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Dancing Cactus & Trending Factors

From a secretly dancing cactus at night to the high demanded product across the world. It’s not a coincidence but an opportunity for some, risk for others, and a study for us, those who watch and learn.

In this article, I’m shedding the light on the tipping and trending factors. Yes, Malcolm Gladwell's voice is playing in the background.

Originally, the dancing cactus is a story for kids about Saguaro cacti that were waiting for the sunset every day to dance at night, and when the sun comes up, they freeze so people don’t notice their movement but sometimes after dancing, their arms freeze on a wrong position

As a product, it was launched in the Egyptian market in the second quarter of 2021_ Chamber of Commerce representative mentioned in a TV interview, it had a normal demand and reasonable price as a toy for fun, but the question should be why now? Why is it a trend? And how?

Creating a trend is not always a coincidence, sometimes it is structured, companies combine some factors of virality and push with a lot of ads, however, it may work and may not!

The common themes of viral content that likely get the higher chance of virality are shocking and surprising, Impressive like the hacks of…., or quick-cooking for……, Funny videos and cuteness content i.e., kids, cats, dogs doing whatever is cute.

The dancing cactus toy is featuring and providing raw material for creating viral content, it’s funny, record and repeat, dance, kids are laughing loudly in videos while playing with it and adults are having fun and hilariously sharing their recordings on social media with friends, it looks cute, green and yellow, small in size and you can order online even if it’s expensive!

The Trending Factors

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book “The Tipping Point”, talked about how little things can make a big difference and explained 3 rules of virality, we can closely relate to them when it comes to products such as the dancing cactus.

1. The law of the few which can be summarized in how a small number of people have access to large groups and have the power to send a message in the right medium and use the word of mouth as the main action for a trend, they are the “Connectors” and the influencers are part of their category.

“It’s safe to say that word of mouth is - even in this age of mass communication and multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns - still the most important form of human communication.”

2. The stickiness factor is considering different ways to create a contagious and memorable message. Presentations and structure of information play a big role in how much impact a message makes.

The question is what’s the quality of the “Stickiness”? Can the content of the message and the product spur someone to action?

That’s what Gladwell answered when he explained Wunderman’s advertising campaign case study:

“In the 1970s, the legendary marketer Lester Wunderman was handling the direct marketing for Columbia record club (one of the largest mail-order clubs) and the company decided to hire McCann Erickson (global advertising agency) to support in a print advertising campaign for a series of TV commercials.

Wunderman was upset, a competitor is sharing his work and threatening his firm's position in the market.

To settle the issue, Wunderman proposed to divide the market into 2 halves, and each one runs his full campaign and whoever’s commercials create the greatest increase in response would win the whole account. Columbia and McCann agreed. After a month, they tabulated the results. Responses in Wunderman’s markets were up 80% compared to 19.5% for McCann.”

Why? And how?

When McCann was spending 4 times as much as his opponent on media time, Wunderman focused on specific time during the day and bought the wee hours to show his ad, additionally he made the reader of the print ad and the viewer of the TV ad part of an interactive ad system by adding a trigger “Find the gold box in the print ad to win a free record”, viewers were not just an audience but participants.

Usually, the quality of stickiness lies in the small and trivial actions “The gold box” and “the right time”

3. The power of context is simply saying that human beings are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they may seem.

This point discusses different dimensions of why is the trend contagious? The book refers to the Broken Windows theory.

“If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of chaos will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes.”

The same idea applies to fashion trends and a product like the dancing cactus, it can start with a broken window and spread to an entire community. One more important reason psychologists mentioned regarding the ubiquity of one behaviour in a community and explained in the book is that when people are asked to make a decision or share an opinion in a group, they come to different conclusions than when they are asked the same questions by themselves. Once we are part of a group, we are under peers’ pressure, social norms, and other kinds of influence.

“The impetus to engage in a certain kind of behaviour is not coming from certain kind of person but from a feature of the environment”

The dancing cactus is the trending product now and after a while, we’ll have a new product that we can see and apply those rules on and see what we’ll get. I highly recommend “The Tipping Point” for Malcolm Gladwell for more interesting details about trends, tipping and epidemics.

If anyone has a different explanation from other aspects of any domain like economics, E-commerce please share with me your perspective.

#viral marketing #viral content