The role of social media users in brand video virality

Abstract

The potential of the Internet as a marketing channel that would give businesses the opportunity to reach global audiences has been identified since its early days. However, the emergence of Social Media was a determining factor in engaging those audiences in a more active way with the Internet phenomenon. In comparison to more traditional marketing media, in Social Media, users are not passive consumers and receivers of marketing messages. Instead, they become actively involved in their creation and sharing (Hanna et al., 2011). User-generated content and content sharing are two important (for companies) activities that prove the consumer's empowerment through Social Media. To get a closer look at this phenomenon, my research focuses on brand videos that achieve going viral and investigates the extent to which individual video content characteristics (such as audiovisuals and plot) affect the consumer's decision to create a story about a brand video in Social Media.