Marketing with Video and Rich Media Blog

Air New Zealand’s naked flight safety tips

Air New Zealand has developed an air safety video that has already received over four million Internet views. Given the subject matter, that’s quite remarkable. Sure the people delivering the instructions are naked (except for body paint made to look like airline uniforms) but that’s not what has everyone’s attention, is it?

It’s a great creative concept that is well executed. The video is fun to watch, the production values are very good and it manages, for whatever reason… to keep your attention. Try as you might you’ll see very little ‘skin’ in the video. The video also does something which may be more important than imparting valuable safety tips to its passengers – it positions the airline as a creative and open-minded organization. It’s difficult to imagine a North American airline approving this creative concept – and yet I can also imagine many of those same disapproving business leaders asking ‘why don’t we do something like this?’ around the executive water cooler.

They also follow-up with some bloopers – another smart idea as ‘related video’ material is becoming standard fare for web-based video campaigns. The true mark of success will be if a legion of parody videos develops around this concept.

State of Florida misses the ‘social’ mark in new video promotion

 

Good effort…  but the execution is off the mark.

Like every tourist destination in the world, the State of Florida is looking for new ways to attract visitors during tough economic times. They engaged  Spark - a Tampa agency to help them build a ‘social video campaign’ to spread the word and ‘Share a little sunshine.’

The promotion began with the above video which is basically a call to action to all Floridians to help boost tourist trade – an integral part of the Florida economy. So far so good.  {Unfortunately the campaign got off to a bumpy start as many YouTube posts complained that the poster board concept (which goes back to  Bob Dylan’s 1965 Subterranean Homesick Blues Video video) was ‘stolen’ from a very touching YouTube video entitled Mark by Ben - a plea by a Florida boy to help find work for his father.}

A website and promotional campaign was created to encourage keen Floridians to pass along the good word. The website includes one of three commercials – ‘Romance’, ‘family’, ‘friends’ that participants are encouraged to forward with the promise of a chance to win valuable prizes with each new email sent.

 The State missed a huge opportunity here. Offering a prize for emailing these videos to friends and family is a good idea but I don’t think it’s enough. Sure it’s easy to do and sweepstakes and contests will always guarantee a certain amount of interaction. I just don’t believe that the recipients, if they actually watch the commercials, will care. If someone sent me an email with a tourist commercial from their town I may start watching it, but it better be really good, or have a compelling message or story. These videos were obviously created on a very tight budget and certainly don’t reinforce all of the beautiful stereotypes of the Sunshine State. These stereotypes,  (Eiffel Tower, Venetian Canals, Manhattan Skyline, etc.) are one of the main reasons people choose travel destinations. Yes, reminding people of important social hooks (friends, family and romance) is interesting but there is limited direct connection to Florida other than the fact that someone from the state may (or may not) have forwarded it to you.

There is a place for high quality video and a place for lower-budget video. The problem is that the lower quality video better have something else going for it or it won’t get noticed.

A better option would have been to create or purchase a lot of excellent quality b-roll video and encourage Floridians to create their own tourist videos using as much of the supplied high quality b-roll video as they wanted. The uptake might have been more limited but the viral potential for these videos would have been a hundred times greater – as would the impact.

A contest to forward commercials is not a social marketing campaign, it’s a contest – that’s it. Give people the incentives (the contest and the ‘Help support your state’ video) AND give them the tools to create compelling videos with themselves in the video – now you have the potential for some exponential growth in both viewership and impact.

Some videos would be great – especially if you give the people excellent source material to insert in the videos and some would be pretty bad. But even the bad ones would be good because they would have real people in them and these people would want to forward these videos on to their friends and family and their family and friends would want to watch them and forward them on to other people.

Unfortunately, this campaign results in the worst of both worlds – lower budget commercials with limited social uptake.

Are viral videos just sponsored entertainment?

 

Who would bother forwarding an infomercial on to a friend?

Millions of people as it turns out. The above video is a rap remix of the original Slap Chop video that already has 1.4 million views. This video has been seen by close to 900,000 people and other versions (they’ve ‘sliced and diced’ the original into a variety of styles and formats) have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. These numbers don’t include  the  parody videos that are now starting to surface. That’s millions of views for an infomercial.

Vince Shlomi- the presenter who helped to make the owners of the ShamWow product a lot of money is back with another over-the-top delivery that heralds the glory of this new kitchen chopping device. It’s campy, it’s silly, and it’s exhausting but it does something that most other viral videos do not: it sells. It demonstrates the features and benefits of the product very clearly. And it is memorable.

The top commercial viral video at the moment is the Samsung Extreme Sheep LED Art video. (8 million views) It’s clever and fun to watch but has little, if any connection to the Samsung LED monitors it ‘promotes’. Most viral videos are really ‘sponsored entertainment’ with a very weak direct link to the product or service they are supposed to promote. Viral video producers are very careful to point out to advertisers that being to ‘salesy’ will turn viewers off (and also lessen their chances of winning awards).

