The Invisible Herd?

My copy of Mark Earl's Herd arrived today. 

It was awesome getting a chance to chat with him last month.  I think Mark is dead on when he tells us to stop looking for "influencers" and to focus on the human traits that drive us to spread memes.

The key is to identify WHY people should be or already are talking about and spreading your product, brand, etc. And yet it is so easy to get caught up in WHO is talking or WHO we want to be talking.

Mark implies that we are just herd mammals deep down and I think he's right.  The coolest part of the herd mentality is that it does not follow any one individual, contrary to myth.  Rather, each member follows the visible assumptions of those immediately around them.  And from this simple copying emerges complex systems or ecologies of behavior.

Which is why I find it so amazing that campaigns go out of their way to not be visible.  I can't tell you how many campaigns I've participated in on Facebook that don't ensure that my participation is made visible to my friends - update my feed, allow me to tweet it, etc.  The first step to being copy-able is that one be visible.

But what if there is no herd?  Or what if everyone just does what the celebrities tell them?

Recently there was a great Facebook experiment that was clearly false, but the researchers ensured that [large numbers] of people had already joined the group.  People continued to join in crazy numbers.  And when asked why they joined, they said that they figured it had to be true because so many people were already in there. [link: CBC Spark Episode ]

The herd exists.

If you are going to ask "Who," then the who question to answer is "who do people copy and why?"  And while we would all love to believe we copy the celebrities and the A list bloggers, the reality is we follow the majority and we follow our friends.

Today I saw seven boys walk by in a group.  All of them had jeans and a blank white t-shirt on.  Not only that, all but one had the same brand of sneakers.  Why?  Well, they could be an all-boy band on their way to practice or they simply wanted to belong to the collective group.  And while one or two may vie as leaders, reality is that it is impossible to predict what trend the group will pay attention to.  Only that the group will continue to copy the behaviors of the members around them.  (Note to my US readers, don't try this at home.  Following a gang in the US and taking notes may lead to getting shot.)

So what can we do?

1) Make our campaigns visible, visible, visible
2) Soft launch everything and continue to test and tweak until it catches
3) Pay attention to who is copying what and why

Image Credit:  Marxpix

Comments

[Matt Moore]

Sounds a lot like social proof: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Proof

[Subbu]

Does the entire social network phenomena make us more a part of the 'herd' than ever before? I become part of a 'fan club' in Facebook b'cos my friends are already there. I came across this quote (I do not know the author) which kind of explains it though not exactly pointing to 'herd'

"There is something of a paradox here in that we are far more individualistic than ever before but spend much or our time building cooperative networks. Cooperative individualism? Sound like an oxymoron but there you are. I do not think for a minute that this movement towards cooperation is ideologically driven. It’s really pragmatic. We now realize that we are more likely to get more of what we want as individuals if we cooperate and help others do the same. Or as the saying goes,”what goes around comes around”, especially in a networked world.”

BTW, glad to have you back after a long spell of absence. You might be pleasantly surprised if you click on the following link: http://tinyurl.com/rafdql

Cheers
subbu

[David Gillespie]

Yes yes yes yes yes yes. Particularly the last three points. I am fond of syaing "Launch early, launch often".

Now that we've killed off social media, the notion of "influencers" must be next to go. Lead the charge cap'n! :)

[Brindey]

Oooh, I like this. Someone had a post earlier this week (that I cant seem to find on delicious...) about how 1 is more than 500 if the "i" is listening.
I have noticed that I look at a few things before following/friending/becoming a fan of something. Do other people like them, and is their follow/follower ratio grossly off.
I think becoming a "fan" of something is meaningless unless the company you became a fan of does a great job of bringing you back to the page and engaging you. Same with a company getting followers- what next?
How do you become a fad?

[Sean Howard]

First... thanks to everyone for commenting and my apologies for being so unresponsive of late. Moving back into agency land is definitely taking some getting used to. I forgot just how much of a life we don't have. ;)

@Matt: Totally. It's definitely got a lot of social proof going on. Cialdini for President! I'm intrigued by the deeper layers - how social proof activity affects my view of myself and then the world as a result.

@Subbu: Nice quote! And thanks for the kind words and the link the passion economy project. I am starting to wonder if there is any ideological "help others" driving this at all. I believe it is as you imply, that it is for individualistic gain/benefit primarily. And yet some are able to leverage this for the larger good (hopefully).

@David: Lol. A good topic for our next evening of wine!

@Brindey: Great points! So many companies/brands/organizations fail to develop a method for continuing the engagement. Or they hire their PR agency to do it for them and they start spouting product benefits and coupons at the audience and can't participate in any meaningful dialogue. Which brings us to an interesting question - do people really want meaningful dialogue? And if they do, with whom/what?

[Subbu]

Congratulations on your new assignment. All the very best! Subbu

[Neil Perkin]

Some lovely examples. 'Herd' is one of my favourite marcomms books - one of the few that I think have seriously pushed comms thinking forward in recent years IMHO. Your 'boys in jeans and t-shirts' example reminds me of this Herd-like project:

http://bit.ly/13H29