more intensely than men. They are driven to bond deeply and build strong relationships. Women seek greater ‘social intimacy’ through their sharing behaviour.

Reasons for sharing brand content in Australia Has entertainment value

M F

Has financial value

M F

21%

Helps answer a question

M F

24% 16%

Has emotional value

M F

46% 55% 31%

13% 23%

Platforms used to share content online in Australia Dark Social Only

M F

Email

M F

Social networks

M F

Text messaging

M F

Instant messaging

M F

Forums

M F

Males have higher levels of dopamine and testosterone than females, which characteristically drives them to be more aggressive and self-centred. As such, men are more likely to display competitive online social behaviour. Men have a stronger drive to explore socially than women, meaning they are less ‘safe’ in their social sharing behaviour.

43% 28% 84% 79% 57% 72% 59% 66% 39% 47%

With these key differences in mind, we conclude that men are driven to share content through a need to explore. Women are more likely to share content that confirms membership to their informal peer group, to chat about the content they are sharing rather than themselves, and to post more emotionbased content.

So, how can we benefit from social sharing data? Building sharing events into any marketing strategy is a valuable step in realising this opportunity. The benefits and insights gained can ultimately inform a brand’s entire marketing approach and improve results. Let’s look at some of the neuroscience insights that enable us to understand consumer behaviour at a deeper level: ‘Going shopping’ versus ‘doing the shopping’. A consumer’s goal focus differs when they ‘go shopping’ (e.g. looking at clothes or generally browsing) to when they must ‘do their shopping’ (e.g. the weekly supermarket trip). When a consumer ‘goes shopping’, they are more receptive to messages and opportunities as their goal is to explore and find something interesting and different. When they ‘do their shopping’, they are generally only receptive to messages that allow them to complete the current task faster, at a lower cost or with less effort. In this mode, consumers are goal-oriented and the goal is to complete the (typically unrewarding) shopping task as quickly and effectively as possible.

16% 10%

RadiumOne in partnership with TPoll October 2014

RadiumOne | Drugs, data and tech. Has marketing utopia arrived?

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The same principles apply in an online environment: when consumers explore and share they are receptive to messages and open to new ideas and suggestions. Visiting a social media site to check if anything has happened since the last visit is exploratory behaviour.

Goals and emotions drive success.

When consumers search, however, their goal is to find an answer and thus anything that allows them to find what they are looking for faster or with less effort is welcome. They tend to be less open to diverting their attention to other matters.

Advertising that is aligned with the mood of a consumer has significantly more impact than a message that is in conflict with this mood. For example, a car advertisement that features the design aspects of a car is more effective when viewed in a design context (e.g. during a designfocussed television show like Grand Designs), than in a program or feature that focuses on the performance and technical details of cars, such as Top Gear.

It is important to note that consumers sometimes search to explore – for example, to research destinations or to find a new car. In this case they fall into the exploratory group as their goal is not to get a quick answer but to indulge in exploratory behaviour. Goal Congruence: Convincing consumers that an offer addresses one or more of their goals. Most goals are ‘nonconscious’ i.e. we are not always aware of the goals that ultimately drive our decisions.

Goals drive consumer decisionmaking. Consumers will not buy a product or service that does not address their goals. However, moods can impact goals as well as the receptiveness of consumers to messages.

Of course, traditional media planning routinely aligns advertising content and channels to some degree, but it is very difficult to achieve mood congruence because of the random nature of advertising placements. An advertisement shown before a brand’s commercial may alter the mood that was created by the television

RadiumOne | Drugs, data and tech. Has marketing utopia arrived?

program. The application of mood congruence principles is certainly valuable, yet historically difficult to execute effectively. Until Now. Mood Congruence: Occurs when the consumer’s mood is matched with the mood generated by an advertisement or other marketing exposure.

Through activating real-time social data signals, we can now determine and act on what consumers are doing and feeling when they are exposed to advertising messages. This is a game-changing moment in realising the mood congruence marketing opportunity.

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It’s one small step to share, and not a giant leap to purchase. Neuromarketing research shows us that people who take a small step are more likely to take a bigger step straight afterwards. Animal shelters have great difficulty in adopting out kittens. Uber ran a promotion on National Cat Day in February 2015, inviting customers to order a ‘Kitten Car’ through the app: a kitten from a local animal shelter would arrive at the consumer’s door to play for 15 minutes. The intention of the promotion was to activate a fun way to promote feline welfare. However, for those people who took the ‘first step’ (bringing a kitten into their home or workplace), it increased the likelihood of attachment and, in turn, the successful adoption of a kitten. The campaign had exactly that effect. Globally, participating shelters saw increased donations and adoptions. What this tells us is that taking a first step – regardless of how small it might be – will create an affinity with the event, brand or activity.

