Thursday, May 17, 2007

Mother's Day Flowers


Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Our viral marketing video case study: Mother's Day Flowers


Pre-production: It’s all about a story


It always begins with a goal and a message. Our goal was to create a video that would teach our fellow students about the steps to creating a viral video. We knew it had to teach. Yet, we also understood the ultimate goal of any viral video is to entertain. This is when we realized the importance of subtle selling with exaggerated entertainment.
We determined the best way to illustrate the steps to creating a viral video was to create a hypothetical selling goal. We discussed many options. We had to choose a theme that all members of our audience could relate to. This would encourage our audience to share the video (which is the key to a successful viral video).


Ultimately we chose Mother’s Day as our theme and selling truck-loads of flowers as our subtle sell. Everyone knows a mom and most people recognize the mother’s in their life with a card, an email, or flowers. Our hope was that they would send our email as a part of their greeting.
Make people feel something


Again we had to select captivating images that would maintain the viewer’s attention. Research tells us that the most appealing and relatable image is a child. This was a great fit with our Mother’s Day theme. We decided to ask the children what they like most about their mom. We searched the Web thoroughly and could not find any examples of this idea. And so we proceeded.


We hoped that our audience would feel moved by the sincere expressions of love from the children. We were surprised to hear the children’s responses and decided the video would twist in another direction, humor. In the end, the story was that the young children were honest. Yet, their honesty told the story of the difficulties of being a mom and pleasing everyone. What we found most endearing was the deep sentiment of love that the older respondents had. As we understand that viral marketing is about emotions, we hope we achieved both humor and sentimentality.


Do something unexpected


With our audience and ultimate goal of educating our classmates in mind, we wanted to include something that our classmates would find unexpected and fun. We chose to interview Professor Caywood. His mother was so amazing and his love for her so evident, the juxtaposition became a nice ending to our Mother’s Day story.
Do not try to make advertisements

The homemade quality of the video gave the viewers a feeling of being a voyeur into a private life. Its roughness assured the viewer it was not a sales pitch. With the thought that it was a real viral video for ProFlowers, we purposely held off from mentioning the product or the call to action until the end.

Production: media technology


We created the video with a digital video camera and used Microsoft Movie Maker to edit. The most difficult part of the process was integrating the music crisply, so that it did not spill over onto the next scene.


Make sequels: Never leave people standing with nothing.


We sent the original video out several days before Mother’s Day. However, we found that some of the children were difficult to understand. So, we added subtitles to clarify the video and to incorporate additional humor. It also served as a sequel and an additional reminder of Mother’s Day.


Allow Sharing, downloading and embedding
We posted the video onto YouTube and to our blog www.subtlesell.blogspot.com. It will also be viewed in a Second Life tour. We welcome sharing, downloading and embedding. We encourage comments and have responded to all of them. Access was not restricted in the least.


Measurement


Using YouTube and Google Video to publish a series of short videos, we can measure the number of times they were viewed, the ranking or rating of the viral video, how many click-troughs were generated, and how many site visitors converted to subscribers, etc. At the time this was written, we had over 500 viewers and a five-star rating. The video was shared all over the world including such countries as Ireland, England, China and Korea.


Our competition


Although we conducted a search for a mother’s day viral video that was created by a flower company, we found none. Yet, when we went to post our video we discovered 1-800-flowers did create a Mother’s Day themed viral video. At first we were disappointed that our idea was not more original. Upon viewing their video, we were encouraged. It reinforced our message even more: The key to a successful viral video is subtle selling with exaggerated entertainment.


The 1-800-flowers video was poorly executed. The photography was clearly done by an expert (it lacked the homemade feel). They guided the children by asking them to compare their mother’s to flowers, a completely unnatural request. The result was forced answers that were not humorous or moving. The setting is a sterile computer lab and the company logo appears throughout the video in the lower right-hand corner (reminding the viewers it’s a commercial and they are being sold to). Just when you thought it could not get worse, the CEO ends the video with “Kids, I couldn’t have said it better myself.” It was a commercial from the beginning to the end and it lacked any of the qualities of a successful viral marketing video.

1-800-Flowers - A horrible example of viral marketing


What is Viral Marketing


The term “Viral marketing” refers to how people pass on and share interesting and entertaining content via the internet. Viral commercials often take the form of funny video clips, or interactive Flash games, an advergame, images and even text. It’s been noted that viral marketing is popular because of the ease of executing a marketing campaign, relative low-cost (in comparison to direct mail), excellent and precise targeting that leads to the high and rapid response rate. The main strength of viral marketing is its ability to obtain a large number of interested people at low cost. Through the use of the internet and the effects of e-mail or internet advertising, the business-to-customer efforts have a greater impact than many other tools of marketing.

Viral marketing is a technique that avoids the annoyance of spam mail. This in turn encourages users to tell a friend of a particular product or services, which serves as highly effective word-of mouth advertising.

Researchers are convinced that this concept is a viable and effective marketing tool. There’s proof to backup their claims. Apparently the brain makes decisions in just a 20th of a second of viewing a webpage, confirms a study, published in the journal Behavior and Information. According to statistics, recreational Internet surfing has overtaken television as the largest recreational activity. Apparently, by the end of this year it is estimated that more than 6 billion people will be using the Internet. Note that it took more than 50 years for television to get to this point. It’s certainly an innovative medium that has captured the interest of the person searching for answers behind a PC,and the individual hoping to score with a marketing strategy.

YouTube and other distribution channels
One of the greatest ‘vessels’ of the viral marketing concept is without a doubt YouTube, a popular free video sharing website that utilizes AdobeFlash technology to display video and allows users to upload, view and share video clips.

After one year in business, YouTube was acquired for approximately $1.65 by Google. YouTube is now receiving more traffic than MySpace, CNN.com and Ebay combined. This is certainly a testament to the growth of video and its viral nature. The wide varietyof site content includes movie, television clips and movie videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging. The company was named TIME magazine’s “Invention of the Year” for 2006.

