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this podcast is brought to you by knowled of
[Music] warten Welcome to knowledge of Warton I'm
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Angie basuni here with me again is Jonah Burger
marketing professor and today he's going to teach
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us about how to be a more impactful influencer
he's been doing some co-authored research that
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looks that how sensory language can help social
media marketers Drive engagement connect with
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their customers more and hopefully Drive sales
Jenna welcome back thanks for having me so I was
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reading recently that social media spending uh on
influencers has reached has passed the 20 billion
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do Mark that is a huge spend for Brands tell me a
little bit about this research and why you wanted
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to look into it yeah so if we go back in time a
little bit say like about a decade ago uh I did
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some conversations with knowledge of won about
that time around the power of word mouth right
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um my first book contagious was all about kind of
word mouth how do we get it how do we get people
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to talk and share and at the time people are still
used to sort of a traditional advertising mindset
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right um uh we go on television a spokesperson
or an actor just a regular sort of looking person
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talks about a product or service says how great
it is and and people are starting to realize in
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kind of the early 2010s wait word of mouth is much
more impactful than traditional advertising right
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we trust it much more because it feels like it
comes from a peer rather than a company and it
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can be much more more targeted it can be more like
it to reach interested uh ears um and so companies
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and organizations given that sort of Revolution
and intention of Word of Mouth have spent the last
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kind of decade and a half starting to think
about well word of mouth is really valuable
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how do we get um and some of that is encouraging
their existing customers to talk and share which
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is great but companies used to that traditional
advertising model said well wait a second I'm
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used to paying buying sort of attention for
my stuff is there a way to do that and that
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really started the influencer room right it's in
some sense a new type of paid media rather than
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kind of me designing an ad as a company and going
on television or putting it in a magazine now I
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pay a quote unquote influencer sort of an online
individual who has some sort of following to talk
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about my product my service and share my message
and so now this 20 billion dollar B industry
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has has grown up um where people are talking
about products and services and using them to
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influence others but importantly there's a right
um influencers are interesting right they often
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have large followings uh people pay attention to
them can raise awareness to products and services
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but they have a trust problem not everybody trusts
influencers because they're not the same as their
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friends right if your friend says oh my God I went
to this restaurant it was great or a a colleague
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in another organization said you know I tried this
software and it worked really well for us more
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like a listen them because you know they didn't
get paid but when someone online that you don't
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really know so well talks about about something or
shares a piece of content you don't know whether
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they did it because they actually like it or not
or just because someone paid them and so there's
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this challenge of hey lots of money is spent on
influencers is all that money really well spent
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and so that's really where this paper project
started hey lots of companies organizations are
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paying lots of individuals to post lots of content
some of it is impactful some of it isn't why right
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what drives impact what types of posts from these
so-called influencers have more impact and even
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more importantly why and how by understanding that
why can we both increase uh the effectiveness of
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our spend uh as well as make our stuff more more
impactful I think that's what's really interesting
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about social media influencers is they really
do just have this single interface this medium
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and so that makes what they say and how they
say it certainly much more important so let's
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talk about that sensory language that's at the
heart of your paper what do you mean by sensory
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language give us some examples sure so let's talk
about something like a food product will be really
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simple here right imagine I said oh oh my God I
tried this food and it was really good that would
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be a nonsensory word doesn't doesn't relate to the
senses in any way alternatively I could say hey I
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tried that food and it was really tasty right
uh tasty relates to the senses it speaks to my
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sensory experience in this case my experience
of taste I tasted the food and I like the way
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it tasted it was tasty um similarly I could talk
about a cream uh let's say a a a dry skin cream
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um and I could say hey you should put it on your
hands right and that's not really a sensory word I
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could rub it I talk about rubbing it on your hands
that's a word that relates in some way shape or
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form to the senses and so we can think about our
sense of touch our sense of smell our sense of
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taste our sense of hearing even our sense of sight
some words relate to those senses more than others
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unlike a word uh just a positive word like good or
even great or could be negative words also these
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sensory words really touch on senses and some way
shape or form right uh I I rather than putting uh
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peanut butter on bread I could spread it on that
bread uh rather than sort of adding uh flakes
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on top of something I could crumble it uh on top
um steak could be really good or could be really
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juicy right and so all of those latter words they
speak more in this case to a sense of taste or
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a sense of smell or a sense of touch and so all
those in someway shape or form relate to sensory
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experience and that's what makes them sensory
language I it seems to me like sensory language
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would be sort of in no brainer and they've been
doing this for a very long time with television
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commercials um radio ads all that sort of thing
but you're actually your paper points out that
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uh the effect of sensory language on consumer
Behavior especially online consumer Behavior
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has sort of been overlooked in the literature
so what does your paper contribute to this how
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do you shed some light on that yeah I mean it's
a really good observation that um particularly
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food marketers have for a long time I think
recognized you know when you show a hamburger
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you want to show it looking you know PL lump and
and juicy and all those sorts of things um but I
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think even traditional sort of advertisers have
not always thought about language there hasn't
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been amazing research um that's been done there's
been a little bit of work but even in advertising
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not a lot of work on the exact words we Ed to