RadiumOne | Drugs, data and tech. Has marketing utopia arrived?

The consumer becomes more receptive to taking another, bigger step in the same direction. When we expose consumers to a marketing message that relates to content they have shared, they are significantly more receptive and motivated to making a full commitment. Sharing content is a ‘small step’. It costs the consumer nothing, triggers a dopamine release and offers another dopamine hit when somebody responds in a positive way. At the same time, the act of sharing makes the consumer more receptive to taking a bigger step, namely to purchase a brand’s product or service. It makes sense to target consumers who share content that is relevant to a product or service – they are far more likely to be emotionally engaged and receptive to an offer at that time. The sharing occasion as the trigger for marketing activity unlocks a valuable new prospecting channel. Endowment Principle: Consumers will value something they have invested in and thus made ‘their own’, more than something they have not yet made a commitment to.

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Another great example of content sharing triggering successful marketing activity can be seen in the lead up to One Direction’s most recent Australian tour.

Nine Live campaign for One Direction Australian Tour 2015 Conversions

One Direction announced their On the Road Again 2015 tour in May 2014, with several shows selling out within hours.

Shares of One Direction related content Conversion Rate %

Nine Live then activated social sharing data to segment and target relevant audiences to drive sales across all venues. A huge volume of articles and social content sharing about One Direction kicked off again their album release on 17 November. Sharing then spiked again around 26 November when they arrived in Australia to perform at the Aria Awards. The increase in sharing behaviour, and subsequent interest and intent data, correlated directly to a spike in paid media results. The relationship between ticket transactions and content sharing continued steadily throughout the year in the lead up to their February 2015 tour.

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There are a number of other principles at play here that can aid marketing success. We have ‘mirror neurons’ that allow us to feel the emotions that other people feel. This is how we can feel the anger, fear, happiness and other emotions delivered by entertainment experiences. Our mirror neurons are more likely to be activated when we are looking at people and content we relate to. Activating mirror neurons will boost the impact of our marketing offer. We also know that the brain is designed to take shortcuts. This is driven by the part of our brain where emotions reside. This part of the brain developed while humankind was living in

a hostile natural environment and the brain was designed to boost our chances of survival – it is often referred to as our ‘old brain’. This is why consumers take shortcuts when making purchase decisions. One of these shortcuts is to follow what others are doing. Behavioural economists call this ‘social validation’: when many consumers engage with or buy something we assume it is worthwhile doing the same, eliminating the need to carefully consider the activity or offer. Given these two powerful tendencies, we can achieve improved marketing outcomes when we show that a large group of people are following our call-to-action. It’s even better when our offer triggers mirror neurons.

Content sharing opportunities for marketers • M  anaging sharing – that is, leveraging sharing data from across the Web and mobile, as well as creating compelling sharing opportunities for owned content – is the first step in getting consumers across the line.

We know that consumers go through a number of phases when they share: • T  hey experience a dopamine release which makes them feel good about their sharing initiative • Not  long afterwards, as the released dopamine dissipates, they will feel a desire for another dopamine hit • T  his makes them more receptive to any proposition they hope might deliver a dopamine release (note that this process takes place in the non-conscious so consumers are typically not aware of why they are more receptive) and; • If the message we deliver is aligned with the content they shared earlier, we know that they are more open to our offer than consumers who have not shared relevant content.

RadiumOne | Drugs, data and tech. Has marketing utopia arrived?

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THE DATA: SOCIAL CONTENT SHARING Real-time social data is placing the power around a brand’s image or reputation in the hands, and hearts, of consumers.

RadiumOne | Drugs, data and tech. Has marketing utopia arrived?

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The great news is that brands can now gather and activate this data, not only from their owned media assets, but also from across the open Web and mobile as it relates to their product or service offering. Marketing has long been an activity where exceptional creative work and smart media buying strategies sat at the core of attempting to connect with consumers. Now, instead of brands seeking to evoke emotion, consumers are showing us their mood, their real-time passion, which becomes the new trigger for brands to activate from. Going down this path allows us to use sharing as an indicator of receptiveness, but it also opens up the possibility of tailoring and delivering our message based on the mood of specific consumer segments most primed to target. We are using social sharing data not only to reach the right consumers at the right time wherever they are, but also to deliver the right message based on what the consumer has revealed via their sharing behaviour.

The power of ‘Dark Social’ in social sharing data Research published by RadiumOne in November 2014 found that Australians share and click on more privately shared content than most regions in the world.