What is Viral Video

According to Wikipedia, viral video is video clip content which gains widespread popularity through the process of the Internet shared typically through email or IM messages, blogs and other media sharing websites. Viral videos are often humorous. There are millions of short video clips on the web, produced by amateurs and professionals. The amateurs publish videos for fun and professional publish their clips to drive traffic to their websites and to sell more of their products or services. With the introduction of the latest camera phones technology, this means that many videos shot these days are done by consumers on these devices. Cheap video editing and publishing tools allow video shot on mobile phones to be edited and distributed virally both on the web, by email and between phones by Bluetooth.

How effective are viral videos at driving traffic?


Video clips are used to generate click-throughs and subscriptions. Videos ranging in length and promotional content are placed on video sharing sites like YouTube and Google Video. The Video specifies a URL, indicating that there’s a website that may be interesting or relevant to the viewer. A link is also provided on the same page as the video, which potentially drives traffic back to the main Website. Videos can be sorted into various categories such as Personal Blog (global issues, spirituality, current events) and Comedy (spoofs, skits, celebrity parody), to mention but a few.

The intention is not to produce a professional looking video that you’d expect from an advertising agency, instead in many instances, video clips are shot in an "amateurish" way and carries though a very ‘unprofessional’ image in their approach and production. This is done deliberately as a professional image would most definitely inhibit the viral potential of videos and set the videos apart from the ‘ordinary’ videos created by individuals on the web. A point worth mentioning is that although promotional, viral videos normally do not contain a sales message, there may be product placement or a sales pitch on a landing page.

Note that entertaining or provocative videos can quickly become viral, being shared by tens or even hundreds of thousands of viewers, most of them connected through online social networks. However, it is important to understand the nature of the environment in which video clips are most widely distributed and shared. If you simply add a video clip to your site or blog, and to YouTube, you will be taking advantage of only a small fraction of the opportunity that exists. In the same way that you optimize your web sites and blogs for the major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN, you also have to optimize the presentation of your video clips in order to be found through searches within social network community sites.

Advantages of viral videos


Video is the best media to spread and distribute a marketing message effectively to the target audience. Here are some advantages of viral marketing video.


More flexible in content

Video can offer the movie, sound and text simultaneously. As it can deliver something very similar to our real life, people can easily understand the message. In addition, as it does not require censorship like other broadcasting advertising, marketers can put whatever they want. For example, in some countries-such as China or Korea- comparison advertising is prohibited by law. So often it is not easy to demonstrate the difference between brands by advertising. Thus, companies in countries like these do comparison advertising through viral video since it is not constrained by censorship.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhb30yVn8d0


More interesting

Video can deliver a story. It can be something unexpected, creative and touching. Just like many people like to see drama, comedy or movies, people also like to see viral video. Also, as it does not look very professional, people see viral video with a more open mind. Once the video is in their favor, they forward it to their family and friends.
http://www.viralvideochart.com/youtube/lose_weight_in_photoshop_makeover?id=DZDHQ9b9fbo


Less energy for audience to understand

Just like watching TV, people can easily see and understand viral video unlike reading text through internet or printed magazine. Researchers are convinced that this concept is a viable and effective marketing tool.

More customer centric

According to statistics, recreational Internet surfing has overtaken television as the largest recreational activity. Apparently, by the end of this year it is estimated that more than six billion people will be using the Internet. Note that it took more than 50 years for television to get to this point. It’s certainly an innovative medium that has captured the interest of the person searching for answers behind a PC, and the individual hoping to score with a marketing strategy.


Example: Customer Centric Video: Shake Your Oodle
Created to announce a Second Life event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSM7GnXyULo

Generates words of mouth marketing (WOM)

Viral video can be a topic among friends and family.

Low cost to distribute

Compared to the traditional media, viral video enables us to distribute it with a smaller budget.

“A lot of friends even send me some wonderful commercials they downloaded from Youtube, and I can't help myself sending them to others. No distribution costs, in a minute, the company win thousands of its potential customers by doing nothing. The customers distributed the commercials themselves.”

Think about the mass media budget, and how much ROI you could gained from that? How much actual purchases are generated from the commercial? You can now understand the appeal of viral videos. Although sometimes it is is enjoyable to forget about marketing and take pleasure in the funny, subtle, creative, or just moving videos. To optimize video clips, to maximize distribution across social network sites., use tags and bookmarking links to help people find, save and share your videos.

People prefer viral video to the obvious advertising

In the flood of advertising and marketing, people do not want to be bombarded by marketing messages.

As a former copywriter, I know how people hate boring sales TV commercials. Why not, I hate them too. How could they waste our time to look at those ugly and weird guys shouting '$199, $199 only for THREE days'."

This is why people LOVE viral video. Viral marketing is a technique that avoids the annoyance of spam mail. This in turn encourages users to tell a friend of a particular product or service, which serves as highly effective word-of mouth advertising.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA2Qp5DizpE

Fast to spread

Do you remember the Taco Bell video “Mice in the Kitchen?” Do you also recall how soon the public came to know about it? Viral video is very effective media to spread a message quickly. Once people come to like the video, people are willing to spread it through e-mail, messenger, video sharing sites such as YouTube, myspace, daily motion or break.com.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MY5wO3ro10

More pull approach than push approach

Unlike traditional marketing tools and other media, Viral video starts from consumer. They start to make their own video (in most cases), they distribute and they generate WOM, not the companies or marketers. This is why IMCers and marketers have to pay attention to viral media as an effective marketing tool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzb89dyynGA

The disadvantages of viral videos.


Time constraint

Even though video is easy to capture viewer’s initial interest, it is not easy to maintain the viewer’s attention through its entirety. According to Nielsen Net Rating, people stay 17 minutes per session on the Website- in this short time, they sample several videos. Therefore, the video content has to be entertaining and captivating. This also brings about the constraint of length. Try to keep your video clips short, preferably less than 5 minutes long. Most people browse through a number of videos when visiting sites like YouTube and Google Video, won’t be willing to give videos too much of their time. Ensure that your video has interesting, entertaining or provocative content. If it doesn't engage your audience, they will have little incentive to share it with other people they know, or across their social networks.

