Influencer marketing is booming, with companies allocating 10-25% of their advertising budgets to influencer-led strategies. Between 2016 and 2020, the number of sponsored posts rose from 1.26 million to 6.12 million, and overall spending in the past few years has grown by billions. But brands face a problem: Consumers tend to disengage from sponsored content. Can social media influencers do anything to mitigate this effect?

According to new research by Rice Business professors Jaeyeon Chung and Ajay Kalra, as well as Stanford professor Yu Ding, there are several “strategic levers” influencers can use to boost engagement. The team analyzed over 55,000 Instagram posts from the top 1,000 influencers. What they found provides data-driven insights for brands that run influencer marketing campaigns.

Influencers can do the following to boost engagement:

1. Include close friends and family in photos. Three faces are ideal for creating a sense of intimacy and warmth.
2. Use first-person language. Phrases like “my bestie” invite the audience into the influencer’s inner circle.
3. Express emotions. In terms of engagement, negative feelings are surprisingly more impactful than positive ones.

When it comes to sponsored content, these tactics can boost engagement and strengthen an influencer’s connection with their audience. Of course, the researchers warn against oversharing and exploiting loved ones for commercial gain. However, the study quantifies tactics for achieving greater perceptions of influencer authenticity. Brands can use this research to carefully leverage personal context to cut through the noise that typically short-circuits engagement with sponsored content.
 

Companies can increase not only the volume but also the quality of employee suggestions and ideas by offering rewards and a choice, according to a study we published in 2022.

We conducted the study on 345 telemarketers at a call center in Taiwan, which already had a suggestion program set up to solicit creative ideas to improve the organization. The company rewarded those who suggested ideas deemed the most valuable by giving thema trophy.

We wanted to see how tweaking the reward changed the quantity and quality of suggestions. So we invited the employees to submit ideas, and if their suggestions ranked among the top 20% most creative ideas – as evaluated by a team of managers and researchers – they would receive one of four rewards: US$80 in cash for themselves, $80 to share with colleagues, $80 to give to a preferred charitable organization or priority when selecting days off. About half of the employees were offered a choice of the four rewards they would receive for submitting ideas. We then randomly assigned one of the four rewards to the remaining employees.

In total, we received and evaluated 144 ideas over a one-month period.

We found that employees who were given a choice of reward submitted 86% more ideas than those who were told what they would begetting. Moreover, the average creativity score of their ideas was 82% higher. Overall, our suggestion program elicited double the number of ideas as the company’s own program and resulted in ideas that were ranked 84% more creative.

Why It Matters

Soliciting employee ideas can be a key driver of innovation in organizations.

When employees share their ideas about products, services or policies using a suggestion program, an organization can take those ideas and refine and then implement them.

These implemented ideas can enhance an organization’s ability to adapt and compete. A 2003 study of 47 organizations found that ideas submitted to employee suggestion programs saved those organizations more than $624 million in a single year.

Our own study suggests small incentives could have a significant impact on the quantity and quality of those employee suggestions.

What’s Next?

Research is still needed on whether there is an optimal number of rewards that organizations should offer to get more submissions. One past study found that when employees were asked to choose from a large set of rewards, they felt overwhelmed and produced few ideas.

Future research can also test whether our results can be found in other types of organizations, with employees in other types of jobs and in other parts of the world. We plan to examine these issues in our future studies of suggestion programs.
 

CHECK OUT THIS EPISODE OF OWL HAVE YOU KNOW

Based on research by Minjae Kim and Ezra W. Zuckerman Sivan (MIT-Sloan)

Over the last decade or so, concern has grown over the tendency for Americans to support their favorite politicians even when those politicians share misinformation. A common assumption about the problem is that partisan voters are apt to believe what they should question (and vice versa). And research backs up the idea that voters are “factually flexible,” either due to laziness or bias.

But what if factual flexibility isn't the whole story? What if a key part of the story is that partisan voters are also “morally flexible” — that they hold opposition politicians to strict standards of factuality but allow their favorite politicians to share misinformation — even socially divisive misinformation. For morally flexible voters, such statements are permissible because they articulate a “deeper truth” that captures their grievances.

This is the message of a new study forthcoming in the American Journal of Sociology, “When Truth Trumps Facts: Studies on Partisan Moral Flexibility in American Politics,” written by Minjae Kim, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Rice Business (Jones), and Ezra W. Zuckerman Sivan, professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at MIT Sloan School of Management.

Along with Oliver Hahl from Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business and Ethan Poskanzer from University of Colorado-Boulder Leeds School of Business, Kim and Zuckerman Sivan found that when American voters evaluate statements made by politicians they support, they tend to be less concerned about whether those statements are based on objective evidence. What matters more is the “deeper truth,” or the overarching message, the statements express.

