Lessons in Virality from Axl Rose's Unexpected Vocal Range
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What makes a piece of content 'shareable'? Hannah shares the highs and lows of creating content that’s designed to be shared and provides tips and insights from the team at Distilled.
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Lessons in Virality from Axl Rose's Unexpected Vocal Range
- 1. appetite for deconstruction... lessons in virality from axl rose Hannah Smith, Content Strategist, Distilled @hannah_bo_bann a
- 2. @hannah_bo_banna appetite for deconstruction…. lessons in virality from axl rose @hannah_bo_banna
- 3. @hannah_bo_banna this is distilled
- 4. @hannah_bo_banna we made this
- 6. 1.8m page views; 100k+ ‘likes’; 4.5k+ tweets; 874 LRDs @hannah_bo_banna http://www.concerthotels.com/worlds-greatest-vocal-ranges
- 7. @hannah_bo_banna insert sexy title slide here... & this guy commented...
- 8. @hannah_bo_banna & they lived happily ever after...
- 9. a happy ending is nice, but rarely interesting @hannah_bo_banna
- 10. @hannah_bo_banna it’s about how you get there
- 11. @hannah_bo_banna it wasn’t always like this
- 12. a few years ago we made this; it got just 31 ‘likes’ @hannah_bo_banna
- 13. @hannah_bo_banna we *still* don’t always get it right
- 14. @hannah_bo_banna but our strike rate has significantly improved
- 16. @hannah_bo_banna how did we come to create this? http://www.concerthotels.com/worlds-greatest-vocal-ranges
- 17. @hannah_bo_banna let’s start at the beginning
- 19. @hannah_bo_banna
- 21. @hannah_bo_banna objectives of the content core messaging personality/brand values target audience target publishers audience & publisher insights content competitors off-limits
- 23. increase brand awareness (via press coverage, social shares & exposure on sites our target audience read) @hannah_bo_banna
- 24. earn links (to build domain authority and increase search visibility across the board) @hannah_bo_banna
- 26. @hannah_bo_banna
- 27. @hannah_bo_banna personality & brand values
- 29. “Remember way back when the internet was accessible only via the dog whistle screech of your dial up modem? @hannah_bo_banna The internet was a brave new world; albeit a decidedly slow and slightly crappy one…”
- 30. “This charming little ditty boasts many a sophisticated lyric - "Hard like Geometry, and Trigonometry" (deep, huh?), @hannah_bo_banna multiple references to excrement and a heart-felt line about morning glory.”
- 32. @hannah_bo_banna who are we trying to reach?
- 34. @hannah_bo_banna what sites do our audience read?
- 35. @hannah_bo_banna audience / publisher insights
- 36. @hannah_bo_banna what do our audience share? (& therefore) what do our target publishers want to cover?
- 37. @hannah_bo_banna
- 39. who else is doing interesting stuff in the space? @hannah_bo_banna
- 40. ever wondered why all pop songs sound the same? @hannah_bo_banna
- 41. @hannah_bo_banna it’s pretty simple, they all use the same four chords...
- 42. @hannah_bo_banna Axis of Awesome - 4 Chords http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ
- 43. @hannah_bo_banna eeeek! that’s what we’re up against...
- 44. @hannah_bo_banna a quick note on ideas
- 45. @hannah_bo_banna an idea is a novel combination of previously unconnected elements in a way that adds value
- 46. the axis of awesome’s 4 chords is a great example.... @hannah_bo_banna
- 47. @hannah_bo_banna you’ve probably thought this: “hmmmm a lot of pop songs sound kinda the same… why is that?”
- 48. @hannah_bo_banna the answer: “they use the same four chords…”
- 49. @hannah_bo_banna you could just write a list of all the songs that use the same chords...
- 51. it’s not until you show me that I really get it @hannah_bo_banna
- 52. @hannah_bo_banna an idea is a novel combination of previously unconnected elements in a way that adds value
- 53. @hannah_bo_banna why do pop songs sound the same? they use the same 4 chords bring it to life with a mash up combining previously unconnected elements execute in a way that adds value
- 54. @hannah_bo_banna how did we come up with this idea?