It is not easy to balance between roughness and fancy

There are millions of short video clips on the web, produced by amateurs and professionals. The amateurs publish videos for fun and the professional publish their clips in order to drive traffic to their Websites and to sell more of their products or services. If it is too rough, it can be boring, but if it is too professional or fancy, people regard it as advertising. This is not something they want to share and forward with their friends.

The intention is not to produce a professional looking video that you’d expect from an advertising agency, instead in many instances, video clips are shot in an "amateurish" way and carries though a very ‘unprofessional’ image in their approach and production. This is done deliberately as a professional image would most definitely inhibit the viral potential of videos, and set the video s apart from the ‘ordinary’ videos created by individuals on the web. A point worth mentioning is the fact that although promotional, viral videos normally do not contain a sales message, product placement or a sales pitch on a landing page.

Obvious intention

When the intention of viral video is too obvious-to sell something, people tend to neglect the message. However, since we have specific purpose of viral video, it is not easy to balance between two. Also, the managing the linkage to the brand is one of the difficulties; This has to be subtle but also has to leave impression.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVeo-3lwwa8

Four steps to making an effective viral video


"Instead of interrupting the viewer's entertainment experience with ads, the ads are the entertainment."

Is viral video marketing a one size fits all?

Let viral video clips drive targeted traffic.
There are millions of short video clips on the web, produced by professionals and amateurs. The amateurs publish their video clips for fun and notoriety, and the professionals produce and publish them in order to drive traffic to their web sites or sell more products or services.
Tens of millions of people watch viral videos, but the question for marketers is how effective are they driving qualified traffic for the sake of their own marketing objectives and goals.

Look at the evolution from where the Internet first started. It started out with everything being free. Natural search was first starting. You could actually go to the top of a natural search engine within a day or two of launching a site and start getting traffic almost immediately.

Viral marketing is now one of the most powerful ways to market online. This is what the Internet was designed for, multimedia as mainstream. This has come about primarily because of the adoption of broadband.
Depending on the report about 50% of the houses in the U.S. have broadband, and that trend is continuing across the world. 80% to 90% of businesses are now using broadband.


Given the truth of viral development of online social community, one key question that marketers should still keep in mind is that: before thinking of launching any viral video campaign, it is important to get deeper knowledge of online surfing audience, examine your potential customers’ demographic, psychological and behavior characteristics, and question yourself whether your customers match the audience. Viral videos have a broad application in marketing, however, we cannot conclude that it is a one size fits all tool.

Production: Make your viral videos attractive and effective from the starting point.

A good viral video production needs careful design and execution. Look at what relative topics are popular in the online community might help understand your audience and create a superstar video for your products.

Pre-production: It’s all about a story
Before starting to shoot the video, a copy telling the story or the theme for the video is important. Entertaining and relativity to audience’s interest is the key. Remember the fact that the online audience’ attention is precious but easy to switch to the abundant of online information sea. So make sure to keep your video clips short, preferable under five minutes. Make it interesting, entertaining or provocative. And be cautious of commercial content. The most powerful short videos are those entertaining while communicating brand awareness and promotion without interruption and annoyance.

Make people feel something
The most important trick of all is to create a very strong emotion. You need to have an opinion, to express an idea with commitment and dedication. You want people to:
be filled with love or hate;
be very happy or insanely angry;
be an idiot or a genius;
be deeply compassionate or an egoistic bitch
You want people's blood to be pumping of excitement.
Forget neutral, trying to please everyone, supporting several target groups or any of the many ways to be unbiased. Viral marketing is 100% about emotions.

Do something unexpected
If you want people to notice your campaign, you have to do something different - something unexpected. Forget about trying to promote your products as just being great - everybody does that. Forget about trying to make it look cool - everyone else has "been there, done that". And above all, never be a copycat.


Do not try to make advertisements
One of the biggest mistake companies make is when they think viral marketing is just advertisements that people share - it is not. Traditional marketing is about promoting your product, showing how good it is, giving it center stage - and generally being incredibly selfish (and possibly using supermodels or movie stars). But guess what, nobody cares about you!

Viral marketing is all about a good story.
When BMW put out BMW Films, the main ingredient was not the cars, but the story. Replace the car with another one, and it would still be great. When Sony made their Bravia TV ads, the product was not even seen - yet everyone remembers it.

Forget about you, your product or your company. Focus exclusively in creating a good and interesting story. Sure, you can add your product into the mix, but it must not be the most important thing.

Production: media technology
Ask good video management softwares for help. You don’t have to be professional, but a good application of animation, title insert, color, music and expected format all makes a great viral video.

Post-production: add more value to your video
Make sequels: Never leave people standing with nothing.
People have just seen your campaign. They think it was interesting, unexpected and their emotions has reached a high level - you have their complete attention. If you simply do nothing to follow it, you lose a big opportunity to be a super sales star. When you got people's attention you need to act, and one of the best ways of doing that is to give them more - make sequels. It can be extra movies similar in concept to the first one - like BMW Films and Nissan did. It can be a behind the scenes look Bloopers; A blog about the process (like Nissan did); Extra material, goodies etc.

One more thing: forget about countdown releases. People's attention span does not last that long. Give them everything now!
Allow Sharing, downloading and embedding.

Sharing is what viral marketing is all about. Everything you do to make that easier is going to improve your campaign. That means that you need to allow people to: Download the content, in a usable format (videos in MPG, pictures in JPG etc.) Allowing them to easily embed the content on their own sites (Note: remember bandwidth issues). Sending it to friends, either using a link or by sending the content directly. Publishing it on various social networks - Digg, YouTube etc. Allow people to add it in the bookmarking sites

Note: This is also easily overdone. You do not want to clutter up your page with a zillion "share me, dig this etc." icons.
Connect with comments.

