• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, July 10, 2013

If you want to make people laugh, you really better make them laugh. While this insight should be sent, post haste,  to network sitcom producers, Unruly Media,  the social media platform that is a leader in studying what online videos get shared, is aiming its message at advertisers.

In short, it would seem it’s hard to leave ‘em laughing and harder to leave ‘em laughing if everybody is trying to make you laugh. In its new Science of Sharing white paper being released today, Unruly  concludes, “ Humor is very subjective and brands need to be extremely funny to impress consumers worn down by a glut of ads which try to be funny (and usually are not).”

 Everybody’s a critic.

 The report says the ads most shared hit on several emotional levels, not just humor.  “Ads must also give viewers a strong reason to share – and ideally more than one emotional trigger - to generate earned shares and views.

 Unruly says ads that offer “weak social motivations, even when paired with strong psychological responses from viewers, had very low share rates.”  

 The London-based Unruly has made the business of sharing ads to the level of pop-science, at least. Its Unruly Viral Video Chart has tracked 329 billion video streams since 2006, and it has delivered, tracked and audited 2.8 billion video views for over 400 brands, but who’s counting? It argues that sharing doesn’t just happen. If it can be measured, it can be helped into being created.  

 Last month in its New York office, it opened its Unruly Social Video Lab,  at which clients can come in and view, sometimes in real time, how their ads are being talked about and shared via Twitter and Facebook, and there’s a facial recognition computer that can show how your face is reacting to the ads you are seeing.  My tour, from well-versed marketing director Devra Prywes and Cat Jones, the head of business development (wearing lab coats, but I think that was a touch done for the media) was, well, convincing and also a helluva lot of fun. Upstart Business Journal made a nice video of their tour that gives a good flavor of the experience. You should find an excuse to do it.  

 For this study, the company analyzed 12 commercials from Super Bowl XLVII, to figure out why some worked and some didn’t. The bottom line: The most shared ads evoked intense emotional responses, like warmth, happiness, awe and pride. (The most shared ad was Budweiser’s “Brotherhood,” which was touchy-feely-horsey.)

 “The least shared were ones with low levels of hilarity and surprise. They confused viewers. (I imagine those ads leave viewers wondering, “I’m a little surprised that ad wasn’t more funny.”)

 The report puts it another way: “The majority of Super Bowl ads researched in our study tried to raise a laugh, but were not funny enough to be shared.”

Another finding from the report is that Wednesday is a great day to launch an ad if you hope it has viral legs. Here’s the logic: Almost half the ad sharing that goes on happens between Wednesday and Friday, and a quarter of all sharing occurs within the first three days of a commercial’s release. Mush all that together and Wednesday is best.

“If a brand is to achieve a viral cascade, its content needs to reach a critical mass of viewers within the first 48 hours,” the Unruly report says.  “Strong content is half of the ‘viral video’ success story. It is equally important to get seen by the right audiences in the social environments already frequented by these targets, within the necessary time frame. Brands can win – or fail – by day 3. Therefore, it’s important to get content trending quickly. Unruly recommends front-loading a distribution campaign to achieve these critical.”

And if nothing is happening virally by the end of the week, you have the weekend to write your resume.

 pj@mediapost.com