The  T-mobile Dance video by contrast is absolutely brilliant and does what many viral videos do not – it includes the product and the experience (in this case – people sharing the moment with their camera-phones) as part of the video. Certainly the connection is not overt – but at least there is an obvious connection. Going from the hearding of  light-suit adorned sheep to large screen television screen is a bit more of a stretch.

Entertainment should never be the goal – if it is then you should sell tickets. Effectiveness should be the measure of success. Did your video sell product, inform your customers and prospects or ‘support the brand’ in a meaningful way?

Will Slap Chop win any awards?  No way. It will be ridiculed by ‘serious’ marketers.

Did it entertain?  If you are a big ‘kitchen demo rap’ fan – then it delivered the goods.

Did it help to raise awareness of the product?  Absolutely!

Was it memorable?  I won’t soon forget it.

Did it help to sell product? I don’t know the numbers but I would have to say yes – if for no other reason than all of the Slap Chop parody video creators having to rush out and buy the device to use in their parody videos. (Perhaps that is a new sub-market.)

Samsung’s successful embrace of viral video

Once again Samsung have engaged the clever folks at The Viral Factory to develop a viral video to promote one of their latest products. Last time they went to Wales to video LED wrapped sheep (7.5 million views and counting) to promote Samsung’s line of ultrathin LED TV’s. This time they have created a viral video (and perhaps a new genre of viral video) that challenges the viewer to solve a visual trick shown in the video. This new video has already generated 650,ooo views and does a very nice job at demonstrating the quality of the  HD video camera that comes with the new Samsung I8910 camera-phone. The video encourages viewers to watch the high-def version of the video to help in solving the riddle. The real purpose of that suggestion of course, is to show-off the quality of the HD video that is captured on the camera-phone.

Judging from the initial viewership and comments the video is already a success. A video response has already been posted using YouTube’s annotation capabilities to  reveal the solution to the trick and provide detailed evidence to corroborate the solution.

Would people have watched this video without ‘the challenge’ – no way. If Samsung had created a traditional ad that simply and overtly promoted the high quality HD camera - it would not have spread virally. Nokia, Sony and many other consumer companies are beginning to realize that the reach and impact of a well executed viral video can be far more cost effective than a traditional broadcast ad.

That said, the challenge still remains in creating a video that is compelling enough for people to want to share it – to make it spread virally. Most attempts at viral video are not that compelling. (Calling it viral doesn’t make it so.)

… and broadacast advertisers still has the advantage that even if their ad is absolute crap, some people will still watch it.

The Geico Gecko goes viral – and risks overexposure.

The Geico Gecko has made his way to viral videos. Geico, the auto insurance company continues to gain market share through aggressive and persistent marketing. At the center of it’s marketing activities is the iconic Gecko – the lizard with the British accent that seems to be everywhere. Now he’s on YouTube and Metcalfe and…

The Richmond-based Martin Agency has created a series of viral video promotions that inserts the Geico Gecko in a number of  popular viral videos like the Gecko dancing in the background with Numa Numa guy (27 millions views) or the Gecko as any one of the popular laughing baby videos or the Gecko taking a picture of himself every day for two years parroting any one of the popular viral videos created by people who actually took the time to take a picture of themselves everyday.

Will these viral videos work? I doubt it – for a number of reasons. There is nothing new here. Every time something succeeds as a viral video a hundred people copy, mimic, lampoon, ‘pay hommage’ and otherwise abuse the concept until it becomes a tired cliche. The first time I saw one of the videos of the daily transformation of someone over a period of months I was mezmerised  – it was inventive, interesting and showed a lot of commitment (and free time). Now there are probably 100 versions of this video and it’s lost its appeal. The Gecko version of this video is worse because they didn’t really try that hard – I think they had five or six Gecko outfits (I suppose the wardrobe department had a limited budget) that they repeated so you were bored after the first five seconds. The audio for the laughing baby is great – but you could sync anything or anyone to that laugh and make viewers laugh. The accordion video above - I can’t imagine who would forward that to a friend. “Hey Biff, you have got to see the Gecko on the accordion… he’s eating nachos man!!!”

Viral video is an experiment for most marketers. Geico has the advantage of having a famous icon that is so well known that brand awareness occurs simply by seeing the lizard. To the extent that people actually do forward these videos to other people then they will have succeeded in exposing the Geico brand to those viewers. That said, Geico runs the risk of associating their brand with something that is less than clever and worse, over-exposing the brand icon to the point that the Gecko could start to lose it’s appeal.