According to Kim, “People insist on strict factuality when it comes to politicians they don’t favor. They don’t give the opposite partisans the same leeway, in part because they don’t like their message. People shift their standards as it suits their partisan interests.”

To arrive at their findings, the researchers conducted a series of six online surveys of American voters: five during the last two and half years of Republican President Donald Trump’s administration, and one in the spring of 2023, during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.

Five of the surveys asked respondents to evaluate divisive, fact-flouting statements made by Trump. Two compared responses to similar statements by a Republican politician (either Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis) and a Democratic politician (either U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. or Biden). The statements pertained to such hot-button political issues as immigration, the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, the COVID-19 pandemic, and Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was “rigged” or “stolen.”

“There is no doubt that partisans are factually flexible,” said Zuckerman Sivan. “Supporters of a politician are much more likely to say that one of these statements is based on objective evidence than are opponents of that politician. But we also found consistent evidence of partisan moral flexibility — that voters distinguish between ‘objective evidence’ and ‘truth’ — and that when you consider who is morally flexible, you’re better able to predict who supports divisive misinformation than if you focus on factual flexibility alone.”

The researchers found that voters care more about truth when evaluating favored politicians. But they care more about facts when evaluating disfavored ones. This effect is slightly stronger for Republican voters, but it applies to Democrats, too.

Participants in each study were shown a divisive statement made by a politician, along with a note that clarified that the statement had been verified as non-factual by a third-party fact-checking organization. For each statement, participants indicated whether they thought the statement was based on objective evidence or subjective impressions; whether the statement was “true” and whether it was more important for the statement to be based on objective evidence or “to send the right message about American priorities.”

For example, in a survey called the “Caravan,” the researchers showed participants a real post from Trump that was not factual — that there were criminals and unknown Middle Easterners mixed in “the Caravan heading to the Southern Border of the United States” that “Mexico’s Police and Military are unable to stop.”

Across the five studies that included such statements, Trump supporters were more likely than non-supporters to say that the statement was based on “objective evidence,” giving an average rating of 3.65 based on a 7-point scale. This was 0.9 points higher than the average given by non-supporters. But while this gap was large, the gap grew to three times larger when respondents rated the truth of these statements. Across the five studies, Trump supporters gave an average rating of 5.2 for truth. Non-supporters averaged 2.2.

A similar gap was found in responses to a statement from Biden that stated erroneously that the COVID vaccines were effective in stopping “the spread of disease to anyone else.” In a follow-on question, one Biden voter explained their rationale for affirming Biden’s false statement:

In a public health crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, it was more important for President Biden to appeal to American values of patriotism and the willingness to step up for others. Most people are aware that while vaccinations greatly reduce the spread of disease, there is no vaccine that can completely, utterly stop it. However, Biden was using strong, emotional, positive language to encourage Americans to do what was morally correct and patriotic at that moment, and I feel that was entirely appropriate.

This emphasis on truth over facts gave the researchers’ article its name. But the more direct indicator of partisan moral flexibility was the preferred standard for evaluating these statements. “In short, when the statement is by a Republican, Democrats insist the statement should be evaluated on its factuality whereas Republicans say that what matters is whether it conveys an important message. And the reverse is true when the statement is by a Democrat,” Kim said.

For instance, in the “Summer of 2020” survey, participants were asked to respond to a post by Ocasio-Cortez. Like the Trump post, this statement included a line that was highly misleading: “Police brutality is now a leading cause of death for young men across the board in the US.” Democratic respondents were much more likely than Republicans to say that the statement should be evaluated on the basis of whether it sends “the right message about American priorities” than on whether it is based on “objective evidence” (3.53 on a 7-point scale for Republicans; 2.13 for Democrats).

“The study illustrates how both Democrats and Republicans shift their standards to suit their interests,” Zuckerman Sivan said. “It seems that we all do it.”

Kim and Zuckerman Sivan believe it’s important for people to recognize that moral flexibility plays a significant part in our decisions and behaviors, because coming to terms with that could ultimately lead to a different set of interventions — though exactly what those interventions might be is still unclear.

“But let’s at least get the diagnosis right before we start talking about the treatment,” Zuckerman Sivan concluded. “Our hope is that if people come to recognize the extent of partisan flexibility, then we’ll be able to start making some progress from there.”