- 55. @hannah_bo_banna kick off with some questions: could we look at why or how the different genres changed? what if we could take one tune and make it change through the genres, e.g. make it funk, heavy metal…? what if you could make your own super group?
- 57. @hannah_bo_banna intended to search for vocal solo... but was curious about this auto suggest...
- 58. @hannah_bo_banna found the range place (http://therangeplace.forummotions.com/f1-range-stuff)
- 60. who’s the greatest singer is something that’s @hannah_bo_banna debated endlessly… could we add to the conversation?
- 62. illustrate the vocal range of some of the most popular singers @hannah_bo_banna
- 64. use vocal range data from the Range Place @hannah_bo_banna
- 65. use Rolling Stone’s Greatest Singers of all Time @hannah_bo_banna as a seedlist
- 66. but the list from Rolling Stone is a little old - shouldn’t we also include current artists? @hannah_bo_banna
- 67. @hannah_bo_banna solution: add in The Billboard Music Award 2014 nominees for top male and female artist
- 68. @hannah_bo_banna so we *think* this is a good idea, but how do you know for sure?
- 69. @hannah_bo_banna you can’t ever be 100% certain
- 70. @hannah_bo_banna but you can improve your strike rate
- 71. @hannah_bo_banna we’re interested in what makes an idea memorable & shareable
- 72. @hannah_bo_banna by deconstructing the success of others you can improve your own chances
- 74. @hannah_bo_banna authors Chip & Dan Heath identified 6 factors make an idea ‘stick’: simple unexpected concrete credible emotional story
- 75. @hannah_bo_banna & we’ve added one of our own: simple unexpected concrete credible emotional story shareable
- 76. we evaluate our ideas based on these criteria @hannah_bo_banna
- 77. @hannah_bo_banna you don’t need to hit all 7, but it helps you evaluate multiple ideas & see which looks to be the strongest it’s also a great set of criteria to refer back to as you’re developing a piece
- 79. @hannah_bo_banna this is much harder than it sounds
- 80. @hannah_bo_banna if you can’t explain it to a 6 year old, you don’t understand it yourself ~ Albert Einstein
- 81. @hannah_bo_banna our idea sounds simple enough, but we had to accept that we were talking about a concept which is difficult for some people to grasp
- 83. we acknowledged that it wouldn’t be as simple @hannah_bo_banna as axis of awesome’s 4 chords however we felt that enough people would understand the concept & we’d made it as simple as we could to understand
- 85. @hannah_bo_banna we struck gold
- 87. @hannah_bo_banna
- 88. @hannah_bo_banna if mariah carey came out on top, the piece wouldn’t have been so successful
- 90. we’re going to win the space race ~ not said by JFK @hannah_bo_banna
- 91. @hannah_bo_banna ‘win the space race’ is an abstraction it’s intangible, no one knows what you mean
- 92. we’re going to put a man on the moon ~ JFK @hannah_bo_banna
- 93. @hannah_bo_banna you can help make ideas concrete with the language you use to describe them
- 94. what exactly were we trying to say here? @hannah_bo_banna
- 95. @hannah_bo_banna who is the best singer?
- 96. @hannah_bo_banna
- 97. @hannah_bo_banna vocal range ≠ quality
- 98. @hannah_bo_banna axl has the biggest vocal range, we’re not saying he’s the best singer
- 99. @hannah_bo_banna the visuals you use are important too good data visualisation helps make abstract concepts more concrete
- 100. abstract concept @hannah_bo_banna made more concrete with the visual
- 102. @hannah_bo_banna comes in two flavours:
- 103. @hannah_bo_banna is the data credible?
- 104. @hannah_bo_banna credible enough for our purposes
- 105. is this credible coming from concerthotels.com? @hannah_bo_banna
- 106. only if we’re clear that we talking about the vocal ranges of the world’s greatest singers @hannah_bo_banna
- 107. @hannah_bo_banna we can’t credibly claim to say who the greatest singer is
- 108. we’ll leave that to these guys... @hannah_bo_banna
- 110. @hannah_bo_banna this provokes an emotional reaction
- 111. @hannah_bo_banna
- 112. @hannah_bo_banna would our piece?
