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Bank of America backs down after YouTube smackdown.

September 30, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Most companies are not prepared for the impact of social media.

CNN Money recently posted this article about Ann Milch, an irate BOA customer who concluded that the only way to get even with the ‘thieving, scheming bastards’ at the Bank of America was to post a scathing YouTube video letting the world know exactly how she felt. At 400,000 views and 6,000 comments, she has received a lot of people’s attention… including the bank’s. Bank of America has since retracted the 30% interest rate (is that legal?) it was charging her and has reinstated the previous 12.9% rate. Good for them.

Whether you agree with Ann and the vast majority of YouTube commenters that the Bank is evil or whether you  feel, as some do, that Ann would not have experienced this problem if she had simply lived within her means you have to agree that the impact of a single angry customer can have a significant affect on your brand.

It’s tough to know what makes any video go viral. YouTube is filled with angry rants, this one just seems to have struck a resonant chord. A lot of people are hurting right now. Perhaps BOA is just the lightning rod de jour, attracting the current anger and frustration surrounding these difficult economic times.

These are still early days. If a single video can garner this much attention imagine what would happen if the angry hoards got together. Imagine if the conversation started to spiral out of control and you were not part of it. Imagine if the groups and people that are impacting your brand were all playing in a sandbox that you knew nothing about, and frankly had no credibility in. Imagine if the majority of negative word of mouth about your brand was visual and interactive and the only arrow in your quiver was a press release.

Time to engage.

Filed Under: General, The Effect of Video on Your Brand, Video PR, YouTube Video Tagged With: , ,

Perhaps bad is the new good for Microsoft. This video is really bad.

September 23, 2009 by 5 Comments

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Microsoft made this video lame on purpose.

What’s the point? To generate buzz? Mission accomplished I suppose, but it’s not the type of buzz  a company should be promoting. Microsoft has turned the comment feature off on the YouTube channel it sits on so if they are trying to generate buzz, they don’t want it recorded. So far the comments on various blogs break down roughly between the following:

1. This video being six minutes of your life that you will never get back (I only lost two of those minutes)
2. Criticism of the acting, the film work and just about anything else imaginable about the video
3. Microsoft providing another reason for people to switch to Apple.

I can’t see much value in that buzz. You could start hurling farm animals from the roof of your corporate headquarters and that would generate a buzz as well. It probably wouldn’t move much product however.

Microsoft lost their way with the Seinfeld/Gates ads, which tried to be funny but were not. They then adopted ‘lame’ as the new corporate video standard in their Songsmith  music – thing. Now they have circled the wagons around ‘just plain bad’. Maybe bad is the new good but I can’t imagine how this will help the brand.

Of course the other possibility is that Microsoft actually thought this was a good promotion. That would be really bad.

Filed Under: Content Marketing, Corporate Video Examples, General, Marketing with Video, YouTube Video Tagged With: , ,

Incredible, amazing, awesome Apple video

September 22, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Incredible, awesome, amazing and fantastic!

Someone has managed to unlock the code behind the Apple marketing juggernaut. The ‘secret sauce’ has finally been revealed: Hyperbole – incredible, unbelievable, sensational hyperbole. And repetition. Lots and lots and lots and lots of repetition.

To be fair to Apple and Steve Jobs you could likely take any video presentation and edit it down to make a presenter look silly, given enough free time to do these things. Is the best pitch man in the business guilty of a little exaggeration, a little too much hype – sure he is. But that ceaseless cheer-leading, optimism and excitement (often referred to as ‘the reality shield’ within the walls of Cupertino) has also led the company to stunning (Steve would have liked that one) market success. What makes Jobs so great is that you know he really, really, really believes what he is saying and he truly wants to build great products and he wants everyone to understand how great these products are. It’s a little manic, a bit (maybe a lot) over the top, but it’s genuine.

I hope Steve remains healthy enough to continue leading one of the most successful companies on the planet.

Filed Under: General, Marketing with Video Tagged With: , ,

Adobe’s purchase of Omniture is a very big deal

September 17, 2009 by 1 Comment

adobe logo

Content is king, if you can track it.

Up until… this week, a large disconnect has existed between web-based content creation and content measurement. That chasm may have narrowed significantly since Adobe announced its purchase of Omniture – the online marketing, web analytics (and data collection) company.

Adobe has taken a significant step in moving beyond it’s digital content creation roots into what may turn out to be a much, much larger business. Network and cable television are closed systems. The Internet is an open system. The first company to establish smart, economical and trusted methods of tracking and monetizing any and all types of content on the Internet could become the new platform for web content delivery - that’s a very big deal.

Flash comes as close to ubiquity as it gets on the web (however, Google and Apple continue to shut Adobe out on their own respective ’mobile web’ platforms). Imagine if every flash player also tracked and reported usage, supported trusted digital watermarking processes, facilitated micro payments and helped to connect the social media and viral distribution dots. Adobe is trusted – especially by the creative and development community so it would be comparatively easier for them to set the standards and to ultimately evolve into becoming ’the platform.’