‘Dark Social’ sharing is the copying and pasting of content and links from websites into email or instant message services, and selectively sharing it with friends, family and colleagues. For each Dark Social share, the content and the people it is being shared with are selected for a very specific reason. This is very different to the data collected from public social networks, where sharing centres around what an individual considers suitable for public examination. Gathering and activating Dark Social data today is an easy and inexpensive process for any brand.

Building sharing events into the core of real-time marketing strategies is the first step in realising the opportunity that social sharing data offers. 8% 23%

10% 31%

WORLDWIDE

Percentage of shares by sharing channel Dark Social



Facebook

All Other Social

7% 16%

NORTH AMERICA

EUROPE

69%

59%

77%

4%

7%

8%

21%

19% AUSTRALIA

11% UK

75%

FRANCE

75%

81%

Source: RadiumOne Po.st social data, August 1-28, 2014

Brands such as the AFL are starting to appreciate the value in gathering and activating social sharing data from the perspective of both marketing return on investment and consumer insights.

RadiumOne | Drugs, data and tech. Has marketing utopia arrived?

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AFL case study – the ‘Don’t go quietly’ finals campaign 2014 After the core fans of the teams in the 2014 AFL finals had bought tickets to the final games of the season, the AFL’s challenge was to fill stadiums with a broader spectrum of passionate sports enthusiasts. We know that Australians share large volumes of sporting related content and that passion and emotion peak around finals time. The objective of the ‘Don’t go quietly’ campaign was to leverage social data to support real-time paid media investment, and to gain visibility and insights around the sharing behaviour that occurs outside of social network sharing. RadiumOne was able to prospect and convert fans across varying levels of engagement from die-hard fanatics, through to those who were casually interested. The ‘Don’t go quietly’ campaign for the Toyota AFL Finals series saw impressive direct results, including very strong ROI of 1:24.

RadiumOne | Drugs, data and tech. Has marketing utopia arrived?

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THE TECH: REAL-TIME MEDIA DELIVERY Now we know a consumer’s real-time passion points through their sharing, interacting and posting – we must act on these insights in the ‘right now’.

RadiumOne | Drugs, data and tech. Has marketing utopia arrived?

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Once consumers have shared relevant content, there is an opportunity to engage with them online in the ‘right now’ sweet spot. Speed is critical and timing is everything. We now know when consumers will be most responsive to an offer because they have taken that small step (sharing content with others who may have the same interests

or intentions) and that they are in the prime emotional state of experiencing a dopamine release. Sharing opportunities represent the small steps we want consumers to take to be more receptive to taking a bigger step – to purchase or engage with the brand in a meaningful way. In the case of the Tigerair campaign, the ‘sweet spot’ to conversion was

within the first 20-minutes where 30% of all ticket sales occurred. We can safely assume that when intending to book a flight, consumers already have a relevant goal in mind – holidays, wanting to experience something new, repeating a positive travel or flight experience, wanting to meet up with people elsewhere whose company they enjoy, or having a romantic or exciting time away.

Airfare sales can always be effectively promoted during certain periods – such as school holidays and long weekends. However, by activating real-time content sharing data, it is now possible to create events with a consumer’s sharing behaviour acting as the trigger, to deliver communications that create new leads at the top of the purchasing funnel.

Tigerair promotion May 2015 Conversions Shares of travel related content Conversion Rate %

May 12

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RadiumOne | Drugs, data and tech. Has marketing utopia arrived?

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This occurs through real-time media buying across social, video, mobile and display channels. Speed is critical when it comes to connecting with relevant consumers in a primed emotional state, wherever they are across the open Web and mobile. RadiumOne’s August 2014 research found that targeted advertising delivered within the first hour after a consumer signals ‘intent’ results in conversion rates up to seven times higher than they are in the following hour.

In Tigerair’s case, the sweet spot was the first 20-minutes after an impression had been viewed – over one third (34%) of all flights booked across the campaign were within the first hour of them being exposed to an advertisement about a flight promotion related to their sharing of content related to travel.

34% of conversions in first 20-minutes Tigerair discount promotion, May 2015 Conversion Latency

1400 1200

The ‘sweet spot’

1000 Customer Purchases

Programmatic advertising technology is harnessing consumer emotion in realtime, giving brands the ability to connect with their audience when they are right in the passion ‘sweet spot’ of engagement.

800 600 400 200 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 Minutes

RadiumOne | Drugs, data and tech. Has marketing utopia arrived?

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CONCLUSIONS & RECOMMENDATIONS Most ‘utopias’ are set in the future, when it is believed that advancements in science and technology will get us to a highly desirable or near perfect state. Marketing technology has brought us to a place where we can meet consumers in the ‘right now’ - with messaging that we explicitly know they are interested in.

