Chris Schreiber
As click-through rates for banner ads have dropped to just .09%, momentum is growing to get beyond ad formats that interrupt. The push for new advertising models stems from the fact that we have entered into a “post-advertising” era. Interruption and poor visual integration are no longer viable branding mediums in a world where consumers are now in full control of their media. In response to this fundamental shift in media, a new wave of “native” advertising models are emerging that fit with today’s social, connected web experience.
Native advertising models present a new form of inventory that seamlessly integrates content from brand advertisers into the site experience. S…
Continue reading...
More About: contributor, features, Marketing, online marketing
As click-through rates for banner ads have dropped to just .09%, momentum is growing to get beyond ad formats that interrupt. The push for new advertising models stems from the fact that we have entered into a “post-advertising” era. Interruption and poor visual integration are no longer viable branding mediums in a world where consumers are now in full control of their media. In response to this fundamental shift in media, a new wave of “native” advertising models are emerging that fit with today’s social, connected web experience.
Native advertising models present a new form of inventory that seamlessly integrates content from brand advertisers into the site experience. S…
Continue reading...
More About: contributor, features, Marketing, online marketing
As click-through rates for banner ads have dropped to just .09%, momentum is growing to get beyond ad formats that interrupt. The push for new advertising models stems from the fact that we have entered into a “post-advertising” era. Interruption and poor visual integration are no longer viable branding mediums in a world where consumers are now in full control of their media. In response to this fundamental shift in media, a new wave of “native” advertising models are emerging that fit with today’s social, connected web experience.
Native advertising models present a new form of inventory that seamlessly integrates content from brand advertisers into the site experience. S…
Continue reading...
More About: contributor, features, Marketing, online marketing
There has never been more opportunity for marketers to generate creative video campaigns that go viral. YouTube recently noted that more than 500 years worth of YouTube videos are watched on Facebook every day, and 700 YouTube videos are shared on Twitter each minute.
And yet, going viral still remains an elusive outcome for the vast majority of brand campaigns. What’s missing?
While many people have an opinion about what causes videos to go viral, there is now a growing body of knowledge based on publisher data analysis, YouTube trends and academic research that can help marketers understand what viral marketing is really about. Here are a few great insights to consider when creating a brand video that will thrive on the social web.
The majority of marketers target influencers who they think can massively jumpstart the momentum behind a viral campaign. This approach is driven by high-profile, anecdotal examples rather than data. In fact, in a recent TED Talk about Why Videos Go Viral, YouTube’s trends manager, Kevin Alloca, asserted that tastemakers are one of the three key ingredients for viral. He cited Jimmy Kimmel’s tweet about the Double Rainbow video, which helped launch it from obscurity to viral stardom.
But while celebrities or influential online voices can obviously help a campaign drive initial awareness, recent data shows that true virality comes from large numbers of people sharing to small groups. StumbleUpon and BuzzFeed recently collaborated on a study that made this point. BuzzFeed noted that the median ratio of Facebook views to shares was 9-to-1 for the 50 stories that generated the most Facebook traffic. This means that for every Facebook share, only nine people visited the story.
In a recent Ad Age article, experts from BuzzFeed and StumbleUpon noted that, “Content goes viral when it spreads beyond a particular sphere of influence and spreads across the social web, via ordinary people sharing with their friends.” Duncan Watts, principal research scientist at Yahoo, has also upheld this conclusion with research he has been doing for years.
A “social object” is the reason that two people are interacting with each other, instead of with someone else. A viral video is a social object, a vehicle for conversation and shared entertainment. Hugh Macleod, the master of viral cartoons, notes, “The hard currency of the Internet is ‘social objects’…Social networks are built around social objects, not vice versa.”
To create a social object from video, you have to tell a story. A person may like or even love your brand, but he doesn’t want to be sold to. Nobody does. Brand videos that go viral transcend the feeling of an ad intended to sell. Instead, they establish the brand as a storyteller.
Google is a good example of a company that has consistently created cinematic social objects by using emotional storytelling to promote its products and technologies. Google’s Dear Sophie video is a great example of a social object that provides a vehicle for conversation.
