Maybe the biggest 'buzz' in marketing currently is buzz itself. While advances in social media have made it the hot topic, why do some marketing ideas ignite and spread whilst others fizzle out? Contagious ideas stand out because they produce a 'social' response that encourages us to share the idea with others. This paper will report on an international validation study - designed to identify the contagious drivers of brands and advertising, celebrity culture and even religious icons, and to test the hypothesis that contagion is a now key predictor of commercial success.
This paper describes a new a brand new approach to measuring emotion, called Metaphorix&trade. Using Web 2.0, Metaphorix? brings metaphors to life though animated visuals, into which the respondent projects himself through a self-selected avatar. Its key benefit to marketers and advertisers is that it avoids the over-rationalisation inherent in traditional approaches to measuring emotion. Why? Because even now, in 2008, most market research is still text-based and literal, not visual or metaphorical, and respondents have to consciously consider their response before answering - which is a real problem, because when we think and consider, we get further away from our emotions. Extensive testing of Metaphorix? shows that it provides a commercial insight denied to conventional methods.