Another important element is to connect with your audience. Remember you got their attention, they are excited and now they want to talk. Comments are the most effective way to do this.

Keep in mind that the best viral marketing campaign is one that creates a strong emotion. This means some people will really like it - while others will get very angry. You have to accept both in your comments, and you have to welcome both opinions. But at the same time you must prevent individuals from waging war against each other.

It is not a sin to delete comments from people who attack another person, or if the comment is off-topic. But it is a sin to delete comments from people who just have an negative opinion.

And most importantly. Connecting with people through comments means talking back. Do not add comments if you do not want to participate yourself.

Never restrict access! Viral marketing is also about your campaign getting a life on its own - spreading like a virus. To become "viral", it needs to be free. Never add restrictions to the mix. Do not require people to register to become members, to download special software, to enter "unlock" codes or to do something in order to get the right link. Viral marketing is never about exclusivity. It is about getting it out there for everyone to see.

Strategic distribution

Video as a component of your social media optimization strategy
Entertaining or provocative videos can quickly become viral, being shared by millions of viewers, however, it is important to understand the nature of the environment in which video clips are most widely distributed and shared.

If you simply add a video clip to your site, blog and to YouTube, you will be taking advantage of only a small fraction of the opportunity that exists. In the same way that you optimize your web sites for the major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN, you also have to optimize the presentation of your videos in order to rank at the top through searches within social network community sites. This process is called Social Media Optimization, or SMO.

Social Media Optimization is the process by which you optimize your online presence to be more visible through searches within online communities and community web sites. It is like SEO (search engine optimization) for social network sites. It is how you make your sites, videos, podcasts, RSS feeds and blog entries more visible and searchable to tens of millions of people who are connected through sites like MySpace, YouTube, Del.icious, Technorati, Reddit, Facebook and dozens of others.

Traditional "connectors" for static sites comprise linking strategies and search engine marketing. Social network "connectors" include use of blogs, podcasts, bookmarks, tags, RSS feeds, trackbacks, reviews, comments, ratings and participation in networked community groups.
The essence of SMO is to increase the chances of your video - or any other portable, sharable content – being distributed more widely and being found more quickly though community search engines.
This is important when producing short videos, because it is within and across these networked community sites that video clips are most likely to be distributed and shared. In other words, to maximize the chances of your video going viral, you have to optimize it for sharing across social network communities.

Measurement
Paid search nowadays has emerged and Natural Search has become extremely competitive. ROI has become much more important. People stopped offering everything free, and marketers' expectations about potential performance rose dramatically as they recognized the potential.
Now, we are in an era where search - paid search and natural search - is a commodity. If you are not doing it well, you must improve quickly. ROI is driving the marketing. Nothing is free. The war on SPAM is waged daily, and the legislative environment is changing daily.

Using YouTube and Google Video to publish a series of short videos, we can measure the number of times they were viewed, the ranking or rating of the viral video, how many clickthoughs were generated, and how many site visitors converted to subscribers, etc.

Based on a iProspect research result, which is responded by online search marketers, it is known that the online search to offline purchase conversion rate is still high. This study found out that, in a vertical market (consumer electronics and computers), 92% of conversions that took place as a result of online research performed via a search engine, took place offline, with only 7% took place online. As a result, it is also important for marketers to measure viral marketing effect to meet main business goals, like marketing ROI, viral video clickthrough to real online/offline purchase ratio, etc.

Integrate your video to make the effect last longer


Making the viral marketing effect durative by integration

When a successful viral video releases great power and spreads like virus, a question raises at the same time: how to make that viral effect last long?

The answer is to integrate the viral video marketing with other IMedia marketing. Once you’ve created a compelling video, begin spreading the word across as many seeding locations as you can possibly find – search, blogs, video channels, mobiles, forums, social network sites etc. This cross-channel reinforcement may up your reproduction rate by a few additional percentage points and will likely, at the very least, increase the saturation of adopters if your rate starts to get low. The length of the effect is prolonged by continuously involving more audience through integrated IMedia channel.

The most popular integration includes:
Vlogging: Video blogging. This term refers to when people imbed video content into a blog. The text part of the blog adds context to each video and aids with search engine marketing.
Vodcasting. A vodcast is like a podcast but with video—a video series tied to a syndication component with iTunes and RSS feeds. For example, BMW offers a weekly vodcast series of two-to-three minute videos about what’s going on at BMW. The company uses the vodcasts to publicize the cool things it’s doing around the world.

The other way to sustain the effect is to create a series of viral marketing campaign consistent with each other. Just like the great success of Spiderman 3, the continuations will not only help the duration of viral marketing effect, but will also help increase the impact by improving the video with accumulated knowledge of audience as well as the market.


Making Your Viral Video Long Tail Friendly

Viral video has given small companies opportunities to present their information. Small companies may not be able to compete with big potatoes by doing better web sites or investing huge on advertising and marketing, but they can do a better job with video.

Everyone wants to add a video to their marketing mix that spreads around the world. However, the unfortunate reality is that there are many more videos that don't come close to becoming instant hits. There's too much supply and simply not enough demand. Fortune calls it an epidemic. If you're going to go the viral video route, besides making your video creative and attractive, you may also considering working with a partner that has a track record. Content is king and so is experience. How to make viral videos easily found in the Long Tail has definitely become the greatest challenge for small viral video marketers.

