Valuable Virality

TLDR

Social media has prompted brands to produce shareable content, yet viral campaigns often fail to enhance brand evaluation or drive purchases. The study seeks to determine how to generate valuable virality—content that is both widely shared and positively impacts brand perception and buying behavior. Emotional appeals are more likely to be shared, informative appeals strengthen brand evaluations and purchase intent, and combining emotional and brand‑integral elements produces ads that both spread widely and improve brand outcomes, offering a framework for creating valuable virality.

Abstract

Given recent interest in social media, many brands now create content that they hope consumers will view and share with peers. While some campaigns indeed go “viral,” their value to the brand is limited if they do not boost brand evaluation or increase purchase. Consequently, a key question is how to create valuable virality, or content that is not only shared but also beneficial to the brand. Share data from hundreds of real online ads, as well as controlled laboratory experiments, demonstrate that compared with informative appeals (which focus on product features), emotional appeals (which use drama, mood, music, and other emotion-eliciting strategies) are more likely to be shared. Informative appeals, in contrast, boost brand evaluations and purchase because the brand is an integral part of the ad content. By combining the benefits of both approaches, emotional brand-integral ads boost sharing while also bolstering brand-related outcomes. The authors’ framework sheds light on how companies can generate valuable virality and the mechanisms underlying these effects.