Master Thesis
MSc Business Administration – Track Entrepreneurship and Management in
the Creative Industries
Managing creativity as a performance indicator in the online music
video industry
Angela Nayelli Cervantes Del Angel
10826645
August 31, 2015
1
stSupervisor Erik Dirksen MSc.
Statement of originality
This document is written by Angela Nayelli Cervantes Del Angel who declares to
take full responsibility for the contents of this document.
I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that
no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used
in creating it.
The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of
completion of the work, not for the contents.
Table of contents
Cover ... I
Statement of originality ... II
Table of contents ... III
Abstract ... V 1. Introduction ... 1 2. Literature Review ... 2 2.1 Music videos ... 2.1.1 Historical context ... 2.1.2 YouTube ... 2.1.3 Music video evolution ... 2.1.4 Message of music videos ...
2 2 3 4 5 2.2 Preference ... 2.2.1 Involvement and persuasion ... 2.2.2 Elaboration Likelihood Model ... 2.2.3 Affection ... 2.2.4 Means-End Chain Model ... 2.2.5 MECCAS Model ... 6 6 7 9 10 11 2.3 Content ... 2.3.1 Key determinants of viral viewership ... 2.3.1.1 Surprise ... 2.3.1.2 Humor ... 2.3.1.3 Emotions ... 2.3.1.4 Controversy ... 2.3.1.5 Arousing, interesting and experiential nature of viral content ... 2.3.1.6 Positive vs. negative content ...
12 12 12 13 14 15 15 17 2.4 Creativity ... 2.4.1 Definition ... 2.4.2 Creativity management and innovation ... 2.4.3 Construct operationalization ...
18 18 18 19 2.5 Virality & WOM ... 2.5.1 Virality ... 2.5.2 Social media ... 2.5.3 Word Of Mouth ... 2.5.4 Electronic Word Of Mouth ... 2.5.5 Virality trends ... 2.5.5.1 Media coverage ... 2.5.5.2 Music ... 19 19 20 21 21 22 23 24 2.6 Viewership ... 2.6.1 Evaluation ... 2.6.2 Operationalization ... 2.6.3 Most viewed music video: Gangnam Style ... 2.6.3.1 Gangnam Style’s key determinants of virality ...
25 25 25 26 26
3. Research Design ... 28
3.1 Strategy ... 28
3.2 Sample and data collection ... 29
3.3 Quality of the research ... 32
3.4 Method of analysis ... 32
4. Results ... 33
4.1 Application of Marketing theories ... 33
4.2 Preference ... 34 4.3 Content ... 4.3.1 Management ... 4.3.2 Other elements ... 4.3.3 Controversy ... 36 37 38 40 4.4 Creativity ... 4.4.1 Creative videos ... 4.4.2 Management of creativity ... 4.4.3 Key determinants of virality and their relationship with creativity ... 41 43 41 44 4.5 Virality ... 4.5.1 Management of virality ... 4.5.2 Effect of media coverage ... 4.5.3 Independent artists ... 45 46 50 51 4.6 Relationship of creativity and virality ... 52
4.7 Effect of creativity on virality ... 53
4.8 Other effects on virality ... 4.8.1 Personality of the artist ... 54 54 4.9 Viewership ... 4.9.1 Most viewed music video: Gangnam Style ... 4.9.2 Creative elements in Gangnam Style ... 55 55 56 5. Discussion ... 56
5.1 Conclusion ... 57
5.2 Contributions to theory and practice ... 59
6. Limitations and recommendations for further research ... 60
References ... 64
Appendices ... 67
Appendix 1: Gangnam Style video statistics ... 67
Abstract
The ever-increasing popularity of the creative industries has drawn researchers to investigate successful products in order to identify patterns; however, the experiential nature of creative products makes it difficult to identify hits in advance. In a highly uncertain industry like the music video business, there is a need for theorizing the factors that lead to positive performance outcomes. This thesis analyses the relationship between creativity management and the factors that influence music video virality, through the study of the concepts and dynamics of preference, content, creativity and virality. An exploratory, inductive research approach was conducted and empirical data was obtained through qualitative interviews with top experts in the online music video industry like directors, managers, and producers from Netherlands, UK, Finland, Norway, USA, and Mexico. The results indicate that there are 3 key determinants of virality in a music video: Humor, surprise and emotions; these elements are considered by experts as creative when they are presented in novel, unique ways that communicate the music video concept. They are not necessary for mainstream artists.
Creativity (cause) leads to Virality (effect); yet not exclusively, as Virality requires a careful symbiosis of market trends, viewer’s self-relevant preference, the artist’s essence, the song and the visuals integrated in a music video. Therefore, the relationship between creativity management and the factors that influence music video virality is that creativity management, i.e. the inclusion of key determinants (humor, surprise and/or emotions) in novel and unique ways, leads to the virality of music videos.
1. Introduction
The ever-increasing popularity of the creative industries has drawn researchers to investigate the paths that successful products have chose to follow in order to identify patterns, since “despite increasing popularity, we lack a comprehensive view of the subject” (Peltoniemi, 2014, p. 1); furthermore, the experiential nature of creative products makes it “impossible to identify hits in advance” (Caves, 2000, in Peltoniemi, 2014, p. 3), leaving producers and distributors blatantly in the dark as to if the product will be a hit or miss.
In a highly uncertain industry like the music video business, there is a need for theorizing the factors that lead to positive performance outcomes in order to overcome the aforementioned uncertainty, ‘‘There is no formula. Nobody knows anything.’’ (Goldman, 19831, in De Vany, 2004, p. 275, in Abraham Ravid, 2004, p. 898), providing managers with guidelines they materialize into marketing strategies to organize resources effectively, given the fact that “demand is unpredictable in the extreme” (Peltoniemi, 2014, p. 3), and thus developing these factors into important tools and constructs to identify and implement in their companies.
One of the most volatile resources that managers of creative industries are faced with organizing is creativity.
Creativity is the use of imagination in the invention of new ideas (‘Creativity’, n.d.); in the music industry, this refers to the invention of new and unique artistic work; being a record, a sample, or any sort of musical expression, genre, or combination of sounds.
Creativity is highly valued and recognized in the music video industry; performance indicators like the Grammy Awards and the Billboard Music Awards usually guide this recognition. These awards are guidelines of the consumer’s preference and taste, giving artists the music video
standards to follow in order to become the ‘next big thing’.