The presence of a brand’s logo in a viral video is a regularly debated subject among creative teams and brand managers. The big concern is branding too much, and with good reason. Harvard research shows that the more prominent or intrusive a logo, the more likely viewers are to stop watching. There are also genuine concerns about too little or no branding, as it begs the very worthwhile question, “Why are we even doing this?”
Researchers at Harvard recommend brand pulsing. That essentially means weaving a brand’s logo throughout a video so it is integrated into the content. Harvard’s experiments have shown that this can increase viewership by as much as 20%.
British newspaper The Guardian recently struck viral gold with the above video, which promoted its open journalism format. It wove in the business logo throughout this mockumentary, making it feel like a natural part of the story.
When it comes to video the rule is to keep it short, but when it comes to viral brand videos, this conventional wisdom does not necessarily hold true.
StumbleUpon data shows that videos viewed between two to three minutes generate a spike in social sharing, while videos viewed beyond four minutes see direct shares increase by five times. Length can be an asset, as this allows for an immersive story to unfold.
A good example is Honda’s Super Bowl ad, Matthew’s Day Off. Honda created one of the most buzzed-about Super Bowl videos this year with an extended cut of its ad, a 2:25-minute short film done in the style of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
The goal of a viral campaign is to be a vehicle for organic sharing and conversation, and some forms of paid media can help drive this mission. Social websites are increasingly developing native ad placements tailored for brand content.
Native ad placements are different than traditional placements in that they blend into the look and feel of a site. Additionally, native ads are sold on engagement-based pricing (cost per view, or CPV), rather than on traditional impression-based pricing (CPM). This ensures that people are engaging with the ad. Examples are Twitter’s Promoted Tweets, YouTube TrueView and StumbleUpon’s Paid Discovery.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, contrastaddict
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In 2011, many companies knew they needed to move beyond simply creating and distributing ads for their products. They needed to create content that attracts, motivates and engages an audience, and thus inspire viral sharing for their campaigns.
This trend fueled tremendous growth for social video in 2011. While many brands were just testing the waters early in the year, we’re now seeing hundreds of companies get into the game and make increasingly large investments in media buys for their content.
We saw tremendous innovation around new types of campaigns this year to address the evolving non-linear media consumption habits of consumers. We’re even seeing new job roles crop up at agencies, such as “Earned Media Directors,” to meet the growing need for strategic, sharable content.
We believe 2012 will bring yet another set of quantum leaps in the space. Here are five social video trends that are already emerging.
As brands gain more experience creating and distributing original video content online (not just repurposing television commercials), they will begin to integrate these assets more tightly with their larger marketing campaigns. Old Spice still reigns as one of the best examples of a highly memorable campaign that seamlessly merged both 30-second television spots with longer form, original online video content. Expect to see more brands weaving together TV buys and longer-form online videos in 2012.
As publishers discover the potential in social video, many are looking for creative ways to integrate this content into their site experience. We’re already seeing an explosion of “native monetization” methods such as YouTube Promoted Videos, Twitter Promoted Tweets and Facebook Sponsored stories. The combination of well-integrated sponsored experiences with high-quality brand video content will only accelerate this trend. Expect to see “native” social video advertising experiences extend much more broadly across the web in the coming year.
Agencies are increasingly hiring earned media directors to help improve their understanding of the value of earned media and their ability to drive results. Additionally, more services are emerging that will help companies gauge social influence online. This will allow brands to take big steps in 2012 to have more specific earned media goals and strategies.
In the last 12 months, we have seen a much broader segment of the advertising industry embrace the cost-per-view (CPV) pricing model. This phenomenon has been market-driven, vetted and employed by most of the major media buying agencies in the U.S. A CPV is an intended engagement/action akin to a cost-per-click (CPC). Advertisers are increasingly finding it a more direct way to engage target audiences, compared to traditional CPM buying (which at its core, especially with regards to pre-roll, is a way to measure disruptive advertising, as opposed to choice-based advertising).