Top 10 Viral Video Moments of 2006

Top 10 Viral Video Moments of 2006
Google buys YouTube for $1.65 billion. Huh? The absurd market cap that YouTube commanded despite low income and pirated content demonstrates the value of you, dear online-video viewer. There’s a race to own your little eyeballs. The moment made us uncomfortable because it flashes us back to the Pets.com era, but it validated the video space to mainstream, and taught people the power of community.
LonelyGirl15 revealed as an actress. Don’t believe everything you watch, folks. This was a sobering moment to millions of people living parasocial relationships with Bree via her YouTube videos. Some celebrated it, and moved to LonelyGirl15 where she serves her videos via Revver. Others groaned because they felt she violated the “realness” of the YouTube community. There are still ‘Tubers that dissect each of my videos to prove they’re fake. People, I did not really steal my neighbors Christmas tree. It’s called story telling, idiots, and you can say what you like about LonelyGirl15 but it’s undeniably a story people want to experience.
Diet Coke & Mentos. If you aren’t familiar with this movement, please turn off your computer and return to your couch. This was fascinating mostly from the corporate reaction. Mentos jumped right in and supported the video creators with sponsorship on Revver, contests and special partnerships. Coke distanced itself initially, and then eventually embraced it too late. My favorite remains the Pepsi Girl by Davideo.
People started making money from online video. Don’t trust me? Listen to NPR’s report on it. EepyBird makes more than $35,000 on a few Diet Coke & Mentos Experiment videos. A comedy duo made more than $35,000 via Revver (a site that shares advertising revenue) from a series of videos showing elaborate fountains of exploding Coke. Later they would get a 6-figure deal with Google & Coke for a sequel.
TIME magazine names consumer-generated media the “Person of the Year” in 2006. Hello, mainstream media — this video sharing thing isn’t a fad. It’s profoundly changing the way we consume media, interact and consume advertising. Perhaps the funniest part of this article was the instant response by bloggers, vloggers and video creators. Each decided we were individually the Person of the Year. Except me. I’m above that petty behavior.
Michael Richards goes on racial tirade at The Laugh Factory. This was upsetting, but a reminder of the accountability power of video. Would that have made international news had someone not caught it on tape? It spawned instant spoofs like “The Lost Seinfeld Episode.”
The Lazy Sunday Rap (Chronicles of Narnia) by Saturday Night Live goes wild on YouTube. NBC reacts by sending a 15-page “cease and desist” instead of basking in the free publicity of the ailing show. And it later partners with YouTube. Now the network is even exploring running dress rehearsals online. The sheer number of horrendous knockoffs of this video reaffirms that it was a paramount moment of 2006.
Net Neutrality movement grows. I don’t really understand this, but I think it’s important. Here’s a video on it.
Public Relations firm busted for making Al Gore Penguin spoof. DCI Group was exposed by the Wall Street Journal for secretly funding a video about global warming and Al Gore.
And lastly, Marketers give a giant “Lennie Small (Of Mice & Men) squeeze” to viral video, crushing its lil’ head in adoration. Countless big brands did Lemming dives into viral video by creating such hits as Tea Partay by Smirnoff, GM’s flying cars, as well as some additional case studies. Then there were the ailing video contests and viral commercials we didn’t forward like advertisers promised their clients. People, let’s resolve to make 2007 better on the viral video advertising front. Please read 7-Deadly-Sins of Viral Video Advertising.

Top 10 Online video Predictions for 2007

Top 10 Online-Video Predictions for 2007
Online video and television collide then converge. We’ve seen small steps toward this, but they’re trivial relative to what will happen in 2007. We’re first going to see some territorializing between online-video players and larger networks and media distributors. Then we’ll start to see great partnerships between major networks and online video sites, as well as deals with Verizon, Comcast and TiVo that give online video creators much broader exposure.
Consolidation of online video sites will increase exponentially. Eventually there will be only a small hand-full of sites (GooTube, AOL, Yahoo) where people upload videos, because those sites will gain critical mass and cut exclusive deals upstream. Almost every industry starts with hundreds of players, consolidates to a dozen, and finally matures with 2-3 major entities. Small sites will get acquired or fade. There will still be niche sites like Break.com and special-interest sites.
Viral video creators will “cross over” to television. We saw Amandon Congdon make the leap from Rocketboom to ABC recently. People with talent, like ZeFrank, will land a short segment on The Daily Show or some other television show. Ultimately this will make ZeFrank’s bloated ego explode — something we hope occurs live on Good Morning America. A few name-brand stars will decide they can move online without the hassle of networks. I don’t see any of these succeeding initially, but as the audience for “online video” surpasses (in some areas) television viewers, it will be hard for them to resist.
Many television shows will develop online manifestations. This will include “behind the scenes” shots, extended storylines, and interactions with the show. Some shows will invite submissions by amateurs and even cast amateurs to participate.
Consortiums will form for economies of scale. Viacom/Fox/NBC/CBS are already toying with an anti-YouTube play. This is as impossible to resist as it is to achieve airlift. Other consortiums will succeed. I see groups of independent online video amateurs forming copperatives to market their content to networks, or networks organizing the coops. Shows like RabbitBites will have higher odds of moving to mainstream when connected with similar content.
Select amateur video creators will begin to make a full-time living without “crossing over” to television. Metacafe’s CEO Arik Czerniak recently told me he anticipates his top amatuer creators will make six-figure incomes in 2007. I think he’s right. I’d also watch for people earning high revenue via Revver if the company rapidly expands its viewer base through affiliate/syndicate partnerships.
A major news story will break via live (or close to live) footage by “citizen journalists” holding cameras. Remember the impact of the Rodney King footage? Consider how more of these we’ll see now that so many of us are equipped with cell phones that record video. And eventually we’ll see live footage from a cell phone in a major news story — a robbery, hostage situation or natural disaster. If the reporters can address the nation live via satellite, why can’t the amateur videographer via a video-enabled cell phone? It will look like garbage, but it will be horrifically real.
Marketers will get smarter about how they gain consumer mindshare through online video. The self-created viral videos will give way to more creative partnerships between brands and top video creators. These deals will be efficient for marketers, and highly profitable for video creators with low budgets. We’ll see increasingly fewer $250K viral video series created by agencies, and more low-budget, fun videos that were inspired by amateurs but get the media support of advertising budgets.
Real vs. fake will be a major 2007 theme. People don’t understand that some videos are designed to be “story telling,” and others are real footage. LonelyGirl15 was an example of a deliberate ruse, but many other “are they real or not” videos are endlessly dissected by comments. This will catch media’s attention, since they’ll enjoy raising viewer concerns about the integrity and validity of this threatening medium.
The “big boy” sites are going to start sharing advertising revenue with select creators like some smaller sites (Revver, Metacafe, Blip, Brightcove, Lulu). That means Google, YouTube, Yahoo and AOL will finally realize that good content means eyeballs. And eyeballs means more revenue.