This study will show an updated and focused view of how the management of creativity is an essential factor for Virality: ‘Rapid performance growth’; from the music video industry perspective. Creativity and other elements are critically observed -and tested- factors that contribute to the virality of online music videos, and thus, performance.
In the context of this study, virality is the result of rapid viewership, spread and share of a music video in an online environment; where once its online presence is existent, there is a presumed equal ease of access for any gender, social or age group. Additionally, performance is identified as a popularity indicator, same as virality (thus, used in this study as synonyms). Viewership is identified as the viewing/listening consumers of a particular artistic product.
The results of this research are “important for the emerging area of research on viral music marketing and for the challenges of music marketers in practice” (Kahl and Albers, 2013, p. 47); same as music video directors, who will benefit from ‘guidelines’ to improve their product’s viewership and ultimately, their reputation as successful artists.
This study attempts to contribute in the establishment of a framework for managers to systematize the elements, tools and constructs required for performance improvements in their businesses, among a highly creative but uncertain industry; thus, investigating this framework could offer fruitful insights to the music video business, which could ultimately become guidelines for other organizational structures in the creative industries.
2. Literature Review 2.1 Music videos 2.1.1 Historical context
‘MTV’ began streaming brief promotional videos showing recordings of music artists on a new 24/7 programming ‘visual radio’, expanding its viewership exponentially over nine years from 2.1 million to 46.1 million subscribers in the US. The growth of MTV, along with other video night programs, empowered videos to become a strong competitive advantage in the music industry and visual media (Gow, 1992).
The rise of rock videos with a fast-paced visual style influenced the look of television programs, films and ads in the 80s, firmly positioning the term “music video” in the American pop culture as the 90s began. Robert W. Pittman, one of the developers of MTV coined the expression: “New multidimensional language” referring to music videos and their communicative potential (Gow, 1992, p. 41).
The US record companies spent millions of dollars in the 90s financing music videos to promote sales of records, tapes and CDs of musical performances. (Gow, 1992, p. 44). However a decade later, at the beginning of the 2000s, the future of music videos was in jeopardy, with declining profits, skyrocketing production costs, and the different objectives of music and television stations compared to the artists and record companies; these stations started caring more about ratings than supporting artists and their products. This forced record companies to slash budgets, driving artists and their music videos to turn to an alternative platform, where developments in technology and digital media boosted the success of online music videos, becoming integral to online video and media sites, creating a new music video culture: “The natural home for music videos had moved from television to the Internet” (Edmond, 2014, p. 305).
2.1.2 YouTube
Music videos became the foundation of YouTube (launched in 2005) and other video websites, generating millions and even billions of views and users, topping the sites’ statistics of
the most-viewed videos. Being a successful model, YouTube has been the seed that facilitated record companies to establish their brands online, like in 2008, when Universal Music Group (UMG) and Sony Music Entertainment (SME) YouTube channels became the first and second most watched channels on the site, with a viewership of +3 billions altogether (Edmond, 2014), merging their efforts into the syndication hub called VEVO (launched in 2009), where both companies (and now joined by Google and Abu Dhabi Media) have seen their views and profits increased, generating some 56 billions of views globally (Edmond, 2014, p. 307; YouTube, 2015b). VEVO provides free online music videos giving record companies the control and revenue over viewership (Edmond, 2014, p. 310).
YouTube itself has become a phenomenon, with over 300 hours of video (of any kind) uploaded every minute (YouTube, 2015a, para. 4). At the same time, music videos, previously being just a marketing tool, are now recognized as a legitimate form of revenue and an economy of valuable content: Music videos are being monetized via online platforms through licensing and advertisement partnerships. The multiple revenue streams and reduced production costs give record labels higher ROI (Edmond, 2014).
2.1.3 Music video evolution
Like Edmond (2014) explains, the music video culture transitioned from a linear, organized exhibition of content through music television to the on-demand, immersive experience where the audience has the choice of interaction or rejection of an expansive database through online media sites, same that facilitate audience participation via spreading, “tagging, sharing, liking, and using music videos as part of broader social media activities. In a YouTube era, the ease, volume, and importance of audience participation and interactivity are greatly increased” (Edmond, 2014, p. 314).
However, in a time where the audience has gained such control over the product, little has been researched about the nature of the viewer’s interaction with online music videos, how the music and visual content interact to provide meanings, how these meanings communicate a message to the viewer and what are their effects on the recipient (audience) and the sender (music video). Regarding the interaction between music and visual content in a music video, Lara Schwartz (2007), talking about pitching music video concepts, emphasized how important it is to have visual hooks and memorable, novel, succinct and direct concepts in music videos; and even in this online era we can still identify “novel, clever, catchy, virtuosic” (Edmond, 2014, p. 317) elements rooted in music videos (Edmond, 2014, p. 316, 317) from all styles and genres.
2.1.4 Message of music videos
The message (form + content) of the music video has been predominately using Hollywood Film’s narrative style (the form) to benefit from the audience’s engagement with the illustration and ultimate resolution of the stories, usually corresponding to the lyrics of the video -This narrative form is contrasting with associational and abstract forms-. The nature of the lyrics might motivate a Director to go one-way or another in visual terms (Gow, 1992, p. 47). In the current online music video era, six recurring formulas (content) are still identifiable: The anti-performance piece (purely conceptual), the pseudo-reflexive anti-performance (shots of production crews filming and editing, showing the process of video making), The performance documentary (recorded concert and studio performances), The special effects extravaganza, The song and dance number (“Hollywood musical”, Broadway), and The enhanced performance (hybrid of performance and a supplementary form: narrative associational and abstract). Even though these formulas represent the content of the music video, the song itself (with its music and lyrics) is the ‘star’ of the show: The song is created a long time before the music video is even conceived,
therefore without a song there wouldn’t be any music video but the song could persist on its own even without the music video (although nowadays the music video represents the best form of promotion of an artist’s work); thus, form and content are tools to engage the audience to a music video and the music video is an instrument to engage the consumer to a song and the artist (Gow, 1992, p. 50 - 62).
2.2 Preference
The viewer’s interaction with online music videos is influenced by the consumer’s engagement with the product (getting “hooked”), which leads to the preference and ultimate loyalty to the music video, song, and/or artist. But, how does this engagement develop in the first place?
