One to One Interactive has released a study conducted by OTOInsights, its research/neuromarketing arm, that examines why some Internet videos go viral.

General Findings

[D]ata from the study does not suggest any correlation between engagement, emotion, and the length of a video. Long videos (three minutes or greater) and short videos (two minutes or less) are equally likely to have high or low engagement scores. This finding suggests that Internet videos do not need to be limited to sound bite productions or even standard television commercial length. Internet video viewers are willing to view longer productions so long as they’re engaging.

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Insight 1: Viewer Responses to Internet Videos are Emotionally Complex
… Marketers need to be aware of the range and complexity of emotional responses to quickly consumed and produced digital creatives like Internet video. Similarly, marketers need to guard against allowing their research and analysis methods to become overly reductive about emotional response. Emotional states are seldom monolithic. Even if the videos seem self-evident in their meanings, viewers’ reactions to them are quietly sophisticated.

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Insight 2:  Engagement Scores Substantially Enhance Interpretability of User Ratings
Marketers designing and evaluating digital media creative assets are not well served by the lack of feedback provided by common ratings systems. Given the importance of ratings systems in video popularity…, it is critical that marketers develop a better understanding of why users might give a video an undesirable rating.

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Insight 3: Viewer Engagement and Video Success are Positively Linked
This data suggests that a certain level of emotional engagement is a necessary, though not sufficient, predictor of a viral video’s success. In other words, it is unlikely that a video lacking a certain amount of emotional engageability will spread virally, regardless of other factors. At the same time, just because a video has this emotional engageability by no means guarantees that it will go viral; other factors (e.g., word of mouth, computer-based recommendation systems, and trendy cultural topics and memes) will influence a given video’s viral ability.

Some of the methods and findings rely too heavily on OTOInsights proprietary methodology to be immediately applicable to most people.  But if you’re considering employing video in your marketing efforts,  the general points are helpful reminders and challenges to the often simplistic ideas we have about what makes for successful videos.

(Hat tip to Roger Dooley of Neuromarketing.)

College campuses are a huge and expensive resource, but for much of the year they do little more good than idle factories. Fully using them year-round would mean much more bang for the bucks we can still afford to spend.

Several years ago, while working with a George Washington University task force on the seemingly humdrum subject of the academic calendar, we began to suspect that American colleges and universities were underutilizing their facilities – perhaps drastically so. Since 1992, federal law has defined the academic year as at least 30 weeks of instruction, but in a survey of dozens of schools’ calendars, we found that this federal minimum, far from being a lower limit, is the norm. Actual classroom instruction, in fact, typically occupies even fewer than those 30 weeks – which means that a typical college fully uses its facilities for academic purposes for little more than half the calendar year.

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The reason this is so important is that an unused campus isn’t free. While college facilities sit idle, they continue to generate maintenance, energy, and debt-service expenses that contribute to the high cost of running a college. Those costs are borne by students, taxpayers, and donors. Such inefficiency is not affordable today.

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Our research suggested that a version of the Dartmouth plan [which requires all undergraduates to take classes during at least one summer term] could increase net revenue at medium-sized private universities like George Washington by more than $10 million a year, after figuring in the cost of additional faculty to teach the additional students. Other institutions might net more or less. Such funds could be put toward financial aid at private schools; public systems could accommodate new students at reduced per-student costs. Schools adopting this plan that didn’t want to enroll more students would find themselves with extra space during the term, which they could provide at low cost to neighboring institutions that needed to grow quickly. More radical cost savings per degree might be achieved through true campus sharing by distinct institutions – having two colleges adjust their schedules so they could double up in a single campus. That would spread the cost of running a campus across two entire student bodies, significantly lowering the cost per student.

That creativity requires novelty is common knowledge, but neuroscientists are beginning to understand why:

Perception and imagination are linked because the brain uses the same neural circuits for both functions. Imagination is like running perception in reverse. The reason it’s so difficult to imagine truly novel ideas has to do with how the brain interprets signals from your eyes. The images that strike your retina do not, by themselves, tell you with certainty what you are seeing. Visual perception is largely a result of statistical expectations, the brain’s way of explaining ambiguous visual signals in the most likely way. And the likelihood of these explanations is a direct result of past experience.

Entire books have been written about learning, but the important elements for creative thinkers can be boiled down to this: Experience modifies the connections between neurons so that they become more efficient at processing information. Neuroscientists have observed that while an entire network of neurons might process a stimulus initially, by about the sixth presentation, the heavy lifting is performed by only a subset of neurons. Because fewer neurons are being used, the network becomes more efficient in carrying out its function.

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Fortunately, the networks that govern both perception and imagination can be reprogrammed. By deploying your attention differently, the frontal cortex, which contains rules for decision making, can reconfigure neural networks so that you can see things that you didn’t see before. You need a novel stimulus — either a new piece of information or an unfamiliar environment — to jolt attentional systems awake. The more radical the change, the greater the likelihood of fresh insights.

The Fast Company article has more–and explains why corporate retreat/brainstorming sessions don’t work.

A few weeks ago, I guess it was, we twittered about Peter Kim’s list of companies that represent some of the best practices in utilizing social networking. Well, he’s now pulled all of that information into a wiki, making it easy to see who’s doing what, how they’re doing it, and what it’s doing for them.

Anthropologist Grant McCracken makes the observation that “Millennials” is always used by people who aren’t Millennials. While I’m not sure such a broad claim actually holds, it is true that this name was given to this generation, which raises interesting questions for McCracken:

This departs from the youth culture handbook. Normally, each generation assumes the right of self authorship. Thus did Richard Linklater and Douglas Coupland help define the alternative (or “indie”) moment. It is for other, older generations to defer. In our culture, youth always knows better, especially one it comes to naming and claiming itself.

