Did Global, Non-English Blogs Set the Tempo for Dove Onslaught?

Soak in this chart for a moment.  It's a very big deal -- great fodder for a marketing team white board session.  What it demonstrates is that global, non-English sites played an unmistakable early role in the viral lift and spread of the Dove Onslaught video that's currently making the rounds across the web. Keep in mind that what we're looking at is not the aggregate number of views on YouTube (that matters too), but rather, a very high-level analysis of hundreds of blogs that explicitly linked to or called out by name the campaign in the first three days.  In effect, these blogs -- most of which "embedded" the YouTube video -- drove a significant percentage of the awareness and trial of the video.  To keep things simple, I created three broad categories of blog authorship: consumers (a generous umbrella which included activists or beauty care enthusiasts), the ad community (folks like me from the industry who love to pontificate about media/marketing events), and Non-English blogs (which, once fully interpreted, draw from both constituencies).  What triggered this exercise was a sudden realization late last night -- after receiving yet another flurry of non-English blog alerts -- that there's something curious, unique, and potentially breakthrough about what's going on here in the context of word-of-mouth.  And this is all independent of the broader debate over whether the Onslaught campaign rocks, sells cases, pushed the needle too much on anti-brand messaging, etc.  (We can cover that later.) No, this exploratory is about where/how buzz begins, and the unique role, if any, of global distribution points in driving early momentum.  So here's a few observations and a few questions that we should be asking along the way.

1.  Global/Non-English blogs dominated the first day of viral spread

• Was this planned or intentional?
• Did earlier "global equity" from Dove Evolution prime-the-pump for early global distribution?
• Was there something in the message that uniquely appealed to Europeans? The French? The Spanish?   Are fashion moments bound to start outside of the US?
• Are anti-brand messages more likely to get early traction outside of the US?
• Did these same bloggers cover Evolution in the first go around?
• Did this have to do with the so-called "illegal advertising" entity that first put the spot on YouTube?  That site includes a bunch of edgy, global ads (many banned).  Was that the perfect starting place for catalyzing immediate global discussion.
• Are there category specific insights in what happened?  Unique to beauty care?

2.  Ad Community blogs played a big role throughout the first three days?

• Do blog content from the ad community spill over into other online constituencies?
• Should ad bloggers be part of the "target outreach" plan for any new product launch?
• Will that make intuitive sense to media planners or researchers who might be more inclined to focus on target end consumers?
• Do ad and marketing bloggers trend positive or negative on campaigns?  Does this matter?

Anyway, I'm working on a much longer note on this topic as part of my buzz monitoring work, but I'll share a few more light nuggets here and there on this blog. This all starts to get REALLY interesting once you peel the onion a bit.  Welcome your thoughts or reactions?

Comments

[Wim]

Dear Pete,
maybe there is a very simple explanation for the high share of non-English blogs on Day 1 : time zones. What is Day 1 : 00:00-23:59 in EDT ? Bloggers outside of the Americas may have had a head start of a few hours, depending on when the campaign went live and when you 'call it a day'. Just a thought.

[Pete Blackshaw]

Great comment. Yes, I carefully thought that through. The flow of global data was consistent throughout the first 48 hours. Very evenly distributed.

[Donna DeClemente]

Interesting stats and thoughts Peter. I was one of the bloggers from the ad community that did a post on Onslaught the first day it was released and embedded the video as well. My first thought after reading your post as to why the non-English blogs were so strong on Day 1 was the same as the first comment here from Wim about time zones.

Other than that I would note that before Dove first launched this Campaign for Real Beauty they conducted a Global Beauty study of 3,200 women from 10 countries. You can download the study from their website.The Campaign has truly had a global reach from the start.

As far as the influence from the ad community bloggers, my blog (www.donnaspromotalk.com) focuses on interactive promotions, and I have written several posts about Dove's campaign. I've personally wanted to make this campaign a viral success story because I believe it is a serious issue (as a mother of two teen-age daughters). So I would actually count myself in both columns...ad and consumer blogger.