2.2.1 Involvement and persuasion
According to Petty and Cacioppo (1983), the personal engagement or involvement with a product starts with the persuasion of the advertised product achieved through attitude change; there are two routes to attitude change and subsequent persuasion: the central route and the peripheral route (See Petty and Cacioppo, 1983 for a more detailed study on these routes). The central route (systematic processing) is elicited by an idiosyncratic cognitive response, a thoughtful information consideration, comprehension, learning and retention of issue-relevant information (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983, p. 3) that helps how a person combines and integrates this said information into an evaluation reaction, thus, helps a person decide if he/she likes the advertisement or not. The peripheral route (heuristic processing), on the contrary, is a non-thoughtful persuasion where the person receives cues and sorts them as positive, negative, or with a temporary situational utility, deciding on what attitude to adopt without needing to engage in any complex cognitive process. Attitude changes through the central route persist on long term
and are more predictable of subsequent behavior than changes through the peripheral route, which are temporary and less predictive (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983, p. 13). A lingering issue is how does the person ‘choose’ a certain route; to answer this the concept of ‘motivation’ comes into play: if the person is motivated and able to think about the stimulus, he/she will take the central route, and if this results in a positive evaluation, persuasion will occur (opposite to resistance or boomerang), on the contrary, if the person is either not motivated or unable to evaluate the cue, he/she will follow the peripheral route (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983, p. 21). Therefore, motivation plays an essential role in cue perception and evaluation, which elicit the relevance of the message.
2.2.2 Elaboration Likelihood Model
The ‘Elaboration Likelihood Model’ (ELM) of attitude change explains that depending on the –high or low- relevance of the message (for the person), different routes occur: if the relevance is high the central route will ensue, and if the relevance (Elaboration Likelihood) is low, the peripheral route will (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983, p. 4). Upon the ELM to central route, If the person is motivated to think about the message to which he/she is exposed (could happen at different intensity levels), this motivation will lead to involvement of personal matters, since being a personal-related matter with direct personal consequences makes it important for him/her to form a well-thought opinion. Thus, the ultimate central route will happen in the presence of high-involvement messages with high-personal relevance, along with the ability to think about the message (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983, p. 5). This cognitive ability could be affected by the medium (e.g.: distractions), the experience with the issue, the repetitive nature of the message (repetitive exposure to a message could have a favorable effect) or its complexity. The most
important factors for favorable or unfavorable cognitive responses are the quality of the argument in the message and the person’s initial attitude towards it (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983, p. 6, 8). Both routes elicit different processes, however, both routes could happen at the same time: the peripheral cues may at first temporarily influence attitude, while the central cues would actually permanently persuade the person. Furthermore, the central cues can act as peripheral cues for some target groups, meaning that perception and processing could vary from one target group to another, e.g.: by age (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983).
According to the ELM model, music and humor are peripheral cues to persuasion, thus, they could be a good peripheral aid to help the receiver perceive the message first and process it then through the central route. The message could be perceived first through the temporary mode (a low-involvement and low-personal-relevance situation) and then when the perception develops, as well as the involvement, personal relevance and motivation (if this is the case), the message -if positively accepted- could lead to a long-term preference for the relevant item (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983).
The message of the author’s study refers to an advertisement, which involves visual, musical and message cues altogether and mixed, along with some other cues (like humor); however, the music video is the object of analysis in this study so in order for it to become not just a peripheral, temporary stimuli but a central, long-term preferred product it is of paramount importance that it is carefully planned, taking into account the target market, how this target market processes information and what issue or product-relevant information would be crucial for it to prefer this music video; if this target market would prefer being approached through a central or a peripheral route. A music video thus could be produced to maximize the likelihood of thinking (for example, emphasizing viewer’s personal relevance), although the environment and distractors
have to be also accounted for. “Since the central route to persuasion is rather difficult, the peripheral route sometimes may be an effective advertising strategy” (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983, p. 22). If the acceptance of the music video was based on a central cue, this favorable result will persist on its own, but if it was based on a positive peripheral cue, then its result is temporary and only persists as long as the cue approaches repetitively making it memorable but on a never-ending short-term manner. However, once the audience has watched the music video, it may become more personal-relevant and involving, making the person more aware of the future repetition of this cue. In this case, a peripheral attitude change can lead to a central persuasion (Petty and Cacioppo, 1983, p. 23) and ultimate preference.
2.2.3 Affection
On the contrary, Zajonc and Markus (1982) claim that preference is based solely on affection: “Preferences are themselves primarily affectively based behavioral phenomena” (Zajonc and Markus, 1982, p. 124). These authors state that affect and preferences are independent (but not restrictive) of cognitive processes, e.g.: recognition memory; and even when a preference was developed from cognition (an advertisement’s information made the item favorable and consequently likable), the preference may become autonomous over time and lose its original cognitive information justification, ending the need of cognitive participation and operating solely on affection (Zajonc and Markus, 1982, p. 126).
However the nature of preference Zajonc and Markus (1982) explain, they coincide with Petty and Cacioppo (1983) in the role of repetition and its effects on perception; they call it the ‘exposure effect’, and describe it as the repetitive stimulus exposure that leads to the enhancement of positive affect towards a product. A person can like products depending on a subjective perception and feelings of recognition of familiarity towards that product, making it a
psychological phenomenon that influences preference and attitude change (Zajonc and Markus, 1982, p. 125). When the person perceives a familiar object, he experiences a “glow of warmth, a sense of ownership, a feeling of intimacy” (Zajonc and Markus, 1982, p. 411).
2.2.4 Means-End Chain Model
To talk about music videos and the reasons why a person watches them it’s necessary to talk about marketing, responsible for creating a –sometimes temporary- psychological relationship between the viewer and the music video, generating a persuasion that associates the music video with satisfying a personal-relevant goal, value or benefit for the viewer. If marketers can influence the audience to perceive a music video to be self-relevant, they can affect also the viewer’s motivation to prefer it, consume it, and spread it (Walker & Olson, 1991, p. 111). To better understand the connections between a product and the audience, Jonathan Gutman’s (1982) Means-End Chain Model studies the consumer’s values and perceptions to understand their motivations and behavior, focusing on the personal connections to the product or service’s attributes (Walker & Olson, 1991).
