Posts Tagged ‘video’

Must Viral Videos Start with a :30?

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

Last week the folks at our office were passing around links to the commercial above from Old Spice. It’s another manly ad from the brand’s agency, Wieden+Kennedy, and it certainly earned lots of LOLs in our office space. I personally found it amusing but very rushed. Many of the words are said so quickly that I missed them and had to go back. I wondered why the pace was so quick, until I began to recall sitting in an editing suite reviewing commercials with my then-agency when I used to be a brand manager at P&G. It came together for me when I looked down at the total time of the video on the corner of the screen and saw :30. Yep, this was a TV commercial also uploaded to YouTube.

Now, let me begin by saying that I don’t have an incredibly strong opinion on this case. Regular readers know that I usually come down hard one way or the other in these blog posts. But in this situation I have more of a working theory to air—and I’m not soft-pedaling just because Old Spice is a brand from one of our big clients, Procter & Gamble, and one of my long-time friends works on the brand.

My working theory is that starting with the 30-second ad is no longer the right way to do branded video. Note first that I am talking “branded video” instead of “commercials.” I think a lot of smart marketers and agencies are starting to reset how they think about “sight, sound, and motion” and are defining their success by whether or not people are choosing to view and share their marketing, rather than the number of impressions that can be bought.

My point is this: In a world in which it is more important for people to choose to engage with video, you can work without the confines of a 30-second box. One of the best early examples is BMW films, which became a DVD series. Other examples range from Will It Blend to the recent Coca-Cola Happiness Factory that I blogged about a few days ago. In these cases the focus is on creating video that people enjoy viewing. With this freedom, filmmakers can go to two minutes and far beyond. Remember, 30 seconds is no magical measure of the ideal consumer attention span—but rather a number that worked for TV networks to slam in multiple messages between content breaks.

So it feels to me that Old Spice and its agency started with the 30-second hole to fill and fought to push its funny content into the box, rather than making the most fun video possible, posting that online, and then, perhaps, placing an edited version onto the TV screen. Then again, people have chosen to view the Old Spice video on YouTube about 1.5 million times (and counting). I might be wrong. What do you think?

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Posted in Organizational Behavior, video | 3 Comments »

Coke Captures a Moment of Happiness

Thursday, January 21st, 2010


I believe that one of the biggest opportunities for Marketing with Meaning lies with brands that are used to spending a lot of money on traditional advertising campaigns that have historically been launched mainly to remind people that the brands exist. Instead, they have an opportunity to create marketing that people choose to engage with and advertising that itself adds value to people’s lives. A few weeks ago I wrote about how brands that lack innovation can win by adding value, and last year this article I wrote in Adweek showed how brands such as Gatorade and Ask.com have hurt sales by continuing to trot out new ad campaigns. One company that is gradually moving forward on the meaningful marketing scale is Coca-Cola—and the video above is just its latest chapter in its next evolution.

Coca-Cola has been one of the biggest traditional advertisers out there, but I do believe it is turning itself into a meaningful marketing machine. In my book I included the examples of its Happiness Factory mini-movies, and its industry-leading Coke Rewards loyalty program. The company got into entertaining iPhone apps quickly. And in Cannes in July I wrote up the example of its new interactive vending machines.

I believe the biggest lesson here is that Coke has focused its Brand Purpose on “Creating Happiness.” If you step back and think about what the Coca-Cola product aspires to do, it tries to create a moment of happiness in an otherwise regular day. Traditionally the company has tried to inspire happiness through its marketing by showing carefully crafted ads with actors playing out scenes in commercials. In truth, this viral video is not too far away from an “ad”—but the key difference is that we see Coca-Cola doing something fun in the real world, and we smile, LOL, and forward this video to friends.

There is another smaller, yet important lesson here around how in-person, guerrilla marketing efforts can go viral and gain scale when you capture them on video. This mirrors the approach by Burger King in its award-winning Whopper Freakout campaign. In both cases the production quality and editing of this piece is fantastic, we see real people and reactions rather than scripted actors, and we actually can see and feel the fun for ourselves.

Of course we have no way of seeing if this video sells six-packs, but the YouTube results suggest this effort was worth the cost of a video crew and handful of props. When I first saw this video on its first day, Tuesday, January 12, there were about 40,000 views. Writing this post on Sunday, January 17 it was up to 400,000. That’s a lot of people choosing to engage with an ad, and coming away with a much more positive connection with the brand. And it’s even more evidence that billion-dollar traditional brands can make the move to Marketing with Meaning.

