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Can text compete with video in Pepsi’s Social Marketing Initiative?

January 5, 2010 by 2 Comments

When we look back many years from now to identify the seminal event, the watershed moment where video became the dominant media type on the web, this might be it. To be clear, I am not suggesting that text will ever go away, become meaningless or die (although those certainly make good attention getting headlines…) I am referring to the time when we chose video over text as the most effective way of communicating ideas online. Yes, I understand that context is everything so allow me to elaborate.

Pepsi has chosen not to advertise during this year’s Superbowl but instead is launching a $20 million social marketing campaign called The Pepsi Refresh Project. Pepsi is encouraging people to submit ideas for projects that will have a positive impact on their communities. These ideas will be promoted online and everyone will get a chance to vote on which ideas Pepsi should fund. It’s a very smart idea. Everyone wins with this marketing campaign. Not only is Pepsi associating it’s brand with a wonderful initiative it will also drive millions of people to learn about, submit and vote on this Pepsi branded project. The residual benefits to Pepsi of this project will be huge over time. Good for them.

People get to vote every month to chose which new project goes ahead. This is where things get interesting. If you go to the Project Refresh Blog you can watch some nicely produced videos that give people an idea of what a $5,000, $50,000 or $ 250,000 project looks like. Without meaning to Pepsi has already set a potential baseline for submissions. Lower down the page they also have some text summaries of other projects but I would bet that the video’s on that page will be viewed in much greater numbers than the text and photo-based summaries. If you were submitting an idea for a project to this contest how would you present it?

Will anyone bother to read a written submission and if they do, will the written submission be as well recieved as the onscreen voice of an impassioned community leader? Well written proposals stand a greater chance of winning than poorly written proposals, no question. Better quality videos also stand a greater chance of winning over poorly developed videos. Will viewers be able to judge effectively between a well written proposal and a poorly produced video proposal? Hard to say.

I’ll give Pepsi the last word from guidance provided in their Refresh Toolkit PDF: “While a video isn’t required, it’s probably a good way to tell the world about your idea.”

If you’re selling an idea online is video a better choice than text?

Filed Under: Corporate Video Examples, General, Marketing with Video, Social Media, The Future of Corporate Video Tagged With: , , ,

Have we reached the online video tipping point?

November 13, 2009 by

wsj

We may have just quietly passed the point of no return.

“The Wall Street Journal has moved its video player front and center with a twice-a-day live newscast on WSJ.com.” The New York Times recently reported that the iconic and venerable print publisher The Wall Street Journal is now featuring video prominently on their website. I think I just felt the ground shift a little under my feet.

Remember when the WSJ added color (colour) to its newspaper? That apocalyptic change was debated for months in media circles. This is a couple of orders of magnitude more significant and consequently will get much less attention.

Why did the WSJ do this? Well, as the New York Times explains  “A major reason is commercial.” Uh huh.

More and more people are going online to find what they want – information, news, entertainment, friends, etc. and video is quickly becoming the easiest and most compelling way to consume content online.  Online video advertising, while still small compared to TV advertising is growing quickly. The money will follow the crowd.

Many things could have signaled the transition from the ‘text’ web to the ‘next web’ such as rich media penetration rates, the number of  YouTube videos viewed per month or the percentage of companies using video on their websites. I think the symbolism of the worlds most prominent print publication prominently featuring video on its website is as good a signal as any to suggest that online video has finally  ‘arrived.’

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , ,

The consequence of tv / online video convergence.

May 13, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Computer Monitor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video sages declare convergence is upon us!

Chad Hurley, CEO and founder of YouTube declared earlier this year that we are now in a transition where the use of, and differences between TV and online video are beginning to blur. In a video interview for Sky News Hurley suggests that consumption of online video and television content will simply coalesce into ‘video’ that will be viewed wherever and whenever the user wants – in the family room, on your laptop, on a mobile device or on other portable network devices.

Paul Sagan took it a step further in his key note address yesterday at the Streaming Media East Conference by declaring that we have reached the ‘tipping point’ where consumers will now start to view online video the same way they view television. Sagan, the CEO of the global content delivery network, Akamai refers to Malcolm Gladwell’s use of the term ’tipping point’  being when a critical mass is reached in the adoption of new product or technology a new market/service becomes firmly and finally entrenched.

Sagan points to recent online events such as the Obama Inauguration and NCAA “March Madness” where comparable numbers of viewers watched events online and on television. Sagan also points out that online HD video is the game changer where “Internet quality now matches TV.”

Ignoring the fact that it is in both of their interests to herald the arrival of a convergence that will bring millions of dollars (assuming YouTube works out the advertising thing) to their companies, it’s difficult to argue that convergence is not happening. If the only question left is when, not if, then what are the consequences of this convergence?