The Means-End Chain model analyzes the connections between the product/service Attributes (physical and abstract characteristics), the consumer Consequences (of consumption; desirable/benefits or undesirable), and the personal Values (belief system, desirable end-states). “It is values which determine the relative desirability of consequences” (Reynolds & Gutman, 1984, p. 29; Reynolds & Craddock, 1988, p. 45); by taking into account personal values and beliefs, this connections are subject to personal interpretation and are thus, subjective. “People have valued end-states toward which they strive. […] Products and their attributes are valued because they are instruments –means- to valued ends. Thus the ‘means that are in the products’ have salience only because they help reach the ‘ends that are in the people’. […] Attributes, then,
[…] -have the- ability to satisfy, provide, or avoid a given consequence, which in turn is deemed important because it satisfies a higher-level personal value” (Reynolds & Craddock, 1988, p. 44). A person’s beliefs and values are the self-meanings that give him a sense of unity and identity (successful items are those linked to the consumer’s identity), influencing the person’s behavior and decision-making across different situations, where the consumer’s subjective meanings of the product’s attributes -and not the attributes themselves- are the key behavior influencers, differing across situations and forming more than one MEC per item and situation (Walker & Olson, 1991, p. 112, 113).
2.2.5 MECCAS Model
To translate this model into a successful advertising strategy, one that leads to high performance, mass viewership and ultimate virality, an extension to the MEC model of Gutman (1982) was generated: The Means-End Conceptualization of the Components of Advertising Strategy, the ‘MECCAS Model’ (Olson and Reynolds, 1983, in Reynolds & Gutman, 1984, p. 31) assists in the preparation and development of advertising that connects the self to consequences associated with the product consumption, specifying important elements and statements that provide the top management and the creative team with the tools needed to apply creativity on generating a relatable advertisement product (Reynolds & Gutman, 1984, p. 31, 32) that communicates to the consumer on various levels of the ACV meanings ladder. “MECCAS can be used not only to develop advertising strategy but also to assess the creative product on a strategic level”. (Reynolds & Craddock, 1988, p. 53) Therefore if needed, it’s safe to use the MECCAS model to assess the creative music video on a strategic level, while managing for its likelihood of virality.
allow for the interpretation and analysis of traditional and online music videos, since even though they differ in content communication, cues, presentation, and elements, they still share similarities between them, like the dynamics of viewership, rapid spreadability, shareability, virality, online environment, etc., which are the subject of this study.
2.3 Content
2.3.1 Key determinants of viral viewership
Advertisement researchers have studied the pre-testing measures that predict the ability to generate offline TV advertising awareness, and have pointed out that these measures (enjoyment, branding and involvement, being enjoyment and involvement the most important) can also predict the abilities to generate viral viewership. They identified the key determinants of viral viewing as the distinctiveness and perceived likelihood to share; also, the inclusion of celebrities in the advertisement is a significant trigger (Southgate, Westoby and Page, 2010).
2.3.1.1 Surprise
Marketing studies have come to the conclusion that effective viral messages must contain the element of surprise; nevertheless, this element by itself is not enough to ensure commercial success, and thus it must be combined with other emotions. The effectiveness is also moderated by gender, where (young) male consumers are more likely to spread disgust-based and fear-based messages that the female consumers; additionally, culture is a key influencer on viral marketing campaigns (area-based cultural differences), so it must be accounted (Dobele et al., 2007). In this context, viral marketing campaigns that use joy in their messages are used to target irreverent or fun brands, as well as mature interest-encouraging advertisements. The campaigns where marketers use sadness target social immediate response to disasters. Likewise, the campaigns that employ anger are targeting single-issue crusades that seek immediate response from the audience
to injustice. It’s strongly recommended that viral marketing campaigns that use fear on their advertisements use it very carefully and prudently. With all these emotions, the finding establishes that successful viral marketing campaigns link emotions to their messages, to encourage the consumer to respond to it, highlighting the goals of viral marketing as the consumption and sharing behaviors by means of the imagination that the message conveys on the audience, as well as being clearly targeted. “Companies must ensure that their message captures the imagination of the recipient to differentiate it from all the other messages the recipient is exposed to on a daily basis” (Dobele et al., 2007, p. 303).
On this perspective, Dafonte-Gómez (2014) explains that surprise and joy are the “dominant emotions in the most successful viral videos” (Dafonte-Gómez, 2014, p. 199); this author points out that mass-audiences events and Television programs are a powerful starting point for the viral dissemination of the most successful videos, where their reach and timely stream account for an influential contribution of the awareness of the consumer. The most widely shared and thus successful videos, according to his studies, use surprise and happiness as the most remarkable emotions portrayed in 76% of the studied viral video advertisements. Likewise, the inclusion of humorous content is present in 58% of the studied sample, while humorous-violent is present in 16%, and humorous-erotic in 8% of the advertisements (Dafonte-Gómez, 2014).
2.3.1.2 Humor
Regarding humor, Zhang and Zinkhan (2006) explain that the presence of humor influences the viewer’s reaction to the advertisement and the product in a favorable manner. This effect made the use of humor a popular practice in advertising and a study interest for marketers (Zhang and Zinkhan, 2006, p. 113). According to Hsieh, Hsieh and Tang (2012), humor is better understood in terms of the attributes of arousal safety, disparagement, and incongruity. Arousal
safety humor provides an escape or comic relief from some constraint; on the contrary, disparagement humor is based on hostility, malice and aggression in social contexts; incongruity humor is the most popular for advertisements, because information that is incongruent to the consumer’s predictions, becomes a laughable and comic situation. This type of humor works best with well-educated people, since they can better understand it. The effect of humor on attitude change is based on its affective nature, that triggers consumer’s affective responses and attention to the message: “Humor in online videos should create affective responses in audiences and positively influence attitudes toward the online video” (Hsieh, Hsieh and Tang, 2012, p. 208). Since humor is defined as ‘the quality of being funny, amusing or comic’ (‘Humor’, n.d.), and creativity is the ‘new and unique’ ideas, there is still a need to decide if humor (for instance, its incongruence attribute) contains creativity/creative cognition (besides that humor boosts creativity as a process); and more importantly, if humorous elements present in music videos can be considered creative or not.
2.3.1.3 Emotions
In the realm of emotions in viral videos, Guadagno et al. (2013) state that there is an ‘arousal hierarchy’ regarding the content of a video and their likelihood to be spread: Videos that evoke positive emotions are the most likely to be forwarded, while videos that convey diffuse emotions are more likely to be forwarded than the ones that show negative emotions, and the videos evoking negative emotions are more likely to be forwarded than non-emotional videos. In this setting, the video source did not impact the likelihood of sharing it (Guadagno et al., 2013), which means that the context in which the consumer became aware of the video could be of any kind and it will still not influence their perception, opposite of the emotional inclusion and consequent content of the artistic product.
