How Steve Knox Disrupted My Schema of how Word-of-Mouth Works

Manhead (c) BioRavenJan 28, 2010 4:45 pm EST

A few days ago Steve Knox , CEO of P&G's inside agency Tremor, wrote  a most illuminating Ad Age post "Why Effective Word of Mouth Disrupts Schemas", describing the cognitive science behind getting consumers to talk about a product.  I highly recommend your reading it as his examples and explanation deconstruct perfectly for online marketers how they too can successfully engineer Word-of-Mouth using disruptive messaging.

His starting point is this: Ordinarily the brain remains in a static state, relying on cognitive schemas or mental models of how the world works.    Steve uses a simple example to illustrate a schema: Getting into your car, you're ready to drive on the right-hand side of the road - without even explicitly thinking about it. Driving on the right is part of your mental schema.  So it is  - when first driving in the UK-   it is quite disruptive to see someone driving on the "wrong" side of the road. It's very disconcerting to your American driving schema -- and you tend to talk about it.

He then goes onto to describe a successful P&G Secret deodorant  campaign leveraging these cognitive principles.

Here is an example of schema disruption and resultant word-of-mouth message from the Secret brand.  The purpose of the Secret Clincal Strength brand is brought to life in our advertising through "Live Life. Don't Sweat It."

We uncovered the core schema in the category is the more active you are, the more you sweat and the worse you smell. We created a disruptive message of "The More You Move, the Better you Smell."  It disrupts the schema first and then is supported by the brand technology (unique mositure-activated deodorants).

The 51,000 people who subsequently posted on P&G's Secret website were exploring the "disruptive schema" that, counter to popular belief, working out can intensify a deodorant's effectiveness, i.e when working out and wearing Secret, you smell better. 

To me, a  great  litmus test of the schema-busting power of a tagline is to gauge whether it directly or indirectly raises the question "Can your product do this?"  Connecting into cognitive science,  the "this" in "Can your product do this?" must bust outside the current schema for the product category, namely, the current expectations of how a product works.

With litmus test in hand, I tried to find other examples. Taglines which speak to the fundamental definition of what is and what is not in a product category are of particular interest to me.

Disruptive Taglines - New School

Let's look at the Apple iPhone, whose brand popularity and overwhelming presence in online and offline discussions dominates  channels today.  Apple's tag line of course is  "There's an app for that".

The somewhat techie word, "app" (for software "application") is the salient feature in the tagline.  It may be a cell phone, but its software-enabled with an OS and, most importantly, tons of apps. (as of Nov 09, over 100,000) .  In effect, this tagline raises the consumer's expectations of what a cell phone  is and  what it shoud do for you.


Nikon Coolpix S1000pj adHere's another example of a product whose tagline disrupts the schema. The Nikon Coolpix S1000pj introduced in August 2009, has yet to hit full stride, but given BlogPulse mentions is capturing a good share of Word-of-Mouth within the online digital camera community.  It is in fact the world's first compact digital camera that includes a  a small projector, allowing users to project a photo on a nearby wall.  So friends and family no longer need to crowd around your small camera screen or wait to upload to a computer to view a photo.

The camera's tagline, "Your personal theater on the go" puts the new category-rivetting feature in the foreground. Encountering the Coolpix S1000pj, the product-researching consumer must re-look, learn and evaluate  -  and today, this usually generates a good deal of online discussion all along the way.

A tagline which successfully disrupts a product schema is like an upward  knee thrust to the corner of the product category's gameboard, throwing competing products that lack the disruptive feature, outside of the consumer discussion.  Is it a camera or is it your  personal theater on the go?  Is it a cell phone or everything-your-personal-computer-can-do plus more?

Now some of this isn't exactly new. Looking back, the power of schema-busting was exercised in some of advertising's most memorable taglines.

Disruptive Taglines - Old School

Source: TaglineGuru.com

The key difference today is that  consumers can check and verify claimed schema busters. While the truthiness of that tagline will be tested in the online conversation sphere. we also see that it's also the marketers starter opportunity to guide that conversation.

For Steve Knox is right: Consumers generate much talk as they wrestle with their disrupted schemas, trying to reconcile something that initially defies their belief system, trying to verify a claim, determine if a  new feature truly works or is useful and so on.  Schema-busting products coupled with masterfully designed messaging can trigger these  online conversations.  But there's a catch. Creating the initial moment of confusion, the shake-your-head "This doesn't make sense" moment is  precious and critical.  It may be predictable from cognitve science, but its final potency is often determined by art and design.

Have a schema-buster to share?