From Manchester’s brunch queues to Uber’s growth strategy – What does ‘herd mentality’ mean for the future of audience targeting and social media?
BY KIRSTEN WALKER, DIGITAL MEDIA ASSISTANT
A couple of weeks ago I attended MAD North, where I sat in on lots of interesting sessions on all things media and marketing. One session stood out to me: ‘The Herd Wins: Why Connected People Beat Bigger Budgets’ with Tom Ridges (Herdify), Sam Benton (MAD Masters) and Rory Sutherland (Ogilvy).
This talk discussed the idea of ‘herd mentality’ and how audience targeting can be increasingly effective if we look at consumers in terms of their personal networks, rather than as individuals. The speakers discussed how consumption behaviours are often based on what we see our friends, family or colleagues consuming; how we copy the behaviours of people we have relationships with.
The speakers outlined that most consumers need at least one person they know to have adopted a product before they consume it themselves, with only around 8% of people being early adopters of products and technology. The other 92% are part of the herd.
Since attending this talk, I have been thinking about the idea of herd mentality – it doesn’t take much to spot where we see this in the real world. Living in Manchester, you see it all the time. It only takes stepping into the city centre on a Saturday morning to witness the queues stretching all down the street, as people wait to get a table at another hyped-up brunch spot, try the newest viral pistachio-flavoured bakery item, or secure a Labubu from Pop-Mart. I have definitely been influenced by seeing a big queue, wondered what all the hype is about, and deciding to find out for myself.
An example where following the herd has influenced my own behaviour is shopping for holidays online. Looking into booking a hotel and seeing a notification pop up saying ’10 people have booked today’ increases your trust in that option, potentially influencing you to choose it over another on the page. This is the herd in action – although we are not physically seeing the herd, we are influenced by the idea that others are flocking to a certain product or service.
Fads, crazes and hype are some of the easiest examples of herd mentality to identify in the real world, and creating this kind of buzz can be an effective word-of mouth marketing technique. However, herd mentality can also translate into more consistent, long-term strategies.
What do these ideas mean for media planning?
Traditional audience segmentation can miss the value of connections and community influences, focusing on the individual’s behaviour and lifestyle while ignoring the influence the herd has on them. In some cases, a high reach isn’t the best option. Starting local or niche – conquering one cluster of consumers, then moving on to their connections and targeting community by community can build a more loyal customer base than starting broad.
Companies like Uber used a localised approach to growth, starting in San Francisco before moving city by city to build a customer base grounded in trust within communities. Similarly, Gymshark built a niche social media community, expanded through influencers and local ambassadors, and then grew into the broader market, leveraging community connections to become a household name. These examples demonstrate how brands can succeed by targeting smaller clusters first, gaining loyal customers who then influence their own connections to get involved. If Uber had targeted consumers across all 15,000 cities it now operates in from the outset, it would likely have failed, as that trust had not yet been established. This shows that reach will not always generate the best ROI – quality over quantity matters in targeting.
The herd on social media
It is hard to ignore the role of social media when discussing networks and communities. Social platforms like Instagram are becoming increasingly community-focused, pivoting away from the direction they were heading towards with influencer content. Instagram’s ‘With Friends’ feature, introduced last summer, lets users see which Reels their friends have liked and reposted, but only from mutual connections (if someone doesn’t follow them back, such as a celebrity they follow, their Reels activity won’t appear). This is fostering the tight-knit communities users have with one another, which means the influence on each other’s online behaviour is growing. I have definitely liked a few Reels that my friends have, gone to listen to an artist because someone liked a video of them, or followed an account a friend reposted. The herd mentality is thriving on social platforms.
What the herd means for digital media
Creating and fostering community clusters on social media platforms is hugely important. In advertising terms, this means that formats which individuals can interact with can get ads to reach entire clusters. If a user likes, reposts or comments on a social post, it is likely to reach their followers (people who are similar to them) and the herd mentality will kick in, leading to more trust in the ad and increased attention to the content. In a nutshell, social content and advertising needs to be as interactive as possible to leverage the herd mentality effectively.
The herd is here to stay!
From queuing outside a brunch spot to booking the hotel that ten other people chose today, we are constantly looking to others to guide our decisions. For media planners and marketers, this is a huge opportunity. Changing the focus from the individual to the community, understanding how clusters of consumers are connected, and using channels and formats tailored to engage networks can influence a brand’s performance massively. Whether we like it or not, we are all part of the herd, and it’s up to us to use it to our advantage!