As advertisers become more well-versed in creating original video content and distributing it through social web channels, they will develop dedicated budgets and KPIs. Because they were largely experimental programs in the past, social video advertising campaigns were often lumped in with overarching digital advertising budgets that also included pre-roll or displayed advertising buys. Social video campaigns are now moving out of experimental budgets and into distinct programs with specific viewership and earned media goals.
Images courtesy of Flickr, jonsson, iStockphoto, Courtney Keating, DarmirK
More About: contributor, features, social video, Video, YouTube
Earlier this month, the advertising industry’s leading brands, agencies and technology platforms descended on New York City for Advertising Week to discuss how brands can effectively connect with consumers across today’s fractured media landscape. Participants analyzed the increasing role of brand content, the changing nature of content distribution and the complexity of measurement.
One particular observation emerged on multiple occasions: When it comes to how we consume media, we no longer live in a “linear” world.
People now move quickly and unpredictably between devices and media environments throughout the day. Therefore, content creators and brands are challenged to tell a story that unfolds in an intended sequence.
Brands and agencies are rearranging many of the core components of their programs to be able to thrive in this non-linear, distracted media universe we now inhabit.
Here are five key ways advertisers and brands are changing it up.
Non-linear storytelling is becoming much more popular with brand content creators. Take the granddaddy of all non-linear brand content campaigns, Old Spice’s “Response” videos. No matter which video you start with, you’ll be entertained and hooked into watching more of the videos.
Given that consumers can discover content in so many different ways, brands need to create content that can stand on its own, even if it’s part of an episodic series.
Another interesting example of this type of approach is Audi’s new campaign, “Untitled Jersey City Project.” The series was shot in the style of a TV thriller, with eight unique episodes of interconnected cliffhangers that, nonetheless, are not designed to be viewed in a linear manner.
Brands are working harder to create genuinely entertaining content that consumers will choose to watch (and hopefully share). Agencies are creating new positions and departments to ensure this content is succeeding; for example, “earned media directors” devote themselves to achieving real results for brand clients with earned media. Coca-Cola has even created company roles dedicated to ensuring “content excellence.”
The University of Phoenix, one of the nation’s largest direct response advertisers, has broadened its web content programs and is now producing content to supplement its advertising programs and engage audiences.
Advertisers are realizing that the purchase funnel is no longer a linear process. The Internet makes so much information available – both through our social connections and the 24-hour news cycle – that the traditional sequence from awareness to purchase intent is often truncated, with consumers bouncing back and forth across the purchase funnel.
To better understand these changing dynamics, advertisers are implementing new methods of digital research to measure their campaigns’ social engagement, and its effects on brand metrics. Emerging digital measurement companies such as Vizu, as well as established players such as Nielsen and comScore (who both introduced new social measurement products within the last quarter), are helping brands access this deeper social activity data.
Neville Manohar, head of digital marketing, credit card and analytics at Chrysler Group, spoke to this trend during Advertising Week. He noted that immediately following last year’s Super Bowl ad featuring Eminem, the company witnessed a flurry of social engagement that far surpassed its expectations. The activity helped change how Chrysler views the purchase funnel when it comes to digital advertising.
Search is a linear process: You want to find out about something, you search for it online. If, along the way, you come across an advertisement for what you are looking for, you click on it. However, as social media becomes a more dominant vehicle to experience web content, we come across advertising in a less linear fashion. In fact, the starting point for many people when they jump online is their news feed, where they can discover content friends have posted and find new stuff that interests them.
Rather than forcing products and services on a consumer, advertisers are turning to distribution models that facilitate content “discovery.” StumbleUpon‘s new “Paid Discovery” advertising model illustrates these new types of offerings by allowing a brand’s site to be the content that users discover and interact with, whereas before, ads appeared ahead of content.
Advertisers are now considering whether the traditional campaign-based advertising approach is the right way to build a brand in today’s media landscape. Consumers fluidly switch between their computers, TVs, mobile phones and social platforms, making it very difficult to guarantee reach with a single campaign.
