Does your brand have a life after death?

I recently saw an amazing Ted Talk by Dr Nicholas Christakis about the social connections between people and how they affect health outcomes. It got me thinking about how social connections affect brand.

They showed that there is a hard correlation between people with obesity - so much so that if one of your direct connections is obese, you have a 45% likelihood to be obese also. This diminishes with distance of connection.
Why is this?

Dr Christakis categorises 3 main drivers for this 1) induction, if I gain weight it causes you to gain weight 2) homophily, or birds of a feather flocking together and 3) confounding (science speak for some effect that we haven't yet been able to identify). They found that all 3 elements were in play affecting the incidence of obesity. You are not only affected by others, associate with people like yourself....but the effect of that lingers beyond your connection, even beyond death! What lingers goes beyond immediate cause and effect - it becomes part of the fabric, ideas and norms affecting the entire network.

Once the Idea, or connection exists, it remains like a cloud in the air. Intrigued, they then tracked this for positivity, finding that like a common cold, postivity is catching too.

We know that Word of Mouth (WOM) is one of the strongest stimuli influencing purchase behaviour (for B2B and B2C). But what happens when we go beyond WOM as a purchase influencer to the notion of a Sustainable Idea?

Some examples of this notion of a sustainable Idea that is harnessed and propogated by a brand are Earth Hour, Contours (the notion of fast, effective and female friendly workouts), Facebook (an online meeting place) and Nike (perform at all points in your life). Which brands do you think do this well?

What Sustainable Ideas exist around your brand, your business and importantly your tribe? How can you help them spread, connect and grow so you too can spread your own brand of positivity, even after the death of your current campaign?

hat tip: Heidi Allen for pointing out this amazing piece of work. Flickr credit:Binkiexxx