It was March 2020 — when COVID-19 was making headlines — that the music at the Houston Symphony stopped. But that silence only lasted a short while as musicians, staff and leadership came together to innovate through the crisis, build their audience and create new performances. As they navigated the pandemic, Scott Sonenshein worked with Rice Research Analyst Kristen Nault to launch a multi-year study of two symphonies, one being Houston’s, and the ways they managed the crisis.

Here, Sonenshein talks with John Mangum, the CEO and Margaret Alkek Williams Chair of the Houston Symphony, about resilience, innovation and leadership through crisis, and the ways in which resourcefulness isn’t just a tactic for survival, but a strategic framework for stronger organizations — crisis or no crisis.

Scott Sonenshein: As I began my research, I was looking for a performing arts organization to study through the pandemic because, at that time, the industry — which depends on congregating for practices and performances — had a 65% unemployment rate. Broadway was closed — in fact, most performing arts organizations were at a complete standstill. It turned out that one of the few organizations that was still playing happened to be in my hometown in Houston.

John Mangum: We did initially shut down. As the pandemic progressed, we realized that we weren't going to have ticket revenue coming into the organization for some time. We started talking with our musicians about how we could continue our work in this new environment. We rallied around two clear points to organize our thinking. One, this is a group of incredibly skilled, incredibly gifted musicians, and they thrive on performing. Two, what we do has value. SS: I was studying a second symphony organization at the same time that took a different approach and stopped performances. What we saw in the Houston Symphony Orchestra was an organization that was relentless in its determination to keep playing. We saw a lot of innovation and creativity in finding ways — not to just put online what they were doing before — but to reinvent what they were doing so it would be suitable for the world they were operating in.

JM: Yes, we started to formulate an idea of inviting our audience into the living rooms of our musicians. We would send a camera and a microphone out to the homes of musicians, and every Friday they had carte blanche — they could play whatever they wanted, and they could talk about their work. We were giving audiences a completely different experience than they would get coming to Jones Hall to hear the symphony, and we charged a small fee for that specific performance.

SS: This approach also grew the audience because they were one of the few organizations thinking this way.

JM: The city let us get back in our hall for 4th of July weekend, and over the course of the summer, we could get the orchestra together in small groups sitting apart. Getting the orchestra back on stage and live streaming those performances was important at the time, but we also still have about a thousand households watching our live streams every weekend. So we developed this new stream of revenue that came out of the pandemic and has stuck with us as a wonderful audience development tool.

SS: Presumably you could have created these products before the pandemic, but it was only because of the constraints of the pandemic that you were forced to think differently. That's really the power of resourcefulness and why it becomes a strategic asset, not just a defensive strategy. It gives us permission to do things unconventionally — and those unconventional thoughts can take an organization beyond regular performance to exceptional performance.

JM: During the pandemic, we weren't under pressure to sell tickets — and that gave us the ability to program whatever we wanted. Another factor was the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020 that made us aware that historically we had not been representing Hispanic or Black women on our stage with our programming. We began to program this work in a really robust way. And that, too, is something that's continued. We developed new skills around collaboration and exploration that, again, absent the pandemic and the social justice conversations, we may never have discovered.

SS: Leadership played a big role here. We matched the two symphonies we studied in just about every other way except the fact that they were performing or not performing. They were similar in revenue, similar in political environments, similar in COVID restrictions. A trust developed in the Houston Symphony between staff and musicians and leadership. The opposite was true of the other symphony. There were certainly economic hardships, but we talked about how these performers have an innate desire to perform, and there was a lot of sadness in this other symphony that was unable to deliver that experience for their staff. What we saw in the other organization was threat rigidity — an approach you often see with leaders facing crisis. It’s the idea that an organization should close up and constrict resources at a time when you really need innovation and creativity. If you want to mobilize and help an organization adapt to adversity, you need to activate all of your staff, all of your employees. And that starts by having them trust you and recognize that you've got their interests in mind; that you've got a vision in terms of being able to weather the storm, but transparency in the fact that you might not have all the answers.
 

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Entrepreneurs share advice for startups

Rice Business is known for building entrepreneurs — the Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine, for example, have ranked us No.1 for five years running. Our students have a lot going for them: for example, professors who encourage innovation and places like Liu Idea Lab and Rice Alliance that support their work.

Students also have a large alumni network. In this ongoing series, we turn to our established entrepreneurs for advice on how the next generation can successfully launch and grow their ventures.

This time, we tapped into the expertise of the 200-plus participants in Rice Alumni Entrepreneurs and Innovators roundtables — forums that foster peer-to-peer support within a small group of organization founders. We asked them: How does a founder know when to take the leap and start running their startup full time?

Here’s what these experienced entrepreneurs had to say.

How Do You Know When to Take the Leap?