On the other hand, this new non-linear climate allows for a deeper and longer level of consumer engagement than the typical television commercials of past.
Heineken, in conjunction with AKQA, recently launched the revolutionary “Heineken Star Player” iPhone app, which allows fans to interact in real-time with the UEFA Champion’s League action. Not only does the app provide a novel, interactive addition to the sports viewing experience, Heineken has also succeeded in creating an entirely new environment in which fans spend a significant amount of time.
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Chris Schreiber is director of marketing at social video advertising company Sharethrough. Before joining Sharethrough, Chris worked in the Global Communications and Public Affairs Department for Google, helping design and execute communications strategy for key consumer applications and social media initiatives.
The new set of features offered by Google+ represents the next chapter for the social web, helping it move from a platform that facilitates conversation and content sharing to a mechanism that can deliver much deeper social experiences. This new forum for creating connected audiences will pay off big for brands that create great video content.
In particular, Google+ is opening up a number of different opportunities for brands to get their videos seen and shared. It’s quite possible that we will look back on the Google+ launch as a landmark moment for social video advertising, because of the new possibilities it created for people to share, co-view, chat and text about entertaining videos.
Here are five ways Google+ will help the social video industry.
While some have taken advantage of Facebook’s features to segment their personal friend network, many have let their friend pool remain one large network with whom they share everything. This means that when they share a video on Facebook, it goes out to a very broad audience, which includes many people who won’t be interested. Some of us may also hesitate to share a video if it means that everyone in our network — including family and even co-workers — will see it.
The Google+ “Circles” feature, which offers an intuitive way to segment your friend groups, will ease the process of sharing creative brand videos with groups that you know will appreciate them. While I would normally be a little reluctant to share a video as absurd as Skittles Moneyshot with my widely varied Facebook friends, my newly created “Social Video Junkies” Google+ circle will appreciate it.
The Google+ Hangouts feature allows for live video chat in the same “room” as multiple friends. Hangouts’ tight integration with YouTube allows for genuinely new social video group experiences.
We all love sharing hilarious videos with friends. The only thing better than getting comments on your Facebook feed or via email is to hear people’s laughter and reactions live, “in person.” Hangouts will offer a new real-time, collaborative viewing experience for social video campaigns, which will massively amplify the benefits of these videos for the brands that create them.
Now imagine you have created a Hangout with friends. You’re all hysterically laughing at a video together, but one of your friends is not online to join. Google+’s “Huddle” feature now comes into play. With Huddle, you can text groups of people or individual friends via the Google+ mobile app to let them know you’re gathering to watch a video. When friends receive a new message in Huddle, Google+ sends a push notification to their phone.
Huddle stands to be a really interesting way to extend conversations that start at the desk and move into the mobile space. It’s a great way to connect a disparate audience around a good piece of content.
Data is king at Google. The Google+ Business profiles already promise to include deep analytics, and while little has been announced as yet, one can imagine that powerful new types of social data insights will become available to advertisers about their YouTube campaigns.
By providing rich data capabilities, Google+ could allow advertisers to gather new insights on the quantity and quality of sharing for their campaigns. Google+’s new collaborative features could also introduce interesting new data categories for advertisers, such as average co-viewing view length (how long a group watched a brand’s video together) versus individual view length stats or engagement metrics via Huddle (mobile) versus Hangouts (desktop).
While the relationship between the +1 button, Google+ and Google Search is still being sorted out (probably even by Google itself), there are clearly going to be opportunities for advertisers to boost their search results with videos that go viral. Whether content is surfaced based on the +1s of people in your circles or through broad social sentiment around search results, popular social video campaigns stand to gain more search relevance as users interact with it. And once a great video gets discovered, Hangouts and Huddles are sure to follow.
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Chris Schreiber is director of marketing at social video advertising company Sharethrough. A leading expert on social content strategy, Chris recently presented a two-hour workshop on viral video at the Cannes Lions festival, entitled “Making Videos Go Viral: Creative, Social, and Technological Techniques.”
