The Importance of Brand Resonance for Virality
One important lesson we have learned in building viral apps for brands is about brand resonance. Brand resonance basically means how strongly do consumers emotionally react to your brand. As examples, a brand with high brand resonance is, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and a brand with low resonance is Unilever. To have a brand spread virally on Facebook it is required that the message it is sending have a high brand resonance.
In our post on the Anatomy of the Viral Loop, we introduced the four stages of viral: See, Click, Desire to Share, and Share. High Brand resonance amplifies the power of the viral loop.
Effect on See Stage
The See stage of the viral loop is amplified because iconic images and text can catch consumers eye. The breast cancer cause uses the pink ribbon to do just this. Every year in October, pink ribbons are plastered all over grocery stores and magazines. The icon brings an instant emotional response into anyone who has any personal connection to the cause.
Effect on Click Stage
On Facebook, newsfeed stories only have a second or two to convince consumers to click into their content. Stories that are able to invoke an instant emotional response, are much more likely to be clicked.
Effect on Desire to Share Stage
After the user has engaged with the content, their desire to reshare the content with their friends is also dependent on the strength of the emotions they are feeling about the content. In our article Why do People Share?, we describe ‘emotional venting’ as one of the roots of sharing. A viral app shouldn’t need to extort people into sharing, but it should simply give them vents (eg. appropriately placed share buttons) for emotions invoked by the content.
Effect on Share Stage
The share stage is unaffected, because this stage is primarily about the accesibility of sharing channels.
Next we will be writing about how brands can increase the resonance of their messages, and allow boring brands to be viral.
Learn more behind the science of virality in this free webinar: The Secrets of Virality