- 113. @hannah_bo_banna again here, we struck gold
- 114. we knew this was something people were likely to get @hannah_bo_banna emotional about - but we didn’t realise just how emotional they’d get
- 115. @hannah_bo_banna
- 116. “this list is emblematic of the decline of western civilisation…” @hannah_bo_banna ~ commentor on the Daily Mail’s coverage
- 117. @hannah_bo_banna “this ‘list’ seems very incomplete” “I can’t believe they didn’t contact you to round the selections out.” ~ conversation on HuffPo’s coverage
- 118. “whoever made this list is mentally ill” @hannah_bo_banna ~ commentor on Rolling Stone
- 120. @hannah_bo_banna have you uncovered a story?
- 121. @hannah_bo_banna again here, we struck gold
- 123. plus we also had the Billboard Music Awards @hannah_bo_banna nominees in there
- 124. @hannah_bo_banna that turned out to be less important
- 125. @hannah_bo_banna this guy was the story
- 127. @hannah_bo_banna would someone look good sharing this?
- 128. @hannah_bo_banna we felt that the unexpected result + the emotion (both positive & negative) sparked by the piece would cause people to share the piece
- 129. @hannah_bo_banna again here, we struck gold
- 130. & the piece went far further than we thought possible @hannah_bo_banna
- 131. @hannah_bo_banna hindsight is 20/20 it’s different when you’re in the moment
- 132. we *always* get nervous before launching a piece @hannah_bo_banna
- 133. @hannah_bo_banna
- 134. @hannah_bo_banna you can never be 100% confident
- 135. here are some of the things we debated pre-launch @hannah_bo_banna
- 136. @hannah_bo_banna do we need more functionality to help people understand the piece?
- 138. should we include clips of the artists singing @hannah_bo_banna those notes?
- 139. a nice feature, but are we just adding complexity? @hannah_bo_banna
- 140. can we even do that - what about music rights? @hannah_bo_banna
- 141. @hannah_bo_banna should the keyboard work?
- 143. we included the visual of the keyboard to help people ‘see’ the vocal range but would hearing it help? @hannah_bo_banna
- 144. @hannah_bo_banna again, a nice feature, but would it actually aid understanding?
- 145. @hannah_bo_banna what are the implications of doing that? what will it cost? will we have to delay launch?
- 146. @hannah_bo_banna we have a responsibility to our clients to get the best results for the least investment
- 147. @hannah_bo_banna our job isn’t to build the most excellent thinger on the internet
- 148. @hannah_bo_banna our job is to get results for our clients
- 149. we debated delaying the launch to increase functionality @hannah_bo_banna
- 150. but if we did that we’d miss our window with the @hannah_bo_banna Billboard Music Awards & we thought that was a great hook
- 151. we decided that the added functionality wasn’t necessary to the success of the piece @hannah_bo_banna
- 152. @hannah_bo_banna in this instance we were right
- 153. @hannah_bo_banna however, less functionality shouldn’t be your default position
- 154. there will be instances where functionality @hannah_bo_banna is necessary
- 155. @hannah_bo_banna 152k ‘likes’; 12.6k tweets; 739 LRDs http://www.thomson.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/infographic/interactive-music-map/index.html
- 156. @hannah_bo_banna 152k ‘likes’; 12.6k tweets; 739 LRDs http://www.thomson.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/infographic/interactive-music-map/index.html
- 157. @hannah_bo_banna 152k ‘likes’; 12.6k tweets; 739 LRDs http://www.thomson.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/infographic/interactive-music-map/index.html
- 158. @hannah_bo_banna 152k ‘likes’; 12.6k tweets; 739 LRDs http://www.thomson.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/infographic/interactive-music-map/index.html
- 159. if this piece had been static as opposed to animated, it @hannah_bo_banna wouldn’t have told the story & we wouldn’t have got the results
- 160. @hannah_bo_banna so what happened when we launched the vocal ranges piece?