Last week, the world’s top brands and agencies descended on the Cannes Lions festival to discuss creativity in modern advertising and to anoint the campaigns that most effectively captured our imaginations. While the conference was renamed this year to the “International Festival of Creativity” (previously the “International Advertising Festival”), it featured an unprecedented amount of participation from blockbuster technology companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft.
Over the course of the week, the significant relationship between the powerful new forces in technology and the creative output from the advertising industry became quite clear. As the web increasingly empowers us to choose and share the media we care about, brands genuinely commit to creating content and experiences that thrive in our on-demand culture.
Here are five key themes from the conference that point to major changes in the world of advertising.
In one of the opening sessions, brand futurist Martin Lindstrom noted,”It’s more effective to feel the brand, not to see it.” Experiential marketing was prominent at the conference. A number of brands discussed the ways we will use technologies, such as augmented reality apps and near-field communication (data exchanges with touch), to connect with consumers.
Few brands have committed to experiential marketing more than Nike, which has had a 55% drop in television advertising spending over the past 10 years. They filled the void by sponsoring over 200 club teams, offering revolutionary mobile technology for runners and creating over 10,000 pieces of original content.
If this conference is any indication, we are about to see an absolute explosion of new types of content from brands. While this process has already begun (especially with online video), we may just be scratching the surface.
No session was more memorable than Coca Cola’s, which delivered a compelling presentation on its “Liquid and Linked” content creation strategy. It emphasizes dynamic storytelling to establish multiple connections with people. Coke is vastly increasing its investment in many varieties of content production to help drive conversation and increase its popular culture relevance.
AOL president Tim Armstrong and Huffington Post founder Ariana Huffington also spoke at length about the vital importance of ad content. Former Googler Tim Armstrong addressed the advertiser audience: “Stop taking orders from Silicon Valley.” He referenced the importance of creating unique content rather than simply optimizing traditional ads to perform better against technology algorithms. Throughout the conference, it was consistently noted that today’s on-demand media consumption habits require brands to create content that people choose to watch (and share), rather than pushing unwanted commercials on its audience.
The “collective” has now begun to replace the “community.” The term refers to the new generation of passionate online groups initiated by brands. This year’s most buzzworthy collective was Sneakerpedia, a Wikipedia-style site powered by Foot Locker, intended to galvanize “sneakerheads” worldwide to document the history of sneakers. The site has built a ton of buzz, a great example of how a brand can create new collectives around topics people are truly passionate about. Additional collectives included Nokia Push Snowboarding and Lady Gaga’s fan group “Little Monsters,” created by Interscope Records.
Advertisers are ready to build. As advertising becomes increasingly digital, agencies are looking to bring in more developer talent to help them create new, original products. Jeff Benjamin, VP Interactive Creative Director at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, spoke about this transition, calling for “invention” in advertising and noting that “inventors are modern storytellers.” The same day, Toronto holding company MDC Partners announced a new $1 million competition for investment in technology-driven projects. Mark Holden, Global Strategy and Planning Director of PHD, noted his future predictions for the advertising industry, that new product development will be essential for the survival of media agencies as media buying becomes increasingly commoditized.
The Domino’s Pizza Tracker, a Crispin website for Domino’s, tracks the progress of a pizza delivery — from dough-rolling to delivery.
The award for the most overall positive mentions goes to Lady Gaga. The Gaga brand has quickly taken hold globally thanks to the previously listed tactics.
Gaga brand-building tools include the creation of her own collective (dubbed “The Little Monsters,” her fans on Twitter number over 11 million), original content (Gagavision video series leading up to her new album release), gaming experiences (Gagaville allowed users to win song tracks by beating game levels) and product development (working with Polaroid on a new product line). In many ways, Gaga is the epitome of the modern brand, deftly leveraging digital tools to distribute her content and broaden her fan base… and other brands are taking note.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, alengo
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Chris Schreiber is director of marketing at social video advertising company Sharethrough. A leading expert on social content strategy, Chris will be co-presenting a two-hour workshop on viral video in June at the Cannes Lions festival, titled “Making Videos Go Viral: Creative, Social, and Technological Techniques.”
