“Okay, so this week let’s try to post things without corgis.”

“Okay…”

Allen told me to do this several weeks ago during one of our marketing meetings. My response was more bland than usual because I had grown use to posting all about corgis. And when I say “use to” I mean quite fond to positing about corgis.

Basically, its a lovable plague that has taken over my body and refuses to leave. No complaints here though.

However, if anyone knows me well enough, or even over a couple of minutes, knows that I will never turn down a challenge. So, my bland response quickly turned into full determination to post the best non-corgi content I could.

7 days later and the week of non-corgi posts was finished. I succeeded in the challenge, but I’m not sure if our Facebook and Twitter pages did.

At the time our Facebook page was just under 100 likes and our Twitter followers were skimming right under 1k. There weren’t significant drops in interaction, but it was noticeable.

To the point…where Allen gave me free reign to continue with corgi absurdity.

Why was it though that the so many more people “liked” these corgi pictures? I mean I fully understand loving a corgi, I am infected with that affection, but its just a silly dog?

Then again, with the multitude of Twitter accounts dedicated to four-legged friends to individuals always Instagramming their pets, its clear that cute animals have a strong hold over the internet.

I mean try and tell me they have zero effect on you. If they don’t you must be a soulless human being; just kidding, but not really.

Cute animals seem to always have a higher probability of going viral. Clearly, it’s the cute animal effect, or infect I should say.

Don’t go changing all of you logos, pictures, etc to baby gorillas and hippos, but consider these various reasons why these charming creatures rack up views, results, and hits.

1. Tugs at Emotions

I have a distinct image in my head with a puppy coming to you, jumping up with two paws on your legs. Looking at you longly to just cuddle with him. Doesn’t that make your heart melt? There is affectionate emotion when it comes to cute lovable animals and it’s a hard emotion to say no to. In fact people are more responsive to content that draws out positivity and a study done by Wharton Business School leads to that conclusion. They found that positive content goes viral more than negative content. What isn’t more positive than an adorable puppy?

2. Makes you take a pawse

(Ha. Ha. Get it?) Without timing the exact second…or even minutes. The time it took you from when you stop scrolling to when you started scrolling again after seeing a cute picture of a duckling there was in fact a measurable pause. Actually, results in a Japanese study showed that looking at cute animals increases your productivity. So taking the slight break to giggle, chuckle, or chortle over some cute kittens can improve your focus in your tasks at hand. Regardless, cute animals are eye-catching and are not easily looked over.

3. Easy to understand

I started to write this title as easy to consume, but I didn’t want you animal-loving vegans to be up in arms and boycotting the TrackMaven blog. What I really mean is that with a cute animal, your brain gets it. It digests the visual image and understands outright that it’s a cute animal. The are two simple things, cute and…cute almost guaranteeing a positive reaction. Generally most individuals do not need a math equation, instructions, or a teacher to understand that this little piglet in front of their eyes allows for the corners of the mouth to turn upwards.

4. Curate-able

When I type cute animal into a Google Search it takes .21 seconds to yield 231,000,000 results. Better yet, if I type cute animal into the key words tool, there is a Low Competition Rate, but with 246,000 Global Searches a Month. (I think that’s an opportunity someone should go for). Two of those searches are text base results, but it still points out how easily these cuties are easy to collect. Curating these images isn’t difficult and people eat them up. Look at Buzzfeed and they also have a section dedicated to just animals. One of my other favorites with the curation of cute animals is Oreck Vacuum Cleaners. They compiled a whole Pinterest board dedicated to Furry Friends — very fitting. This board also has over 2,000 followers, which is a decent amount for a vacuum cleaner company (Dirt Devil and Dyson didn’t even have Pinterest Accounts).

It may be a silly notion to start changing all of your branding to center around a dopey, adorable corgi…although we wouldn’t mind. However, this “cute animal effect” isn’t something to just brush under the rug. Taking away even a few of the ideas could reel some of your marketing in to gain some engagement across the board. As cliche as this sounds, looking outside of the box say with a delightful furry pal, could lighten up the marketing world.