What can viral video learn from eROI 2007 Online Marketing Prediction?

1. Thoughtful, cause-related marketing is the biggest winner in 2007.
2. Email mantra: list segmentation + relevant content = improved results.
3. Greater integration of Video into all websites.
4. Democrat majority in Congress swings the tide of online marketing.
5. Most successful companies will become media companies.
6. Great Content is King.
7. Email marketers will demand more strategy from their marketing agencies.
8. User-generated content will be a component on most new websites.
9. Viral campaign websites will have a purpose.
10. Social networking will get more and more niche.


Editors recommendation
In closing, we recommend the following Website which features a panel composed of the most successful producers of viral video on the Web describing their approaches to leveraging the phenomenon of Web video and how it relates to mainstream media today and in the future. There are ten episodes in total. If you’re pressed, try to find time for 1, 2, 3, 9 & 10.
http://www.scribemedia.org/2006/11/09/viral-video/

References for Information Shared

Reference
1. http://subtlesell.blogspot.com/
2. http://www.internetvideomag.com/Articles_2007/012707_YouTubeVideo.htm/
3. http://www.marketingexperiments.com/improving-website-conversion/viral-video-clips-targeted-traffic.html/
4. www.youtube.com
5. http://www.marketingexperiments.com/improving-website-conversion/viral-video-clips-targeted-traffic.html/
6. http://www.baekdal.com/articles/Branding/viral-marketing-tricks/
7. http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004845
8. https://courses.northwestern.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_160688_1
9. http://e-strategy.com/article.asp?subject=viral-video-marketing-services
10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_video
11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_video
12. http://nalts.wordpress.com/2006/12/30/top-10-viral-video-moments-of-2006/
13. http://nalts.wordpress.com/2006/12/30/top-10-online-video-predictions-for-2007/
14. http://www.emaildays.com/archives/online_marketing_predictions/

Best Internet resources on viral marketing videos

Raising the Bar on Viral Web Ads ****
This article retraces the viral video boom to an ad executive, Ed Robinson, who produced a viral video ad 6 years ago that drove 500,000 visitors to his web site in 3 months. The author says that viral video marketing has exploded, expanding "from a negligible piece of the advertising pie to a $100 million to $150 million industry." According to the article, the freshness of online videos is wearing off due to an abundance of amateur viral videos, forcing companies to spend huge amounts in order to compete.
Interview with Brendon Sinclair: Web Video Quadruples Conversion Rates ***
In this article, the author questions Brendon Sinclair, author of Web Design Business Kit on SitePoint, about online video and its effect on conversion rates. Sinclair explains that he can provide better understanding of a product via video through using graphs, graphics, and audio. Video allows him to demonstrate passion and credibility. Sinclair then explains the process of using video online.
Marketers are into YouTube ***
This article states that big corporations such as Nike, Warner Bros., MTV2, and Dimension Films are "seeding [YouTube] with commercial clips." Why? Because the advertising cost relatively inexpensive. Companies shoot a video, and then simply upload it for free. For example, Deep Focus, a marketing firm that represents film companies, placed Scary Movie 4 on YouTube and received a million views within a week.
Viral Ads: It's an Epidemic ***
This article explores the potential for online videos to be used as viral ads. The author presents the idea that marketers can advertise their product to millions very inexpensively if they produce a video that is funny enough for viewers to send to all of their friends and colleagues. The problem is deciphering between content that is "pass-around worthy" and content that is merely crap.
Online Video Advertising Builds Momentum ***
This article sees online video as a way to "engage the audience." Dorian Sweet, of Tribal DDB, suggests that the internet is being used for access more than information and that people will explore a website more deeply because they want to be entertained. The article indicates that there is a new target audience called the "V" or video generation. The article also presents the idea of using "viral video to build buzz for brands."
How To Create an Unstoppable, Never-Ending Marketing Virus ***
This article tells the story of how an online data storage company, LineVault, made a big splash with very little money: hire someone famous and make a viral video. By sending out an email blast and purchasing a few banner ads, the video has been viewed by over 300,000 people. The author provides links to examples of viral videos and explains characteristics of a successful viral video. One, it needs to be buzzworthy (funny, weird, gross, shocking, helpful, sexy, inspiring). Two, it needs to be able to be passed around easily (the press, newsletters, email).
How To Drive Traffic To Your Website Using Funny Videos **
This article posits that companies can "easily incorporate [viral videos] into their own eCommerce websites." The author suggests that having a video on your site sets you apart from the competition, resulting in new traffic and repeat visitors. A company can use video for comedic effect to drive traffic or for instructional purposes to make their product more understandable.
'Dove Evolution' Goes Viral, with Triple the Traffic of Super Bowl Spot **
The message here is straightforward: Dove received a jump in traffic from a free advertisement uploaded on to YouTube that tripled that of a 30-second Super Bowl commercial that cost $2.5 million.
High-Tech Marketing "Goes Viral" **
This article posits that today's consumers are harder to reach because of new technologies emerging such as TiVo, and that the solution is viral video. The author says, "Instead of interrupting the viewer's entertainment experience with ads, the ads are the entertainment." Next the article gives examples of how this new medium actually increases conversion rather than merely producing a laugh.
Online Video Growing at 71% Clip **
This article focuses on the growing popularity of online video on sites such as YouTube, Google Video, and Yahoo Video (YouTube had a growth of 0 to 20 million users in a year). The article recommends that marketers take advantage of this "enormous growth in online video activity."
窗体底端

Monday, May 14, 2007

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Today's TOP 20 viral videos

http://www.viralvideochart.com/

link to this website.
Chart of the most popular viral videos on the Internet. The hottest stuff from YouTube, MySpace, Google, Metacafe, Daily Motion and Break.com.

