BRAIN BITESDDB Group Hong KongWhite Paper SeriesIssue 3April 2015

BRAIN BITESIssue 3April 2015 “Word of mouth is the best

medium of all.” - Bill Bernbach

This issue of Brain Bites looks at what goes viral in Hong Kong. Based on an analysis of four viral cases from 2014, we provide tips to marketers for creating their next piece of online content.

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No question about it, to ‘go viral’ is the holy grail of marketing. Whether it is one single piece of content such as Psy’s Gangnam Style or a collaborative pop culture phenomenon like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, every marketer dreams of producing or initiating content that gains worldwide popularity.

In this pursuit of over-night fame however, we often forget what truly sits at the core of ‘going viral’: sharability. Already in 1996, Jeffrey Rayport defined viral marketing as fashioning messages so that ‘target markets will re-transmit them as a part of their core interests.’ But what really constitutes these core interests?

For Thales Teixeira, Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School, sharing is an egocentric act with the motivation to gain social status. In line with this argument, Jonah Berger, author of the bestseller ‘Contagious: Why Things Catch On’, explains that before people share a piece of content, they evaluate its social currency. The better it makes them look, the more likely they'll be to pass it on.

Apart from social currency, marketing experts and social media gurus have also identified humor, timing, the element of surprise and luck as key success factors for making things go viral.

In an attempt to decode what goes viral in Hong Kong, we have taken a closer look at 2014’s most shared and talked about pieces of content.

Here are our four lessons learned.

Case #1: “You are Thick Toast!” 你厚多⼠士!

Uploaded to YouTube in May 2014, the video shows a woman arguing with another passenger after being told off for eating on the MTR. There are thousands of similar videos on YouTube, but what made this one gain traction was linked to the women’s accent. Her persistent shouting of the phrase ‘You are very nosy!’ in her accent led the uploader to dub the phrase as what sounded like: ‘You are thick toast!’. This quickly became the new popular phrase in town.

‘You are Thick Toast!’ is 2014’s iteration of a genre we call HK Street Drama. Content that fits into this particular genre usually centres on people losing it in public or having a heated argument. Over the past decade, we have seen many similar videos taking the city by storm. The first of its kind was ‘Bus Uncle’ way back in 2003, which has gained more than 10 million views to this day. Another famous representative of this genre would be ‘A Girl Slapping Her Boyfriend 14 Times’ – for those who don’t know it, the title should speak for itself.

One more characteristic of the HK Street Drama is that it normally

Four lessons for going viral in Hong Kong

Four lessons for going viral in Hong Kong

by Ronald Lee & Andreas Krasser

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BRAIN BITES

Before people share a piece of content, they evaluate its social currency. The better it makes them look, the more likely they'll be to pass it on.

- Jonah Berger

Issue 3April 2015

Source: YouTube

spins off numerous creative parodies, and it almost always leaves behind a famous catchphrase.

Lesson#1: Hong Kong people thirst to watch and gossip about shocking interpersonal encounters. Give them a little bit of drama taken directly from life.

Case #2: “Public Housing, Home-Ownership Scheme Flat, and Private Housing” [公屋潮文] 公屋●居屋●私樓

Another type of viral content unique to Hong Kong is what is called Viral Literature. Viral literature, translated more accurately as ‘trendy post’, is a phenomenon that emerged from Hong Kong’s famous discussion forum subculture. It is usually a very long rant or a fictitious story about a social problem Hong Kongers face on a daily basis.

The most popular posts regularly end up being adapted into a short film by another party, which makes it go viral beyond the subculture itself.

In 2014, one video that stole the show was the film adaptation of the forum post ‘Your girlfriend invites you to her home for dinner’. The short film was called ‘Public

Housing, Home-Ownership-Scheme Flat, and Private Housing’.

The video shows a fictitious story about a person going to his girlfriend’s house and meeting her parents for the very first time. We see three different versions of the same scenario depending on what kind of apartment the boyfriend lives in. Over dinner, the mother of the girlfriend casually asks the protagonist where he lives. As we can expect, the mother reacts very differently based on his answer: a flat built by the government through the Home-Ownership-Scheme, or a private condo.

It’s not difficult to pinpoint the reason why this short film resonated so well with Hong Kongers. It reflected several social problems that many young people in Hong Kong face nowadays: ridiculous housing prices, difficulty to take relationships to the next stage because of the housing problem, and being judged by one’s financial status.

Lesson #2: People share what speaks out for them. Be empathetic and strike the right chord on a shared social problem.

Case #3: “Who Has Yet To Speak?” 問誰未發聲

You might think, if we are talking about last year’s viral content in Hong Kong, what about the Umbrella Movement? To make things short, we are not going to talk about it. Instead, we are going to talk about a piece of related content that went viral even before

Hong Kong people thirst to watch and gossip about shocking interpersonal encounters.