Their study also establishes that consumers who experienced strong affective responses to a video also reported a greater likelihood and disposition to share it, making it more likely to spread as a viral video; although, a consumer may base a general decision to share a video on a very different set of factors than it does when sharing the same content to a specific individual. Furthermore, since the ‘specific individual’ to whom the consumer is forwarding the video is likely to be a friend or an acquaintance, the consumer is more likely influenced to forward positive-content videos, because he wants his friends to experience the same pleasure the consumer did (Guadagno et al., 2013).
2.3.1.4 Controversy
Nevertheless, according to Chen and Berger (2014), strong affective responses can also be elicited by controversy. Controversy implies different (and sometimes opposing) opinions regarding a topic; it varies usually between cultures, since each culture has an implicit shared consensus about which are considered controversial topics. This controversy increases interest from the bearers, which in hopes of sharing entertainment, makes them more likely to discuss the topic and pass along the knowledge to others; this interest doesn’t vary even if the people who spread it are anonymous, friends or strangers. Online environments are the ultimate place where people can remain anonymous while sharing an opinion, thus this is the place where controversy is be more likely to spread content in a viral manner (Chen and Berger, 2014, p. 580 - 582). 2.3.1.5 Arousing, interesting and experiential nature of viral content
Berger and Milkman (2012) analyzed general online content virality and found that “more practically useful, surprising, interesting, positive, and emotionally arousing content” is more likely to be highly e-mailed [viral] (Berger and Milkman, 2012, p. 201). Contrasting, Berger found that physiological arousal leads people to share content even if there isn’t a connection to
emotions (Berger, 2011, in Chen and Berger, 2014, p. 581). Berger and Schwartz explained the experiential nature of virality: “while more accessible or publicly visible products generate more immediate and ongoing face-to-face word of mouth, more interesting products only get talked about more soon after people first experience them” (Berger and Schwartz, 2011, in Chen and Berger, 2014, p. 581). The importance of people’s word of mouth relies in its influence on consumer behavior (Chen and Berger, 2014), impacting a product’s performance and most likely, its virality.
Nelson-Field, Riebe and Newstead (2013) studied the emotions linked to video sharing; they established that “High arousal emotions are the primary driver of video sharing” (Nelson-Field, Riebe and Newstead, 2013, p. 205); they observed that although designing high arousal commercial videos is rare and difficult, being more expensive and taking longer to produce, these videos are most likely to be shared. This suggests that marketers and producers should focus more on the emotional appeal of the content, because even when evoking a positive or negative response on the audience, the most important part is to create a strong emotional connection with them (Nelson-Field, Riebe and Newstead, 2013).
Elaborating on Berger and Milkman’s (2012) physiological arousal, their results state that content that evokes a high-arousal positive or negative emotion is more viral, as opposed to low-arousal or deactivating emotion evoking content (like sadness). The driver for this emotion-specific diffusion is the level of activation –arousal- induced by positive and negative emotions (i.e., awe, amusement, anxiety, and anger). Arousal mediates the impact of emotion on transmission, so the more amusement or anger, or etc., the more likely content is to be shared, including through word of mouth (Berger and Milkman, 2012, 201).
2.3.1.6 Positive vs. negative content
These emotions so far have been mentioned as equal; yet, positive content is more viral than negative. The reason behind positive content being prominently shared might be that people share this highly emotional content to “make sense of their experiences, reduce dissonance, or deepen social connections” (Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter 1956; Peters and Kashima 2007; Rime et al. 1991; in Berger and Milkman, 2012, p. 193), as well as to entertain others (this is where interesting and surprising content becomes handy), inform them or boost their mood (this is where useful and positive content becomes spread). This social diffusion environment implies that content may be shared to help peers, generate reciprocity, or boost reputation by showing knowledge of funny, entertaining or useful information, without caring for an economic or self-reward; thus, social transmission requires less motivation and involves more the sender’s internal states (Berger and Milkman, 2012, p. 201). In this matter, they determined that individual psychological processes that drive social transmission are important to understand collective results, and that the emotion arousal that content evokes on the consumer helps conclude whether a cultural item succeeds.
Content characteristics as well as being featured prominently (highly publicized content) increase the likelihood -in equal importance- that the content will become viral. To design viral content, marketers must then focus their efforts on crafting ads that make consumers amused, even when evoking negative emotions (with cautious planning) like anxiety (Berger and Milkman, 2012, p. 202). Yet, it’s worth reiterating that the most successful viral advertisements are the ones that evoke highly arousal positive emotions.
Concerning viral positive, surprising, amusing, emotional, entertaining, interesting, and mood boosting content for music videos, generating content with this characteristics becomes a complex task; yet it is the rewarding outcome what makes marketers, creatives, producers and managers to jump on the creativity bandwagon to create the best music video for a song and artist in hopes of hitting it big and have the video become viral. This seems like a straightforward process, yet little is known about how to craft content with these characteristics that is unique and stands out from the others, least about the unpredictable acceptance outcome of the customer; so in reality, music video producers get the trendiest director to incorporate ‘creative’, high-tech visuals, publicize it in a loop and hope for the best. It all sounds suitable but what exactly is creativity?
2.4 Creativity 2.4.1 Definition
Creativity has been studied through time by different sciences, all trying to decipher the complex, amazing process carried out by the human mind; from all definitions of creativity through the years, the most commonly accepted by contemporaries is the one defined by Teresa Amabile (1983): Creativity is the generation or production of novel, unique, valuable and appropriate (feasibility) or useful ideas, processes or solutions (Amabile, 1983, p. 359, 360). 2.4.2 Creativity management and innovation
Successful artists, directors, producers, marketers, and companies alike are the ones who are able to innovate in their own fields; since innovation is the successful implementation and thus management of creative ideas, creativity is a necessary precursor to innovation (George, 2007): Creativity management is necessary for innovative, viral music videos. Furthermore, creativity is constituted by levels or dimensions, i.e. an idea can represent either an incremental (low
creativity) or a radical (high creativity) improvement from the status quo, or it could vary in terms of scope or value-creating range, making creativity a continuum since an output is never purely creative. Moreover, creativity is widely subjective, since a creative work for a stakeholder might have a different (negative) outcome from another stakeholder’s perspective (George, 2007, p. 443).
2.4.3 Construct operationalization
Novel, unique, wild, ‘creative’ ideas must also be considered useful or having the potential to create value to be formally considered creative. Novelty by itself is not creativity, uniqueness is not creativity, and problem solving is not creativity. To be able to distinguish creative ideas both novelty and usefulness must be present (George, 2007, p. 441, 442); however, these two indicators are subjective and bounded to “social, cultural and historical precedents of the field” (Amabile, 1996, in Perry-Smith and Shalley, 2003, p. 90, 91).