describe things in part because it was tough
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to study and in the last um sort of five 10 years
there been a revolution in our ability to extract
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Insight from content and that's really opened up
some exciting uh work on on language and so in
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this case um you know uh we tried to begin to say
okay well what is the language that influencers
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use and different people use different types
of language right um most influencers are not
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necessarily experts on language um some of them
just post content and they try to figure out what
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works and what doesn't but they may not always
have insight into why and so we got a large data
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set of hundreds of different influencers posting
thousands of pieces of content across multiple
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different platforms and what we did is we began
to look at actually the content they were posting
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We Said okay controlling for everything else so
controlling for what topic they're talking about
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um you know what brand they're working with
how many followers they have um their gender
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their age um what time of day they posted it the
other words they're using might the specific type
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of language you know rather than saying uh food
is good saying it's tasty for example um rather
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than saying it's great or wonderful saying it's
juicy or fragrant these language uh words that
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sest suggest direct experience might they actually
have a bigger impact in fact we found that it did
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so in a variety of different domains uh we found
that using sensory language um rather than this
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other type of language had an impact not just
a significant impact but a pretty large one um
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in uh Tik Tok for example an additional sensory
word just one additional sensory word in that in
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that uh video that people might be making was
associated with 11,000 additional likes and
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and comments and so we not only looked at the
impact kind of what does sensor language work
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and it does we look both in the field as well as
experimentally we just manipulated those words and
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um asked people to imagine that it influence
One Thing versus something else we showed a
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causal impact of that language on Behavior but
we also dug into why um and as a as a scholar
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of consumer Behavior I always find the why really
uh interesting and important and my my co-author
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the first author of this paper Luca really really
did the hard work on this and and what he pointed
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out is is look influencers have a big challenge I
they're talking about all these products all these
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services but people don't know whether to trust
them or not um and even if you say something is
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good or it's great or it's wonderful or I love
it lots of people say those things how do I know
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that I can trust or not but sensory language
does something quite interesting right um if
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it suggests that you've actually had Direct
experience with that thing right if if you're
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saying hey it's really juicy or really tasty
or really fragrant or really smooth right good
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is a positive adjective but smooth suggests you've
actually felt it right I love these cookies that's
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really positive but you know they have a big
crunch when you bite into them well that suggests
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you much have actually bit into them right anybody
can say the cookies are great whether they've
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tried them or not but to actually say they have a
crunch you must have actually experienced it right
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and you can imagine the same thing for other types
of experiences whether it's a a consumer product
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or whether it's more of a B2B software backend
sort of thing and so using sensory language
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suggest direct experience suggest someone actually
try that product or service they're talking about
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and because that makes the speaker seem more
authentic right it makes them seem like they're um
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I've actually used that shampoo or relied on that
software package I liked it not to use it enough
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to use it myself and so I'm not just recommending
because someone paid me I'm recommending because
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I actually liked it because I tried it and wow
if you actually liked it and you tried it I'm
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much more like list so just using that sensory
language can move the influencer from someone
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p is perceived as I'm just getting paid to endorse
this product to someone who's actually experienced
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the product likes the product is endorsing it
because they believe in it exactly and that's
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a big challenge here right do I trust this person
and so I use cu's just like right if you just met
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someone you try to figure out well do I trust
them or not and it for influen is particularly
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difficult because we don't have the most trust
for them to begin with but we use cues like the
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language they use or the photos they post or other
things to make inferences about them in this case
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right sensory language suggest direct experience
we've done other work on other types of languages
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or images that speak to similar things but it's
it's all about sort of saying hey I'm not just
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saying this I actually experience it and if
I actually experience it I'm more authentic
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and I'm then I'm going to trust that person I'm
going to be more likely to buy the product talk
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so what is your big takeaway for marketers or for
social media influencers who want to get better at
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what they're doing yeah I mean I think this has
both this as you very nicely said sort of direct
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takeaways for individuals who are themselves
influencers or who want to have influence many
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of us may not see ourselves as influencers per se
but we may want to have influence um uh more on
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the on the folks that listen to us whether online
or off but also the brands of the organizations
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that work with these individuals and I think
what's particularly neat here is this is not a
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big ask right we're not asking you to have 10,000
more followers or you know drastically overhaul
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everything you're doing subtle ships really small
ships in the language you're using can have a big
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impact ises that men right one additional sensory
word is associated over 10,000 additional likes
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and comments on Tik Tok and so by understanding
what sensory language is and understanding how to
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work it in to what we've done uh what we've posted
what we're sharing we can have a a big impact
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on on our contents eventually influence and it
doesn't cost anything extra doesn't cost anything
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extra no we like that thank you Jah his paper is
titled how sensory language shapes influencers
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impact you can find it online along with his
many books on powerful persuasive language the
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latest one is called magic words what to say to
get your way if you enjoyed our conversation we
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encourage you to check out all our content at
knowledge. won. up.edu I'm Angie bassi thanks
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for joining us for more insight from knowledge
at Wharton please visit knowledge. won. up.edu
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