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Posted in Connection, Entertainment, purpose, video | 1 Comment »

ABC News NOW Features Marketing with Meaning

Friday, October 16th, 2009

abc interview

Last Friday I had a spur of the moment opportunity to be interviewed by ABC News NOW for a segment promoting my book, The Next Evolution of Marketing: Connect with Your Customers by Marketing with Meaning. I believe it aired live on some ABC stations, and of course the video segment is available online at ABCNews.com.

I’m pretty happy with how the interview turned out. (My wife says I need to smile more.) I got to hit most of the key points I hoped to, and was able to pull out a wide range of examples. I have to say that the experience of interviewing via satellite like this was very odd. I was basically sitting in a dark, empty studio in Cincinnati, staring at a TV camera lens and listening to an audio feed of the ABC News show in my ear. You have to make it look like you’re in the middle of a real, face-to-face conversation but it couldn’t be further from that. Anyway, check out the video by clicking here and let me know what you think!

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Posted in book | 5 Comments »

Book Introduction Video Release!

Friday, May 8th, 2009

As regular readers know, my team at Bridge Worldwide and I continue to gear up for the launch of my book, to be published by McGraw-Hill in October 2009. At this point I’ve almost completed the actual writing process, and I’m now shifting to focus on the marketing of the book itself.

According to many of the successful authors I have spoken with, one of the key steps to a successful book is a strong introduction video that can be placed on the websites for Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Luckily I happen to work at an incredible digital advertising agency and was able to work with a stellar team on my video. The team decided to audit several best-in-class examples and decided to aim for the top. Of course their drive and passion put me on the spot to perform as well. The shoot went very well and I think the final product turned out great.

In the video you can see a summary of the structure of the book, as well as the final title: The Next Evolution of Marketing: Connect with Your Customers by Marketing with Meaning. I hope you will provide your feedback and reactions either in the comments below or on the YouTube page of the video.

Thanks for your support and encouragement and my special thanks for Alex Rolfes, Brad Lark, and James Marable for making it happen!

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Posted in book | 2 Comments »

Hulu Makes a Move Away from Interruption

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

If you’re not a regular subscriber to Wired magazine, it’s worth the 5 bucks next time you’re at the airport if only to read the feature article on the new Fox/NBC online TV venture called Hulu (or you can just read it for free here). The Hulu story is a great lesson in new product marketing by not one, but two large, stodgy corporations with much of their business stuck in the status quo. Jason Kilar, the 36 year-old Hulu CEO managed to throw together an online television program with thousands of shows in a matter of weeks.  Hulu is growing rapidly and starting to challenge YouTube.

Aside from the outstanding innovation case study, Hulu is serving as a new benchmark in the future of advertising and mass media. The company is still showing advertising, as expected, but it has significantly decreased the number of ads as compared to traditional broadcast television. According to the article, Hulu is charging more but serving far fewer ads.

Let’s say the average prime-time cost per thousand viewers (CPM) ad rate is $25, which is a reasonable estimate. Television shows are averaging 8 minutes of commercials for every 30 minutes of programming, which means 16 30-second slots at $25 each. This makes the “effective” CPM for a program equal to $400.  On Hulu, the company claims that ad rates are “two to three times” that of broadcast TV. Let’s call it 2.5 times on average, meaning the ad rate is $62.50. However, Hulu is only showing two minutes of advertising per 30-minute show, or only four 30-second ads. As a result, it’s take is $250 per show, meaning that for every viewer who watches The Office on Hulu instead of regular TV, NBC loses 47% of its ad revenue.

You can’t protect old business models artificially.” – Peter Chernin, President, News Corporation

How is Hulu getting away with this? Well, the company realizes that the only way to win in online video is to put its consumers first and provide more value. And it believes great content and a modest amount of advertising will be satisfactory for the greedy online video viewer. The hope is that viewers rely on Hulu versus YouTube and other free and/or illegal options such as BitTorrent. The results seem strong so far: One analysis suggests that Hulu could beat YouTube in revenue this year.

Aside from dramatically cutting the amount of advertising per program, there are some other user-friendly marketing options here. Hulu sometimes offers the chance to select which ads you see. And there is a thumbs-up/thumbs-down button for advertising, which supposedly helps ensure that you receive better interruptions in the future.