Now, there may be a number of Millennials who are widely seen to be authors and architects of their generation. (And I just know the comments field will fill with smug correction.) But let us observe that “Millennial” was created (I believe) by William Strauss and Neil Howe. When one generation allows itself to be named by another generation, the game is up. Even the alternatives were provided by another generation. I believe The Net Generation was proposed by Don Tapscott. “Generation Y” was proposed for awhile, but this was patently relation and honored that “Generation X” that had come before.

Now, it may be that this is the Millennial difference. They are, some of them, quite happy to embrace a status quo. If someone wants to name them, well, this is just one of the many things they are prepared to live with.

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But I have to say, there is something odd here.

Any Millennials care to respond?

While much of a designer’s work is abstract, emotional, and gut-level, our designers value research, collaboration, and feedback, considering it all part of the creative process. This ability to learn from the client and the target audience and to incorporate the findings into a final design is particularly true of Stein Art Director Bo Uzzle. Bo has been designing for the education market for years, and he makes an excellent case for design to flow logically and responsibly from research. We coerced him into sitting down for a short interview …

Q. If a school has conducted a lot of market research, can you use it?

A. Of course. I don’t think a responsible designer has the option to ignore research. I don’t hear the name of a university and think colors. That’s not the way it works for me.

We do a lot of research, looking at the target students’ aspirations and an institution’s aspirations and at how these interface — where they meet. That’s important: to look at where a school wants to be, not just at where it is.

In focus groups, we try to get the flavor of a school. We look at the play between being liberal arts versus a comprehensive university. Is the school carried by a few programs? What associations do people off campus have with the school? What draws individual kids to a school? How many are full-pay or first-generation? Who is the decision maker in the prospective student families — the student or the parent?

There are commonalities for every institution. For instance, people want to see the campus, to see where they are going to live for the next four years. We are selling lifestyle as much as academic distinctives.

If a college has lots of first-generation students and it seems that they are drawn to the idea of “college,” then I’ll consider using design elements that are iconic of college.

Are the majority of the prospective students “careerists” or people who want to learn how to learn? If they are mostly careerists, you don’t want to frustrate that desire with a lot of abstract language.

Some institutions attract kids who are readers, and that makes you want to give them opportunities for moments of discovery. I love being able to plant Easter eggs for curious people. This requires working closely with a writer. The content has to be structured in a way so that when a reader digs deeper, they are rewarded for their effort. I also love the boldness of the direct, benefits-oriented appeal to careerists.

Designers have to read the content in order to be successful. I think they have to like to read, in order to keep from frustrating readers. A rudimentary understanding of writing is necessary for functional layout.

Q. Can you describe the “design process” a little more?

A. The writer and I work together, doing the research and talking in broad strokes about what makes this school different. What motivates the students there?

For Woodberry Forest, we developed the themes of brotherhood and standing together in an extensive branding document. We thought that talking about brotherhood was best done as a long, direct speech with a rhythm to it — almost sermonizing.

Then we needed to figure out the viewbook sections. How do you back up that appeal? Your typical sections are academics, athletics, outcomes, etc., but for this brotherhood theme, you want something more conceptual: What it means to be a Woodberry man, to join this line, this history.

Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with the typical sections. Most kids won’t read a viewbook linearly. They’ll thumb through it from back to front. They want to see that list of majors. You’ve got to give them that payoff. But I like to put it at the end because the center spread is one of your best chances to create a lasting dominant impression with a reader. It should connect emotionally. My least favorite viewbooks are ones that are collections of lists.

Once we have the outline, we decide where we want to create interest with details and where we want to be broad, to hit people over the head. Is there a structural logic we want to impose? That starts to flesh out the outline.

The writer writes the broader strokes — what each page will be about. Together we decide — do I need to detail it — is there a story that needs to be told? Or do I need to scream it? We work from broad to the minute and then back up again.

Q. You direct the photo shoots for your projects. What makes a good photographer?

A. We are looking less and less for the photographers who can make the perfect studio shot. We look for people who can give energy, believability.

Kids are incredibly cynical nowadays. They react negatively to anything they don’t believe is sincere.

The good photographers make people feel comfortable, either not aware the camera is there or looking at the camera like you are one of their friends, like you’ve just walked up and joined the conversation. Two camera-aware shots can be technically the same but have a totally different feeling. I do try to limit the number of camera-aware shots. They are so tricky. If you don’t get it right, kids will crucify you for it.

There are other considerations. Many images in a piece will be small images. You want them to give a graphic idea, not details. Let large images celebrate the details.

We’ve all seen viewbooks with the cliched cover shot of a student sitting alone under a tree reading a book. We’re often tempted to think the contemplative life — the life of scholarly reflection — is the ideal collegiate experience. But that’s not necessarily going to connect with a 17-year-old. Social networking has changed the ideal. Kids nowadays don’t want to be alone. You have to show students interacting in groups.

Deserted beauty shots of facilities are a no-no. True, they’re easier to get than shots of kids interacting in the same setting, but you have to understand that the shot of the facility relates a feature, and the interaction shot portrays a benefit. And that’s a powerful difference.

We need to be aware of the stories we’re telling with our images. The story that an image tells to someone not familiar with the school is frequently completely different from the story it tells to us and the school administrators.

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Every school has a different story to tell. Often for my job, the starting point is finding a reason to fall in love with the school. If I can convey that reason to someone else, then I deserve my paycheck.