Creativity as a construct has been defined as twofold: as a process and as a product. Given that the subject of this study is creativity as part of a product, it isn’t necessary to analyze creativity as a process. Therefore, regarding creativity as a product, a product is creative to the extent that domain-specific experts (peers and gatekeepers) judge it as creative (Amabile, 2012). Since high performance, successful music videos can effectively innovate through creativity, and creative outcomes are considered as such by gatekeepers and field experts; what do experts consider creative in a music video?
2.5 Virality & WOM 2.5.1 Virality
As previously discussed, Internet rescued the Music Video, bringing it back to the scene and remixing it with online and traditional forms of dissemination. In an era where everyone and no
one could become a superstar, marketers go above and beyond to find out what the next big trend will be, in hopes for them to become the frontrunners. One of the current strategies marketers of record labels use to promote their artist’s music videos is Virality. This construct implies ‘the tendency of an image, video, or piece of information to be circulated rapidly and widely from one Internet user to another’ (‘Virality’, n.d.); in this context, the characteristic of ‘rapid’ refers to the action performed or occurring during a short interval of time or with great speed (‘Rapid’, n.d.), even though it’s evaluation is widely subjective to the project’s objectives: For example, an independent musician whose new release gets 10,000 views in one month might consider this a successful viral video, while for a mainstream pop artist this outcome would be expected to be reached within the first hour of release, and would otherwise be considered a failure.
Virality, along with traditional forms of marketing, owes its success to peer-to-peer communication that makes a product or service acknowledged not only by the consumers who experience the advertisement stimulus but also by the consumer’s network of contacts (Hsieh, Hsieh and Tang, 2012, p. 208) carried through any online system, social media application and computer-based or mobile platforms (i.e. tablets and smartphones), making it available to whichever (‘glocal’) scale of diffusion in an epidemic way (Palka, Pousttchi and Wiedemann, 2009, p. 172).
2.5.2 Social media
The term ‘Social media’ entails “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content’’ (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p. 61, in Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011, p. 255); social media apps are specially fitted for virality, because the online communities can transmit any type of knowledge through them to an unlimited number of users (Kaplan and
Haenlein, 2011, p. 255). In the case of music videos, social media refers mainly to online video streaming services like YouTube and Vimeo; however, the video could be shared through any type of social media application (e.g. Facebook, Twitter), though it would still have to link the sharing post to the original streaming service site.
2.5.3 Word Of Mouth
The aforementioned peer-to-peer communication refers to ‘Word-Of-Mouth’ (WOM), an oral interpersonal communication process between people who act as sender and receiver. WOM influences consumer behavior and attitude, from purchase decisions to the diffusion of innovations, impacting on products and services’ pre and post-consumption attitudes (Palka, Pousttchi and Wiedemann, 2009, p. 172; Chen and Berger, 2014, p. 581). In addition to WOM’s impact on the consumer, it also offers benefits to both parties: For the sender, since they can help peers and consequentially improve their self-confidence and reputation; for the receiver, it reduces decision-making efforts and also improves confidence and safety, since the recommendations come from inside his network and thus are reliable, un-biased sources of information (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011, p. 254, 255).
2.5.4 Electronic Word Of Mouth
Advances in Information and communication technologies together with the Internet have revolutionized the consumer communication channels and environment, making it more rich, immediate, large-scale, and prominent. Internet provoked the transition from a traditional WOM customer-to-customer communication to the digital era, the technologic-based communication channel called electronic word-of-mouth ‘eWOM’. eWOM comprises online reviews and comments that customers make about a product or service in an online social media platform that becomes readily available to the online community. Just as traditional WOM, eWOM has a direct
influence on consumer behavior, yet contrasting with WOM, it has two specific advantages: The high-speed diffusion of information (in traditional WOM, information spread is limited to the network of the sender), and its electronic nature makes it easy to measure its impact on tangible outcomes like sales, profit and marketing ROI, reducing risks (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011, p. 255).
2.5.5 Virality trends
The trend in viral marketing (virality strategies) has its base on the Internet’s ever-evolving video streaming technology, with video-sharing websites like YouTube and Vimeo as benchmarks, where people can watch, comment on and share virtually infinite content (Hsieh, Hsieh and Tang, 2012, p. 202). Forwarded content sent by friends and family gains more credibility, positive attitude and involvement than those coming from a stranger or an advertisement, given that it involves the social sharing of an emotional experience, in order to share feelings and sensations and feel identified with their close ones (Hsieh, Hsieh and Tang, 2012, p. 208, 209). This complies with the aforementioned statement that emotion is a requirement for shareability since people want to be entertained. Therefore, virality is achieved through successful, large-scale social cognition, electronic word of mouth (Palka, Pousttchi and Wiedemann, 2009, p. 173).
Given that a viral ad or music video consumption (viewership) requires consumer’s subjective positive attitude and preference, marketers, directors, artists and producers have to focus their creative efforts in the content of the product, being the only ‘safe’ bet they can control to tap the full potential of virality. The message is the core of the persuasive communication (along with the context) and therefore the consumer’s attitude towards the content influences its diffusion behavior (Hsieh, Hsieh and Tang, 2012, p. 203, 204, 210) and consequent virality.
Regarding the reasons behind effective virality, Maura Edmond (2014) explains that the success of a viral video is the ‘spreadability’ of the content; in other words it’s “The extent that it acts as a hub for further creative activity by a wide range of participants in this social network” (Burgess 2008, 102; in Edmond, 2014, p. 315). Hsieh, Hsieh and Tang (2012) state that the content’s emotional element is essential and it can be achieved through perceived humor, which triggers viewer’s emotions and influences its (positive) attitudes and forwarding behavior; good content needs to be memorable and interesting, so while trying to achieve this, sometimes creatives cross the line to the provocative and edgy content, which could be perceived as inappropriate and completely obliterate the persuading effort: “Highly provocative and edgy messages are a double-edged sword” (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011, p. 261). Furthermore, the multimedia effect has a great impact, since people prefer innovative, richer stimulus that include vivid video, music, visual and sound effects (Hsieh, Hsieh and Tang, 2012, p. 217, 218; (Kadam, 2012).