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BRAIN BITESIssue 3April 2015

Four lessons for going viral in Hong Kong

Source: YouTube

the whole movement started: the adaptation of the song ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ from the musical Les Misérables.

In early May 2014, a video was uploaded to YouTube showing a little girl singing a song called ‘Who Has Yet to Speak?’. The song was an adaptation of ‘Do You Hear the People Sing?’ fitted with Cantonese lyrics that portrayed the political situation at that time. It focused on the debate around the 2017 Chief Executive election, and encouraged Hong Kong people to speak up and let the government know what kind of election they wanted in 2017. The song quickly went viral and many people started to upload their own covers of it. Eventually, the newspaper group Apple Daily encouraged everyone to record themselves singing one line of the song, hoping to produce a music video featuring the voices of all Hong Kongers. When a number of celebrities and KOLs participated as well, the sensation got pushed even further.

Lesson #3: People want to be heard. Enable them to be heard even louder.

Case #4: ALS Ice Bucket Challenge 冰桶挑戰

Admit it, whether you participated or not, you were tagged at least once on Facebook to take part in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

It undoubtedly was the most viral sensation of 2014 – worldwide. But what surprised us most was how popular the challenge actually got in Hong Kong; it is very rare for viral phenomena originating in the West to so smoothly pick up in the East as well.

Now, there are truckloads of articles out there giving various explanations for the success of the Ice Bucket phenomenon, but what we believe drove its success the most in Hong Kong is collective FOMO, or ‘Fear of Missing Out’.

‘Fear of Missing Out’ is defined as ‘a form of social anxiety, whereby one is compulsively concerned that one might miss an opportunity for social interaction, a novel experience, profitable investment or other satisfying event’ (Przybylski, Murayama, DeHaan, Gladwell, 2013). The success of the Ice Bucket Challenge just shows how much the age of social media has pushed FOMO over the edge.

But the Ice Bucket Challenge is in fact not the first FOMO phenomenon to have happened in Hong Kong. The giant rubber duck back in 2013 proved just as viral. Crowds and crowds of people filled the Tsim-Sha-Tsui promenade every day to pose for a photo with the rubber duck and post it on their social media channels. As photos

What we believe drove the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge’s success in Hong Kong is collective FOMO, or ‘Fear of Missing Out’.

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BRAIN BITESIssue 3April 2015

Four lessons for going viral in Hong Kong

Source: YouTube

of the rubber duck took over everyone’s news feed, people were even more driven to go and take a photo by themselves.

Our social media newsfeed has become a benchmark for how much fun we should be having in our lives. The more people share their lives, the more we think we should be doing something ‘post-worthy’ too.

The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge took this notion to the next level. It gave people a worthy cause to either feel good about participating, guilty for turning down the invitation, or smart for finding an unusual way to respond.

Lesson #4: People want to appear interesting. Help them to look good and feel good about themselves.

Our social media newsfeed has become a benchmark for how much fun we should be having in our lives.

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BRAIN BITESIssue 3April 2015

Four lessons for going viral in Hong Kong

Source: South China Morning Post

Sources:

Berger, Jonah: how to make your content go viral in Mashable (2013)

Przybylski, Murayama, DeHaan, Gladwell: motivational, emotional, and behavioral correlates of fear of missing out in Computers in Human Behavior (2013)

Rayport, Jeffrey: the virus of marketing in Fast Company (1996)

Schreckinger, Ben: the home of FOMO in Boston Magazine (2014)

Teixeira, Thales: the new science of viral ads in Harvard Business Review (2012)

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BRAIN BITESIssue 3April 2015

Four lessons for going viral in Hong Kong

DDB Group Hong Kong DDB Group Hong Kong (DDB, Tribal and RAPP) is united behind our founder, Bill Bernbach's belief, that creativity is the most powerful force in business. Today, we use that creativity to develop ideas that people want to play with, participate in, and pass on. We call this social creativity. DDB Group Hong Kong is one of the most awarded agencies in Hong Kong, leading in creativity and effectiveness. We were leaders at Cannes Lions in 2012, and 2013 and the Hong Kong Effies in 2012, 2013 and 2014. At Marketing’s Agency of the Year Awards 2012 we were named Creative Agency of the Year.

DDB Group Asia Pacific DDB Group Asia Pacific is cohesive collaboration of global businesses, including DDB (advertising), Tribal Worldwide (digital) Rapp (data-driven marketing and analytics) Interbrand (brand consultancy), DDB Remedy (healthcare and medical), Mango PR (PR and experiential) and Tracey Locke (shopper marketing). Comprising of 33 offices in 14 countries DDB Group Asia Pacific is part of the DDB Worldwide communications network and Omnicom Group.