Microsoft promotes IE8 launch with video, lots of video.

   microsoft 
In order to stop or reverse the continuing erosion of Internet browser market share Microsoft is launching it’s revamped browser IE8 (replete with lots of new bells and whistles) with great fanfare. Firefox continues to gain followers, Google is pushing Chrome very hard and the popularity of Apple products will ensure that a small but loyal group will continue to browse the web with Safari. Microsoft is doing it’s best to maintain a 70% market share (down from over 90% a few years ago). While any Microsoft marketing activity can be dismissed as just another dip into their bottomless reserve of cash it is still instructive to look at how they are spending their promotional dollars. This time around they are spending money on video – lots of it.
 Microsoft has hired or licensed some know and lesser known comedians and Internet celebrities (i.e. Obama girl and Ask a Ninja) to help create some rather engaging content and also to promote some of the new features of IE8 in a series of videos called ‘The history of the Internet”. It’s well done and worth a look. Interestingly you had to install Silverlight (Microsoft’s competing product to Adobe Flash) to view the videos. I couldn’t find the these videos on YouTube so presumably Microsoft is controlling distribution to encourage people to install Silverlight. I’m not sure this is the best way to encourage the viral spread of a video but I’m sure they know what they are doing…
 Aside from the 25 half minute humour clips they have assembled to promote IE8 virally they have also created the following 15 separate marketing videos:
  1.  A 30 second commercial that plays on the homepage of the IE8 Site (This video offers the least value of any of the video’s – no one wants to watch a commercial on the  web… unless it’s really engaging.)
  2. An overview video that summarizes the features and benefits of the new browser.
  3. 5 separate videos that explain the detail of each of the 5 major features.
  4. 3 scenario videos that demonstrate popular use-cases for where the new browser features will be used.
  5. 4 Partner videos that show how selected Microsoft partners are benefiting from the new features.
  6. A detailed ‘case study’ that details in an interesting comparative format how the new browser is as fast or faster than that of it’s competitors – trying to quell one of the big knocks against the old browser.
 This is a smart way to develop video – short form targeted video that highlights a specific idea (feature and/or benefit) to a specific audience. Creating one 30 minute video would have guaranteed that no one watched it. The cost of creating 15 small videos is not that much more than the traditional cost of creating a 30 minute video. Microsoft is obviously committed to using video and sees it as one of the most effective ways of communicating with its online audience.
 
 
 
 
 

‘Be Brave’ – A brilliant PSA / Viral Video by Pfizer Canada

Pfizer Canada along with the Starlight Childrens Foundation introduced a viral video campaign to raise awareness (and money through donations) of the challenges that seriously ill  children face. The video was produced by Toronto’s Zig Studio who did a brilliant job at showing that love, support and courage can sometimes be the best medicine. Interestingly there is no dialogue in the video, just a powerful message with an emotional ending. This is not your standard viral video fare and will hopefully raise the bar for other companies looking to take advantage of social media.

Released in the fall it hasn’t received the attention or traction that it’s creators would have liked. It’s difficult to say whether it’s lack of notoriety is because of  lack of proper video seeding and promotion or whether YouTube viewers are simply more attuned to dancing cats and kids playing with light sabres. Either way it’s a great piece of video that Pfizer and it’s creators should be proud of.

Five questions to ask a viral video producer.

A growing number of video production houses and ad agencies claim to specialize in viral videos. By definition a “viral video” is a web-based video that is so popular that people will want to share it with their friends or colleagues (through social media sites, through email, through IM, through blogs and through media sharing websites). That is a very big promise.

One of the best examples of a successful corporate viral video was created by Blendtec, a Utah-based blender manafuacturer. The company created a wildly popular video promotional series called “Will it blend?” which showcased Blendtec founder, Tom Dickson dumping everything imaginable into a blender to answer the question “Will it blend?” The videos contain an engaging mix of shock, humour and campiness that have generated millions of views. “Will it blend?” has become an Internet meme and the series has generated millions of dollars in increased sales for the company. {The company has even made money from merchandising the ‘Will it blend?’ name and shared advertising revenues generated from Will it Blend? videos on video sharing site Revver.}

So yes, it is possible to generate awareness, buzz and even revenue with viral video but success at the level of ‘Will it Blend?’ is the exception. The challenge is that you have to strike a very delicate balance of entertaining without looking like you are selling. If your video looks like a commercial or a blatant promotion, it won’t be shared. If you create something that is hugely entertaining but does nothing to advance your brand, what’s the point?

It’s also getting much more difficult to break through the chatter. YouTube gets a cajillion new videos uploaded every minute. Yours better be really good.

If you’re thinking of creating a viral video here are five questions you should ask prospective viral video production house:

1. How many viral videos have you done, and for who?
2. How will this video promote my brand? (Most viral video producers squeeze the brand into the video)
3. How will you measure success? If the answer is ‘views’, is there a way to qualify who is viewing it?
4. Do you employ any video seeding strategies, title and thumbnail optimization or other guerrilla techniques that help accelerate video sharing?
5. Are there any guarantees? What if it only gets viewed by 100,000, 10,000, 1,000 or 3 people?