I certainly do not believe that Hulu represents Meaningful Marketing.  It still relies on an interruptive advertising model that gets in the way of the content viewers actually want to see. But Hulu’s moves and early success are proof that the only way to win in the future is to get closer to what people want.

Side Note: While Hulu shows a dramatic decrease in advertising, the Chicago Tribune just revamped its newspaper to increase advertising to 50% of the total content.

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Posted in Television, content, video | No Comments »

YouTube Breaks Its Mold

Monday, September 29th, 2008

“Best page takeover ever!”

“This is an idea that I would have said, ‘It will never work!’”

“One of the most brilliant pieces of digital marketing I have ever seen.”

These are just a few of the quotes I heard from friends who forwarded me a link to YouTube’s viral video takeover in support of Nintendo’s new game, Wario Land.  Check it out here and then return to this blog for further analysis….

Pretty cool, huh? Let’s delve into the Meaning and Marketing benefits.

In terms of Meaning, you have to start with the fact that Nintendo selected a media platform that is entirely dedicated to consumer engagement. People viewed nearly 5 billion videos on YouTube alone in July 2008.  People choose to go to YouTube mainly for bite-sized entertainment during their day. They are looking for entertainment, and the medium is successful in part because it does not force viewers to sit through interruptive commercials. Thus, the only way for marketers to win in this channel is to create entertainment that people find valuable. And we can easily measure the consumer value – and to a certain extent the business impact – of YouTube creative by counting the number of views of brand videos. Dove’s Evolution video has more than 10 million views combined, but this controversial Snickers ad only has about 400,000 views. You can’t buy YouTube viewers – rather, you’ve got to create work that people find worth watching.

To date, YouTube has been mainly used by marketers to host viral videos and consumer generated video contests. But this Nintendo work breaks the mold and shows great promise for the marketing on this still-new channel. Many viewers likely come to the page initially because of an interest in video games, the Wii and the Mario series specifically. But all are rewarded with a surprising, fun concept that is executed flawlessly.

We cannot see the business impact for sure, but it looks promising so far. In terms of number of views, on Wednesday, 9/24, the site had 500,000 views, and a day later it was at 1.1 million. The ad unit iself is generating free press coverage. Game marketing is a lot like movie marketing – the initial buzz and opening sales are critical to long-term success. We’ll have to track how it performs, but this is a great head start.

My one negative comment on this example is that I don’t think it’s scalable. It works as a one-hit wonder for Nintendo, but will the next YouTube takeover be as surprising or fun? And imagine the work it takes the YouTube team to both dream up this idea and execute it on their system. When you have to make a cool creative idea every time (rather than just sell mass eyeballs), it becomes a lot harder for both YouTube to sell and clients to buy.

That said, I feel more bullish on YouTube as a digital marketing professional, and I feel that both the Nintendo AND YouTube brands have provided a special experience for me.  Bring on the next one, guys.

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Posted in Connection, Entertainment, Games | 1 Comment »

Making Nonprofit Marketing Meaningful

Friday, August 22nd, 2008

Let’s face it: A lot of nonprofit marketing campaigns are horrible, despite the fact that their messages can and should be very meaningful – and their media placement and advertising development are often provided pro bono. Too often, nonprofits cannot decide if they want to raise money or raise awareness. And they tend to start the creative process by going straight to print ads or 30-second commercials, because, well, it’s free. Pro-bono creative work often means that the agency goes into la-la land with its work.

But some nonprofits are understanding how to make a bigger impact by starting with the needs of their audiences. My current favorite is the two-minute video above from the British Heart Foundation. Here, the group recognized that they need to add value to the audience by educating them on what a heart attack feels like.

That in itself is an outstanding creative brief for an advertising agency to receive. And Grey in the UK took this assignment to an amazing place. Instead of checklists or cuteness, Grey went for the jugular with a very realistic, first-person, long-format video. The acting is great, the editing is outstanding, and there is a real, emotional pull with the first-person view. It’s not really a video; it’s an experience.

I’m a little disappointed that this has less than 100,000 total views on YouTube, which suggests this hasn’t hit the viral takeoff point yet. But I’m not privy to how this is airing and being received in the UK.

Kudos to the British Heart Foundation and Grey UK for going way beyond the typical, and giving us killer creative that makes meaning in people’s lives.

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Posted in non-profit | No Comments »