2.5.5.1 Media coverage
According to Kaplan and Haenlein (2011), successful virality meets three criteria: “The right people need to get the right message under the right circumstances” (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011, p. 256). From their perspective, the right people refer to three groups of messengers: market mavens, social hubs and salespeople. Market mavens are those individuals who know everything about everything in the market, they have access to an extensive pool of knowledge and spread it through their social network. The market maven transmits the content to a social hub, spreading it and leading to virality: social hubs are people with immense social connections and serve as bridges between subcultures, transmitting content to a large-scale community; mainstream media coverage of online videos increases their viewership and spread since they are ‘everywhere in sight’. Salespeople come in handy when the content wasn’t persuasive enough, they make it more
relevant and convincing, and then pass it on to the social hub for distribution (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011, p. 256, 257). Palka, Pousttchi and Wiedemann (2009) mentioned the conditions to facilitate content forward intention from the sender and the receiver’s perspective following a forwarding etiquette; from the receiver’s side, it’s the content’s adherence of recipient’s interests (people are influenced by groups that are important for them and use them as behavioral guidelines); the tie strength (strong ties lead to more sensitive and personal information diffusion); the subjective norm (following social norms and peer pressure to maintain good reputation); and the expressiveness (to gain attention, to show expert status and emphasize their innovativeness identity). Consumers need to share their positive experiences to enhance their image and project themselves as intelligent consumers (Palka, Pousttchi and Wiedemann, 2009, p. 181). From the sender’s perspective, the consumption-based conditions to forward include (personal) customer satisfaction and involvement of the communicator (relevance based on his needs, values and interests). The higher the level of involvement of the sender implies that he or she has personal conditions that make it more likely to share content, these conditions are mavenism (also previously identified by Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011) and altruism, sharing content to give and help others (Palka, Pousttchi and Wiedemann, 2009, p. 182, 183).
2.5.5.2 Music
The viral marketing of digital music conveys some critical factors according to Kahl and Albers (2013); stating that it’s essential to embed the music itself in a viral advertising message, and that non-musical messages should be used additionally. Moreover, the relationship between the artist and its fans influences in the foundation for the sharing and spreading of the music (Kahl and Albers, 2013). This theory suggests that by ‘message’, Kahl and Albers (2013) are referring to the lyrics of the song contained in the music video advertisement, and that
additionally a non-musical message, being this a music video’s ‘visuals’, should be used in order to ensure the viral marketing of music, and subsequently, a music video.
Needless to say, a marketer could have the perfect combination of advertisement strategy, maven support, multimedia innovation and appropriate context; yet, all this becomes useless if the product is not good by itself. “Even the most successful buzz cannot heal a bad product, inappropriate price, or insufficient distribution. To reveal its true potential, viral marketing needs to be accompanied by changes in the rest of the marketing mix” (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011, p. 261). Content that is memorable and interesting and emotionally (e.g. surprise, joy, disgust, fear) triggering has the potential to become viral, and surprisingly it frequently doesn’t mean major changes in the message (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011, p. 256, 257). The buzz that virality creates is an ephemeral trend that goes down quickly, often lasting not more than a couple of weeks (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011, p. 261).
2.6 Viewership 2.6.1 Evaluation
As previously mentioned, during the past decade the online music video streaming website ‘YouTube’ has become the performance indicator benchmark for real-time viewership evaluation. This website has been an important instrument and release platform for the introduction and growth of viral music videos, the most viewed category of videos (Edmond, 2014). YouTube is a phenomenon of more than 1 billion users who watch hundreds of millions of hours, generating an astounding billionaire viewership that spreads across 75 countries and 61 languages, increasing per second (YouTube, 2015b).
2.6.2 Operationalization
since it is the fundamental attribute that can be monitored and evaluated in real-time; opposing to shareability, which is a less prominent feature that can’t be formally traced and accounted on social media. This lack of control is the main reason for this study’s solely focus on the online music video viewership. Viewership -as mentioned before- is the amount of viewers of a music video, thus, it is the chosen performance indicator of analysis.
2.6.3 Most viewed music video: Gangnam Style
Regarding viewership, the most viewed music video on YouTube (officialpsy, 2012) to this date is Psy’s “Gangnam Style”; this video has currently 2,395,830,203 views and counting; it was published in July 15th, 2012, with peak views at the end of that same year (see Appendix 1). This video became a viral phenomenon across the globe, breaking YouTube’s views counter record (officialpsy, 2012; PromoSeanTV, 2015).
2.6.3.1 Gangnam Style’s key determinants of virality
This video contains numerous takes in a predominantly fast-paced style, however, it’s unreliable to categorize the elements presented in these takes as those of the nature of humoristic, interesting, surprising, or emotionally appealing key determinants necessary (according to theory) for virality; it is even more inappropriate to rule these elements as creative, given their subjective nature. However, if these elements were in fact settled as creative, it would be necessary to find out on a further research if this is the reason behind the music video’s virality, and the dynamics of this condition.
Nevertheless, researchers state that since the video received mainstream media coverage, its virality was subsequently boosted (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2011); yet, this raises doubt about the independent music videos that don’t receive wide coverage and still become viral, given that it
invalidates the theory of liking something and thus watching it in a viral way because of stimulus repetition of Berger and Milkman (2012).
Furthermore, it’s unsuitable to validate that these music video content key determinants of virality are considered as such (is that supposed ‘humoristic’ element really humorous?) since they are subjective and open to interpretation. Therefore, a good start to validate the key determinants and (expected) creative attribute in any music video is to consult the experts in the music industry.
The available research is widely focused on what makes online videos go viral in a general (internet ‘memes’) or marketing (advertisements) context; likewise, they have studied the elements that enable digital music to go viral; but little to none information is available about the conditions that empower an online music video to increase its performance through viewership, spread and overall virality in a rapid way.
There is a clear research gap regarding the elements or ‘formula’ that engages viewers who share ‘online videos’ and ‘digital music’; the nature of these elements, and consequently, their effects on online music videos and their virality. There is a need for theorizing their interconnections and organizations, their dynamics and nature of these elements; and given the artistic nature of music videos, there is also a need to study the possible link of creativity with the performance of an online music video.
This study attempts to answer all of these issues with the help of the information provided by experts in the field, who are active members of the music industry business, music video directors and creatives, record label producers, music video online platforms, and management professionals.
factors that influence music video virality? 3. Research Design
3.1 Strategy
In order to appropriately answer the present study’s research question, which inquires about a relationship between creativity management and music video virality; additionally to the theoretical framework presented, there is a need to include information from the current industry, achievable through the compilation of experts’ insights about the theory concepts and strategies regarding how the inclusion (or exclusion) of creativity in a music video influences its virality. As previously mentioned, virality, for matters of this research, refers to the rapid viewership of a music video on the Internet environment; while viewership is identified as the audience for the music video. Creativity is treated as the novelty of a product, in this case a music video. These construct specifications were mentioned to the interviewees before starting the sessions.