1. Ad dollars will migrate. Assuming a fixed promotion pool television, newspaper and radio advertising will continue to take a hit. Old media companies have to adapt to survive. Denial isn’t a particularly good long term strategy.

2. The video ad unit will never be the same. Ad agencies have followed a simple formula over the past 50 years: Create something memorable in 30 seconds. No standards exist online and in spite of everyones’ best efforts no ‘standard’ will emerge in the short term. Online viewing behaviours and content formats continue to change – so will the ads that pay for all that content.

3. Interactivity changes everything. By and large video is still video,  today – a linear medium consumed in a relatively ‘lean-back’ position. Immersive technologies, gaming, behavioural targeting of content (not ads), multiple endings of entertainment content, next generation ad placement (real time changes to video), new 3D formats and who knows what else is going to change how we consume and monetize content.  

4. Content formats are fluid. Movies are 90 minutes, television is either 1 hour (44 minutes) or 1/2 hour (22 minutes). Pretty simple. Advertising will have to adapt to new content formats. “Two minutes is the ‘right length’ for an online  promotional video, correct?”  Who knows? “No one watches any video online for more than 30 minutes right?” Wrong. Advertisers and television producers set the agenda and pretty much stuck to it over the last 50 television years. Online is different. The Internet is a big sandbox where everyone gets to play. We will continue to discover new styles and formats and approaches to online content creation for the rest of our viewing days. Not only will content owners begin to shift their content online, they will begin to do things with their content that they never could have imagined in the next few years

5. Communications will continue to become much more visual… more engaging. Show me don’t tell me. No, text isn’t dead, but it’s doing less and less of the work online.

6. Online measurement/metrics will drive results. Advertisers will begin to see exactly with whom, why, where, when and how their ads worked. Privacy issues aside, we’ll begin telling everyone – either overtly through our actions or covertly by our behaviours – how we feel about their content.

7. Sharing and collaborating really is a big deal. Engaging social networks and reaching out to the twittering masses isn’t possible via television. Online not only is it possible it’s necessary. Creating content that is intended to be shared (and critiqued and reconstructed and parodied) adds a new level of complexity to content creation.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , ,

Nielsen reports online video and social media reshaping web

April 29, 2009 by Leave a Comment

 

 

Nielsen has released a new report  that looks at online engagement by Internet users. John Burbank (above), CEO of Nielsen, provides highlights of the study. Online video and social media lead the way while the rate of growth for  ’traditional’ online activities such as e-mail and search has continued to decrease.

According to the report online video and social media have now surpassed e-mail in terms of online activity.  Why is this happening? Johan Jervoe, CMO for Marketing at Macdonald’s summarized this new behaviour well: ” It’s not about technology and wanting to be online constantly. It’s about wanting to belong and be connected constantly.”

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

How to present video on your website

January 13, 2009 by 5 Comments

There are many ways to present video on your website. The cheapest and easiest is to upload your video to YouTube (or one of the many hosting alternatives) and place the embed code for that video on your site. The downside to doing this is that you can’t control the quality or of your video as well (although the ability to affect YouTube video quality and others is getting better) and you also have to deal with having other videos display at the end of the video in that player. Hopefully it’s not a competitors video or something equally distasteful.

Hosting Video

You can host your video on your own servers if they are relatively fast and you don’t expect much traffic to your video or you can chose a content delivery network that will host, serve and track your video. Your video will still look like it is on your site – it is just streaming from another server. (Refer to ‘Where to host your corporate video” for reference.) Once you have chosen where to host your video the next step is to chose a video player. All video has to be in a player to be viewed on the web. Flash Player is the standard. YouTube and most other video portals use flash, as do most corporate sites. Microsoft is trying to get Silverlight accepted as another standard. We’ll see how that goes. (Zune anyone…?)

Video Players

There are many options when it comes to implementing a flash video player on your site:

1. You can use the default flash player that comes with Adobe software.

2. You can purchase a customized flash player that has many features built in.  There are many available at under $100 such as Flowplayer (which I currently use)

3. You can build your own custom player – you would need some very specific requirements to chose this route.

4. You can use an open source player like the one being promoted by the Open Player Initiative .

5. You can use the service of a video production and or distribution firm that promotes a ‘platform’. Usually in this case you need to sign on for other services to use their player.

Whatever route you chose you will need to make a minimum amount of changes to the html on your site to accommodate the flash player. You will have to use the services of a web expert to help you plug the player into your site. The code that is required to implement a flash player on your site can be found at here: http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/

Filed Under: Managing Video Projects Tagged With: , , ,