This acquisition could also be seen as a defensive move as Adobe will be under some pressure to add more value to flash because the implementation of the new HTML5 standard (whenever that happens) will include video tags which don’t require a video player plug-in.

The holy grail of marketing has been to find a way to track the results of your marketing program. Adobe has made a very strategic move in purchasing Omniture. Content developers and their customers should look forward to implementing new ‘commerce modules’ with future Adobe product releases.

Filed Under: General, Online Video Industry, Video Standards Tagged With: , ,

Shocking, but effective UK road safety PSA video

September 4, 2009 by 1 Comment

This video is shocking, quite realistic and it is probably very effective.

Produced on a modest budget of less than $20,000 this public service announcement has been seen on YouTube more than 2 million times and has been covered by many major news outlets. Developed by the Gwent police in Wales the four minute PSA was created to illustrate the dangers, and more importantly, the consequences of texting while driving. The video is targeted to young drivers but certainly applies to drivers of any age.

PSA’s have been around as long as television but are seeing a resurgence as costs of video production continue to drop and distribution (free) is not dependent on the goodwill of local television stations. There has been a considerable amount of conversation around whether this video is too graphic and whether this will lead to a slate of horrifically realistic PSA’s. Of course there is no ‘right ‘ answer to this issue, only opinions.

My opinion is that the quality of the video, the timeliness and importance of the message and the relative uniqueness (yes, I’ve seen many like it, but this one seems to stand out) of the video make it very powerful and, my guess is, very effective. I forwarded it to my kids and suggested they watch it.

Will this open the floodgates to a wave of graphic gun-shot victim, drug addiction, accident prevention and other public service messages. I don’t know. There is a fine line between too much and not enough reality in our lives.

Filed Under: PSA Video Tagged With: ,

Video Sharing tops McKinsey survey as most useful Web 2.0 business tactic.

September 2, 2009 by 2 Comments

Early in 2009 McKinsey surveyed 1,700 executives from around the world to determine the value they have realized from their Web 2.0 deployments. The study stated that “the heaviest users of Web 2.0 applications are also enjoying benefits such as increased knowledge sharing and more effective marketing. These benefits often have a measurable effect on the business.”

Looking at the chart below it is not surprising that there is a strong correlation between the familiarity and relative longevity of certain technologies (video, blogs and rss) and their benefit to corporations. Companies, especially larger companies, tend to avoid adopting new ideas until they have seen other companies take that risk. It’s interesting to see Social Networking ranking so high – given it’s short lifespan. I would expect to see Social Networking topping the list in the next two years.

It’s also interesting to see these referred to as ‘technologies’. They are all certainly enabling technologies but the real value is in the content they allow to be more freely shared. In time the focus on these communications tactics as ‘technologies’ will fall into the background and the emphasis will be on the marketing and communication value that they promote.

Not every every tactic is right for every company but it is safe to say that video sharing should be at the top of any company’s list that is considering adopting new Web 2.0 tactics.

McKinsey chart

Filed Under: General, Video Statistics, Video Technology Tagged With: ,

Sears employs online video to supercharge it’s online and in-store retail

September 1, 2009 by 2 Comments

new selina

My 14 year old thinks Sears is cool. So does my 82 year old father. Go figure.

Sears launched a major marketing initiative this summer called  Arrival Lounge to highlight to it’s younger target audience that you shouldn’t just go back to school – you should ‘arrive’ back to school- suitably attired in Sears back-to-school fashions. Sears hired Disney Channel celebrity Selina Gomez to lead the marketing program which is centered around it’s arrivelounge.com website. The site includes music, celebrities, dancing, backstage passes, coupons, behind-the-scenes features, air-band contests and high quality video production. Sears has done all of the requisite cross-promotions with social media sites like YouTube and Facebook and has also developed tie-in programs with MTV. The program has been a huge success for the company.

What makes this campaign particularly interesting is the company’s use of web-based video. Sears has comfortably broken a couple of web-video barriers (launching music on the site without asking and also playing full screen – albeit lower res -  video) and seem to be employing a video first and ‘text as support’ approach which until now has been the other way around. Video has traditionally been used as support for the text that appears on a website.

While it certainly makes sense that retail establishments targeting younger demographics would lead the integration of video marketing into websites this isn’t the beginning of the end, it’s the simply the end of the beginning (it made more sense when Churchill said it…). What we are seeing with sites like this is a glimpse beyond the ‘text web’ – the integration of broadcast media and rich media programming into what until now has been a static content delivery environment. Sears isn’t the first company to take this approach but given their history and positioning in the marketplace it is a significant departure from it’s traditional marketing activities.

The short term consequence will be a surge in rich media web video production – a lot of it quite awful (remember the first websites) and unfortunately will favor those with traditionally larger marketing budgets. That said, the clever use of social media channels could turn out to be the great equalizer between large and smaller companies.

Filed Under: General, The Future of Corporate Video, Video Marketing, video production Tagged With: , ,