Friday, May 11, 2007

I LOVE viral video

As a former copywriter, I know how people hate boring sales TV commercials. Why not, I hate them too. How could they waste our time to look at those ugly and weird guys shouting "$199, $199 only for THREE days" for the whole 30''.
That's why I LOVE viral video, you know, a lot of friends even send me some wonderful commercials they downloaded from Youtube, and I can't help myself sending them to others.No distribution costs, in a minute, the company win thousands of its potential customers by doing nothing. The customers distributed the commercials themselves.
Think about your mass media budget, and how much ROI you could gained from that? How much actual purchase generated from the commercial? You will know why marketers think about viral videos. Anyway, let's forget about marketing. Enjoy the funny, subtle, creative, or just moving videos.
(some links to viral videos I love: I know, viral video doesn't have to be the commercial. But why not? Enjoy them.)
1. Ariston made The BEST AD in the world!
You know it is an ad, SO WHAT? I like it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA2Qp5DizpE
2. Honda
makes me thinking of interesting and subtle experiement in our childhood.
"Isn't it nice, when things just work."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2VCfOC69jc
3. Coffee-"Paris is always a good choice."
Have you ever seen the movie "Sabrina"? Read or write diary with a cup of coffee at the corner of the street. I used to thought there is a physical cafe along the left bank of Seine named "left bank" and I will go for the coffee. See, it's all because of the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXGTB1chtNs
"It's the color of Monet"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZU6VWY5TCA
"hear the fragrance of coffee"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCDh3caoMLA&mode=related&search=

(Rui )

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Tips for creating a viral video

Viral Marketing
The term “Viral marketing” refers to how people pass on and share interesting and entertaining content via the internet. Viral commercials often take the form of funny video clips, or interactive Flash games, an advergame, images, and even text. It’s been noted that viral marketing is popular because of the ease of executing a marketing campaign, relative low-cost (in comparison to direct mail), excellent and precise targeting that leads to the high and rapid response rate. The main strength of viral marketing is its ability to obtain a large number of interested people at low cost. Through the use of the internet and the effects of e-mail or internet advertising, the business-to-customer efforts have a greater impact than many other tools of marketing.

Viral marketing is a technique that avoids the annoyance of spam mail. This in turn encourages users to tell a friend of a particular product or services, which serves as highly effective word-of mouth advertising.
Researchers are convinced that this concept is a viable and effective marketing tool. There’s proof to backup their claims. Apparently the brain makes decisions in just a 20th of a second of viewing a webpage, confirms a study, published in the journal Behavior and Information. According to statistics, recreational Internet surfing has overtaken television as the largest recreational activity. Apparently, by the end of this year (2006) it is estimated that more than 6 billion people will be using the internet. Note that it took more than 50 years for television to get to this point. It’s certainly an innovative medium that has captured the interest of the person searching for answers behind a PC, and the individual hoping to score with a marketing strategy.

YouTube and other distribution channels
One the greatest ‘vessels’ of the viral marketing concept is without a doubt YouTube, a popular free video sharing website that utilizes AdobeFlash technology to display video and allows users to upload, view, and share video clips.

After one year in business, YouTube were acquired for approximately $1.65 (approximately 0.49252 Euros) by Google. Starting from zero about a year ago (February 2005, to be exact). YouTube is now receiving more traffic than MySpace, CNN.com, and Ebay combined. This is certainly a testament to the growth of video and its viral nature. The wide variety of site content includes movie, television clips and movie videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging. The company was named TIME magazine’s “Invention of the Year” for 2006. In October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had reached a deal to acquire the company for $1.65 billion USD in Google's stock.

As for Viral Marketing, YouTube has been hailed the advertising medium of the future. Thanks to viral videos…

Viral Video
According to Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia), viral video is video clip content which gains widespread popularity through the process of the Internet shared typically through email or IM messages, blogs and other media sharing websites. Viral videos are often humorous in nature and may range from televised comedy. There are millions of short video clips on the web, produced by amateurs and professionals. The amateurs publish videos for fun and professional publish their clips in order to drive traffic to their websites and to sell more of their products or services.

With the introduction of the latest camera phones technology, this means that many videos shot these days are shot by consumers on these devices hassle free fun. Cheap video editing and publishing tools allow video shot on mobile phones to be edited and distributed virally both on the web by email and between phones by Bluetooth.

How effective are viral videos at driving traffic to web sites?
Video clips are used to generate click-throughs and subscriptions. Videos ranging in length and promotional content placed on YouTube and Google Video for example. The Video specifies a URL, indicating that there’s a website that may be interesting or relevant to the viewer. A link is also provided on the same page as the video, which potentially drives traffic back to the main website. Videos can be sorted into various categories such as Personal Blog (global issues, spirituality, current events) and Comedy (spoofs, skits, celebrity parody), to mention but a few.

The intention is not to produce a professional looking video that you’d expect from an advertising agency, instead in many instances, video clips are shot in an "amateurish" way and carries though a very ‘unprofessional’ image in their approach and production. This is done deliberately as a professional image would most definitely inhibit the viral potential of videos, and set the video s apart from the ‘ordinary’ videos created by individuals on the web. A point worth mentioning is the fact that although promotional, viral videos normally do not contain a sales message, product placement or a sales pitch on a landing page.

Note that entertaining or provocative videos can quickly become viral, being shared by tens or even hundreds of thousands of viewers, most of them connected through online social networks. However, it is important to understand the nature of the environment in which video clips are most widely distributed and shared.

If you simply add a video clip to your site or blog, and to YouTube, you will be taking advantage of only a small fraction of the opportunity that exists. In the same way that you optimize your web sites and blogs for the major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN, you also have to optimize the presentation of your video clips in order to be found through searches within social network community sites.