- 161. @hannah_bo_banna there were 4 waves of coverage
- 162. @hannah_bo_banna wave 1: coverage focused on a claim that wasn’t made in the piece: Axl Rose was being named as the greatest singer of all time
- 163. @hannah_bo_banna
- 164. @hannah_bo_banna wave 2: journalists slate others for drawing inaccurate conclusions from the piece
- 165. @hannah_bo_banna
- 166. @hannah_bo_banna wave 3: counter-claim: Mike Patton (Faith No More) is found to have the greatest vocal range
- 167. @hannah_bo_banna
- 168. @hannah_bo_banna wave 4: Axl Rose comments
- 169. @hannah_bo_banna
- 170. @hannah_bo_banna controversy attracts coverage but not always in the way you might expect...
- 171. it can be hard to get a brand mention for a piece of content - particularly when you’re not using proprietary data @hannah_bo_banna
- 172. but when journalists are attempting to deflect the trolls they’ll mention the brand early & prominently @hannah_bo_banna
- 173. @hannah_bo_banna
- 175. 1.8m page views; 100k+ ‘likes’; 4.5k+ tweets; 874 LRDs @hannah_bo_banna http://www.concerthotels.com/worlds-greatest-vocal-ranges
- 176. @hannah_bo_banna results like this don’t just *happen*
- 177. we spent over 60 hours promoting this piece @hannah_bo_banna
- 178. @hannah_bo_banna & our efforts paid off
- 179. @hannah_bo_banna the bigger picture
- 180. @hannah_bo_banna getting good at this stuff is hard
- 181. @hannah_bo_banna no, really hard
- 182. @hannah_bo_banna there’s a few things we do which we think have helped us get better
- 183. @hannah_bo_banna focus on ideas, not formats
- 184. @hannah_bo_banna an idea is a novel combination of previously unconnected elements in a way that adds value
- 185. @hannah_bo_banna a music infographic is not an idea; it’s a format
- 186. @hannah_bo_banna know your sh*t
- 187. @hannah_bo_banna has this already been done? is it possible to do this? will our audience share it? will our target publishers cover it? have we got proof something like this as worked before?
- 188. @hannah_bo_banna know you’re sh*t
- 189. @hannah_bo_banna or more accurately, when your ideas are sh*t
- 191. @hannah_bo_banna evaluate all your ideas simple / unexpected / concrete / credible / emotional / story / shareable to give yourself the best chance of success
- 192. @hannah_bo_banna good luck out there x
- 193. @hannah_bo_banna thank you ☺
- 194. Hannah Smith Content Strategist, Distilled caffeine addict; book worm; would really like a unicorn... send cat pictures or questions to: hannah.smith@distilled.net @hannah_bo_banna
- 195. credits Images: axl - http://www.nolandalla.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/axl-rose.jpg happy ever after - http://img.ffffound.com/static-data/assets/6/c8972ec570efebca114372a3895032aeb98e5858_m.jpg strike: http://www.twobluecommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/bowling.jpg unexpected - http://thabto.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/shocked-face.jpg emotional - http://adland.tv/ooh/feed-sa-trolley-ambient-south-africa gold - http://www.4khdwallpapers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/gold-texture-wallpaper-7.jpg no - http://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9w1aqMfCG1qz6f9yo1_r2_500.jpg rolling stone cover - http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/d8/0c/41/d80c41d517f2fbe3bd86614d506832b3.jpg audience - http://theculturevulture.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/audience.jpg swing - https://www.flickr.com/photos/21745851@N00/4805435840 danbo - https://www.flickr.com/photos/nomadic_lass/6889892777/in/set-72157629144987013 unicorn - http://queenofheartsonthesleeve.tumblr.com/post/58736423727/ok-not-much-but-here-it-is-3 Big love to to the wonderful Distilled folks who helped me put this together: Adria Saracino, Mark Johnstone, Paddy Moogan, Phil Nottingham, Tim Allen, & Will Critchlow