RadiumOne | Drugs, data and tech. Has marketing utopia arrived?

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The traditional holy grail of marketing was the ability to precisely reach valuable consumers who already have, or are about to have, a need to purchase a product or service. For years, marketing has sought to make creative messaging so enticing that it successfully gains the attention, interest and desire of consumers who had no current need or want for that product or service. The merging of neuroscience and actionable social data has brought us to a place where marketing – which has always sought to evoke emotion through

great creative – can now be guided and triggered by the exact thing we are trying to evoke: consumer emotion. Developments in the area of tech-enabled neuromarketing are only going to accelerate, as brands take the initiative to unlock the value of sharing.

The time for marketers to act is ‘right now’.

These tips will enable all marketers to unlock the value of sharing: • M  ake it easy for consumers to share your content and for you to track the activity; use smart sharing widgets and URL shortening software on owned media and for all social activity • A  ctivate the data gathered from the sharing of your content across all channels, including native content. Ensure that the data is easily actionable for paid media targeting rather than restricted to analytical and reporting purposes • W  ork with providers who can gather and act on explicit versus inferred social data in real-time (not in days, weeks or months). This ensures you are engaging consumers while they are in the ‘sweet spot’ of receptiveness • S  elect software providers who protect against data leakage to third parties, and; • G  ain visibility into all relevant social sharing, including Dark Social, enabling you to then connect with those audiences outside of your owned and earned media environments.

RadiumOne | Drugs, data and tech. Has marketing utopia arrived?

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About Dr Peter Steidl Peter Steidl has a remarkable blend of intellectual, commercial and creative thinking skills that make him incredibly unique. He has worked as a marketing academic, a researcher, an educator, an author and a speaker. So he understands brand theory. But he has also worked as an advertising, brand identity and media strategist; a business consultant; and a brand facilitator. So he’s worked at the coal-face and seen theory put into practice. He has worked with big businesses and big brands across a myriad of categories and in many different countries. In addition to this vast experience, Peter continues to have an insatiable appetite to do work that matters. At the heart of Peter’s skills is his genuine understanding and passion for brands. But he never looks at a brand in isolation – he always looks at brands in context of the category, the business, the competition, the product, the consumer and the communications – and he advises on opportunities to improve in all of these areas, whether you ask for them or not.

RadiumOne | Drugs, data and tech. Has marketing utopia arrived?

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About RadiumOne RadiumOne unlocks the value of sharing – connecting brands with consumers based on their ‘right now’ emotions and passions. The most effective way to track, gather and activate sharing data from paid, owned and earned channels is through the use of smart sharing software. RadiumOne’s Po.st® Sharing Widgets and Po.st® Link Shortener, help brands, agencies, rights holders and publishers to gather and activate their own social data and then expand upon it with the company’s

PRODUCTS patented ShareGraph™ technology – a form of looka-like modelling with the fundament difference that it’s based on real world connections between real consumers. RadiumOne ensures that all customer data is protected. Most importantly, all sharing data captured can be used to fuel upper funnel paid media prospecting activities on a single platform. Implementation of RadiumOne’s suite of data gathering software is a fast and easy process for any size organization. There are no license fees or other charges for the software, RadiumOne’s commercial model is tied to paid marketing investment.

Po.st® Sharing Widgets offer key features including fast load time, fully customisable look and feel, and marketleading social analytics.

Po.st® Link Shortener is built with the paid media needs of marketers in mind. It delivers persona-level data capture and activation.

RadiumOne Mobile Connect leverages proprietary data, vast targeting capabilities, and cross-channel activation methods to connect online and mobile advertising, while driving engagement, retention, and monetisation.

RadiumOne | Drugs, data and tech. Has marketing utopia arrived?

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DELIVERING UNIQUE INSIGHT LED OPTIMISATION AND REPORTING

To contact your local RadiumOne team for more information, or to have our team implement the RadiumOne Po.st ® software, please share your details at [email protected]

ACROSS ALL DEVICES AND CHANNELS

CONNECTING WITH THEM THROUGH REAL-TIME PAID MEDIA

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WE TRACK CONTENT SHARING WHILE IT’S HAPPENING

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unlocks the value of sharing, connecting brands with consumers based on their ‘right now’ emotions and passions.

5. AND THEIR INTIMATE SOCIAL NETWORKS

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4. FINDING YOUR MOST VALUABLE AUDIENCE

ALL TYPES OF SHARING ACROSS ALL CHANNELS

MILLIONS OF DAILY SHARING EVENTS