This process is called Social Media Optimization, or SMO. SMO entails optimising your online presence to become more visible through searches with online communities and community web sites. This process is very similar to SEO for social network sites. SMO allows you to create more visible sites, videos, podcasts, RSS feeds and blog entries which will be more searchable to tens of millions of people who are connected through sites like MySpace, YouTube, Del.icious, Technorati, Reddit, Facebook and dozens of others.

The essence of SMO is to increase the chances of your video or any other portable, sharable content from being distributed more widely and being found more quickly though community search engines. This is important when producing short videos, because it is within and across these networked community sites that video clips are most likely to be distributed and shared.In other words, to maximise the chances of your video going viral, you have to optimise it for sharing across social network communities.

When you post a video clip to your blog, you will want to increase the chances of the video being widely distributed, correct? Well, the most basic step to take is to add a line of links to relevant social network sites.

Here is an example of a typical list of links at the end of an optimized blog entry:(Add to: YouTube blinklist del.cio.us digg yahoo! furl)These links allow people to quickly add your blog entry to the social network or community site or sites to which they belong. Once the post has been added by it will be available to every other member of that community through the site's search function.

While some of these sites, like del.icious, Yahoo! and furl include categories that cover almost any topic and subject you can think of, other communities are more focused.

YouTube is clearly focused on short videos. In common with other social network sites, it has a number of features that enable members to vote for, rate, share and distribute the videos they like best. The voting and rating process is an integral part of almost all social network community sites. As a result, content rises to the surface through a "democratic" process, whereby the combined opinions of community members determine which content gets the greatest exposure. Social media search is driven by popular vote. It is essential to understand this when you create your own videos. Needless to say, your videos need to be compelling, entertaining or at least different.

There are few essential tips to keep in mind when maximising the viral potential of your video…


Try to keep your video clips short, preferably less than 5 minutes long. Most people browse through a number of videos when visiting sites like YouTube and Google Video, won’t be willing to give videos to much of their time.

  • Ensure that your video has interesting, entertaining or provocative content. If it doesn't engage your audience then they will have little incentive to share it with other people they know, or across their social networks.

  • Be very cautious about including commercial or promotional content. Less is certainly more in this medium. Try not to bombard your viewer with too many pay-off lines and advertising hogwash – keep it as ‘real’ as possible. The most powerful short videos are those which are purely entertaining-a short catchy and relevant phrase that the consumer relates to will suffice.

  • Don’t settle for creating just one video. You can’t accurately predict which videos will enjoy wide, viral distribution. Plan on creating a series of clips, and learn from the one which performs the best.

  • Optimise your video clips to maximise distribution across social network sites. Use tags and bookmarking links to help people find, save and share your videos.
  • Submitted by Jasmine.

    Monday, May 7, 2007




    Viral Marketing's Video Love Affair APRIL 26, 2007 Along with 'cool microsites' and games, viral video is hot.


    Click the link above for this recent article from
    eMarketer.com





    Viral Marketing Videos: the key to subtle selling

    Video-sharing sites such as YouTube are an amazing success. Millions of viewers tune in daily. While many of the video clips are created by people, just like you and me, companies are diving into the excitement. The key to a successful viral marketing video is making it seem homemade. The viewer wants to peek into a real and private world. So, the selling needs to be subtle, but the entertainment is exaggerated.
    As with all viral marketing, the success is measured by how often it is viewed and then forwarded by the reader. The challenge is creating a video that will deliver a message, entertain, not offend, still be considered hip enough to forward on to a friend and not appear like an advertisement.
    What is a viral marketing video?
    Viral marketing videos are delivered on-line. In addition to YouTube (and other video-sharing sites) they are posted to Websites, blogs, and sent peer to peer as email attachments in MPEG or Quick-Time or WMA format. They are often used to promote new movies, musicians, consumer products, political candidates and to bolster a company image. The videos often feature entertainment not found in common commercials. Situational videos may use product placement to subliminally market a product. The content is less regulated and not censored. For this reason, they are often used for harsh competitive advertising.
    Why are viral marketing videos more effective than blogs, podcasts and Second Life?
    A picture is worth a thousand words. This is certainly true of viral videos. A simple message can be understood after watching a short video. Viral videos are considered quick and entertaining. Viral videos are less expensive than traditional commercials and product placement in a movie or television show. They require less energy on behalf of the viewer, making them more appealing than labor intensive blogs (like this one). The viral video can simulate a face to face marketing experience, which is more personal and effective than an impersonal blog or podcast. The message can be shared rapidly with email distributions and on-line communities. Finally, the forum is uncensored and encourages creative freedom.
    What are the disadvantages of viral marketing videos?
    There are so many appealing visual images on the Internet that it can be difficult to capture and to keep the viewers attention. Once the viewer's attention is captured, the video can not overtly sell. Yet, a video that is too subtle will fail to deliver its message and reach its goal. While having creative freedom is usually considered an advantage, it can lead to the creation of offensive videos that loose the viewer’s interest.
    What are the qualities of an effective viral marketing video?
    A successful viral video is subtle selling using exaggerated entertainment. The viewer should feel they are being entertained and not sold to. Great sales people don't sell: the customer buys. Good marketers don't advertise: they entertain. Viral marketing videos also attempt to entertain and empower the customer.

    The video includes appealing images or images that capture the viewer's attention. As with any advertising environment, the competition to capture the viewer's attention is fierce. The video must be creative and fresh. Successful viral videos often appear unpolished and homemade. Viral marketing videos give the customer the feeling of being a voyeur into a secret world.

    For example, consumer products can be effectively marketed by viral videos using product placement. An effective viral video for Coca Cola might be a rough, homemade video of high school girls. This mini-drama features the girls sitting on a bench outside of school, engaged in the usual gossip and of course drinking a Diet Coke.

    Finally, as with any marketing effort, you begin with a goal. This is also true of viral marketing videos. The video must include a subliminal call to action. Your goal may be to persuade the viewer to believe, do, buy or simply forward the video along.