The purpose of this study is primarily exploratory, since it’s important to find out virality-boosting elements and their influence over this outcome in an uncertain and ever-evolving industry (thus, flexible enough to future modifications); however, this exploration is mixed with a -lower level- of descriptive study, given that the expert opinions inform in detail of the virality management process as they occur now in the music video industry. A combination of both purposes allows for the well-rounded exploration of the viral music video, thus allowing for the understanding of relationships, causes and effects.
The nature of this study allows for theory building parting from constructs, theories and strategies through an inductive research approach, also making use of expert opinions in the form of qualitative primary data. The comments made by the experts will, combined with the theory, formulate possible relationships and causes and effects of creativity along with elements present
in viral music videos; given the subjective nature of the industry, and thus, the need for experts’ knowledge. This subjective nature of the environment and interviewees (different locations and professions) allows the researcher to establish beforehand the ultimate disadvantage of limited generalizability of results; nevertheless, the qualitative nature of the study allows for the rich and detailed understanding of the data.
Primary qualitative data that consists of interviews was used, where the research strategy to collect the primary data was to ask questions regarding the topic and subtopics of study; these questions are all related and aiming at finding possible relationships between elements that help boost virality of a music video so they are not only useful but also the most appropriate to be able to understand such an abstract and adaptive knowledge of the creative music video industry context and processes. It is worth mentioning that secondary data was not used since the main concern of this study is to understand and grasp the current situation in the music video industry, which might not be useful or even relatable to in the past; and maybe only valid for a short period of time. The semi-structured interviews were conducted digitally face-to-face, with minor questions adaptations according to the profession of the interviewee or according to the flow of the conversation –sometimes even changing the order-, leaving some questions open-ended and others straightforward.
3.2 Sample and data collection
I based my research method on a sample of 8 interviews to top experts in the online music video industry (e.g., a country manager at VEVO), and senior music video directors and producers from top music video production companies in important hub cities like Amsterdam (Netherlands), London (UK), Helsinki (Finland), Bergen (Norway), Los Angeles (USA), and Mexico City (Mexico), as well as independent directors; all this in order to grasp the majority of
the industry segments’ experts and their take on my research topic. The sample consists of 6 men and 2 women, with a median age of 34; they are all senior professionals (working for more than 3 years), and just one of them works as a freelance director; the majority of the respondents work at their own companies.
Given the nature of the summertime work schedules of the interviewees (the summertime is their peak work season), it was impossible to get to interview all of them face-to-face, thus, the majority of them preferred to be interviewed through Skype, an online calling and video service that allows anyone to be connected, allowing me to interview them at any time they had the availability to do so. As mentioned by them, the interviewees’ way to communicate to anyone in the world without moving is Skype, so this is their preferred communication channel. Depending on their choice of time and (predominantly) video call, I established rapport with them so that they would feel comfortable enough to share their ideas naturally. Confidentiality protocols for this thesis were discussed before the interviews started to ensure freedom of speech; as well as the key constructs and their operationalization regarding the present study (Like for instance, what would be considered as Virality, and what not). All of the interviewees agreed to be audio recorded, since they were aware of the nature of my interview and it’s purpose. Subsequently, transcripts of the interviews were made.
The interviews consisted of 25 questions conducted on an average of one hour (see Appendix 2) per respondent; all interviewed during the month of July 2015 (except for one that occurred mid-August). The open-ended questions range from the current career and job activities of the interviewee, virality intention, virality boosting elements, viewer engagement, viral context, creativity, creative music videos, effect of creativity on viewership, effect of lyrics and music in preference, relationship of creativity on virality, media coverage and virality, artist’s ‘buzz’,
creativity present in the most viewed music video in YouTube, and its relationship with creative elements from theories. All these questions were semi-structured with some variations in order, adapting them to the conversation; some of them were implicit in other question’s answers so there was no need to duplicate them.
Through cold calls to production companies found on the Internet, through my own personal network, and in one case, through the University’s network, I was able to contact 27 professionals through emailing, phone calls and Facebook messages; getting in communication with people of diverse (yet industry-related) professions like music video director, record label managers, music video producers, marketers, and music managers. This variety is because at a certain point in the study of literature I realized that to complete the panorama of the industry I couldn’t just focus on the directors’ opinion, but I also needed to include marketing practitioners and managers. As previously mentioned, the summertime becomes a hectic time for the music industry, since it’s their busiest time because of summer festivals, releases and etc.; for this reason, after a long period of time, I was able to confirm 10 interviews, from which I could only conduct 8, since two of the directors cancelled last-minute because of their current unusually busy schedules and lack of time. Nevertheless, I focused on the quality of the interviewee’s profiles and careers instead of quantity.
Since I conducted interviews, this research design is suited to qualitative studies, thus, through related specific questions I was able to apply methodology constructs and recommendations from the Social Media Research Method Workshop and the Qualitative Data Analysis Workshop courses from the Master program. Given that I chose creativity in a product as a core management (and marketing) issue, I also included theories from the ‘Managing Creativity’ course, and included the relevant information on my literature review. The Social Media
Research course provided me with the knowledge and ability to approach the technical dynamics of an ever-evolving internet-driven research focusing on the usage of social media, particularly important for my research since virality involves the viewing of music videos, done predominantly through online social media platforms. With all this into account, I established a conceptual framework to formulate answers to specific gaps in the literature review that will be confirmed or invalidated by the arguments that the experts state, presented in the results section. 3.3 Quality of the research
To ensure the quality of the research 4 elements are discussed: Credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability.
To ensure credibility ‘Member checks’ were used; the interviewee’s transcript and findings was sent to each of them in order for them to approve the content collected. Also, the information of the findings was shared with the rest of the respondents as a means to triangulate the data and confirm its consistency.
To ensure transferability, a full detailed description of the setting of the interviews was explained, providing the reader with the necessary information to judge its external validity.
As a means to ensure dependability, a transcript of each of the interviews conducted is shared with the thesis, providing transparency in the documentation of the findings.
To ensure confirmability, the self-analysis evaluation of the research is presented in the discussion section.
3.4 Method of analysis
Through the interviews, the data was collected and carefully analyzed; detailed examination of the transcripts was conducted, comparing the results to the theories and forming subtopics, which emerge from the literature review and consequent interview design and data. The data is
