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Bzaar Vzaar promotional video: Oliver Stone adds drama to corporate video.

November 23, 2010 by 4 Comments

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Oliver Stone invents a new video category – ‘corporate video trailer’.

Presumably sporting a Movember ‘mostache,’  Stone plays both investor and pitchman in this recent promotional video for Vzaar – the UK video hosting service that competes with Brightcove and others. It’s sort of strange.

If the video is meant to be campy/funny then I clearly missed the humour. If it’s mean to be important and dramatic then… I missed that too. I really don’t know what to make of this video. It’s well produced, features a celebrity and has a very clear marketing message that is well delivered. It’s just …sort of strange.

It could be the dramatic music, could be Stone’s delivery, it might even be the green-screen overlay of all of the videos in the background that Stone eventually emerges from half way through the video. Something about this video is unsettling and I don’t think ‘unsettling’ is a positive brand attribute, unless you are Marilyn Manson.

I suppose the video does draw attention to itself and that’s a good thing. I’m also impressed that Stone chose to invest in the company – that’s a great endorsement of their offering. I’m just not sure how this video would make me want to use their services.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , ,

Is ‘Will it Grill’ effective marketing?

November 14, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Will this viral video generate revenue? My guess is yes.

Borrowing heavily from the Blentec marketing playbook (see Will it Blend ), the good folks at EZ Grill developed this ‘What Grills Faster?’ viral video to promote their portable/disposable grills.  This video was developed by an agency and there was likely some type of seeding activity to support the video, so while the cost to develop the video was much higher than just the cost of the phones you have to imagine the budget was still relatively low.  At 350,000 YouTube views to date and growing, there are a lot of people out their (myself included) who are now aware of a product they had never heard of, or considered before.

There are also a number of people upset with the blatant waste associated with this promotion – you can sense the palpable anger in some of the YouTube comments.

Why I believe this viral video is noteworthy is that it accomplishes two very important things that most viral videos do not:
1. It makes you clearly aware of the specific product – EZ Grill and,
2.  It highlights one of the key benefits of that product – in this case a portable/disposable grill that obviously throws off a tremendous amount of heat.

Will this viral have the same success as Blendtech’s ‘Will it Blend’? I doubt it.

Will it cost effectively drive awareness of their product and therefore net new sales? …probably.

Have they set themselves up for a series of new virals (like Blendtec did) where they set ablaze any number of interesting items (there’s no end of stuff that people would like to see torched)? Perhaps.

Is this effective marketing? What do you think?

{Note:  EZ Grill is also encouraging customers to send in photos and videos of themselves using the EZ Grill product in exchange for free products. This more ‘tradional’ social media marketing technique is a good engagement technique to supplement the awareness being generated by this viral video}

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