Summer blockbuster season is upon us, and we’re already starting to see some truly innovative social video campaigns coming out of Hollywood. In many ways, movie studios are leading the charge when it comes to social video advertising, using groundbreaking interactive features, creative distribution strategies and original content to successfully drive huge amounts of viewership and sharing. Brands looking to up their social video game will benefit from closely watching Hollywood’s creative approach to online video marketing.
Here are four things that brands can learn from Hollywood when it comes to social video.
Getting people to watch and share your content requires some fundamental shifts in how marketers think about video advertising. Sharing has to be the starting point when developing content. Hollywood gets it: Great content is their currency. This is one reason why movie trailers were shared 184% more than the industry average for brand video content over the last quarter, as measured by Sharethrough’s distribution network.
For example, to promote the new Muppets movie, Disney released a short original video called “Green With Envy,” a parody of the Rom-Com genre. It has more than 1.4 million views on YouTube.
While television and much of online video advertising inventory is limited to 15- or 30-second videos, social video advertising allows for distribution of video content of varied lengths and styles. Hollywood is taking full advantage of the flexibility of this medium to mix in “red band” (read: racy or R-rated) trailers, long-form trailers, interactive videos and viral videos along with their standard trailers to keep things interesting.
For example, a recent red-band trailer for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo did a fantastic job of stirring up buzz. The shaky camera — evoking a sense that the video is a bootleg — added to the intrigue and exclusivity. Many in the marketing and film worlds have expressed their belief that this “bootleg” was created by Sony as part of a campaign intended to go viral. If that’s the case, they’ve even gone so far as to remove it from YouTube on copyright grounds.
Another great example of non-standard content is an amazing interactive YouTube video page for Kung Fu Panda 2, featuring a mix of fun videos of Jack Black and the animated main character, Po. The page’s videos have generated millions of views and nearly 4 million Likes on their Facebook page.
Brands should look to mirror this approach and come up with different versions of the same themed content to reach different audiences and prevent fatigue.
In the old model of TV advertising, demographics ruled. Now, film marketers are going one step further in search of an audience with social influence that is most likely to watch and share their content. For example, Hollywood was early to experiment with the distribution of movie trailers in social games on Facebook, and they are trailblazing the emerging trans-media distribution world. Integrating brand video content into social media is critical to maximize sharing.
With the launch of Facebook’s recent program that enables brands to distribute their videos into more than 300 social games (and provides Facebook Credits to users who watch them), any brand marketer can take a page from Hollywood’s play book and get their content in front of hundreds of millions of socially active consumers.
Another good example of cross-media promotion was the addition of an ad for the film Super 8 as a playable level inside the hit video game Portal 2. Game review site Kotaku released a YouTube video about the trailer, which has generated hundreds of thousands of views to go along with the millions of people who played the game.
Movie marketers were some of the first to embrace social metrics such as “sharethrough rate” — the rate at which a video is shared — in order to quantify success. Data collected from sharethrough rates now help movie studios make informed decisions about which trailers to use for online advertising campaigns, which demographics to include in campaign targeting and even potential markets for film releases. Brands are also beginning to use social metrics as a proxy for the overall success of their campaigns. They should look to further use sharing data to optimize their creative assets and distribution strategies, as well as test new markets for their products.
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Chris Schreiber is director of marketing at social video advertising company Sharethrough. A leading expert on social content strategy, Chris managed communications for key consumer applications and social media initiatives at Google and helped drive content strategy for major entertainment brands, including Late Night with Conan O’Brien and CBS Sportsline.
Holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas and Valentine’s Day are prime times to generate viral video activity. Holidays not only spark sentimentality and excitement but are also shared experiences with universal customs. When millions of people come together around a common experience, that’s a perfect time to create, launch and ignite viral sharing of a branded video campaign.
Simply put, shared experiences produce shareable content. At Christmas, there are dozens of shared experiences such as decorating a tree, giving gifts and hanging decorations — and plenty of commercials and videos that play on these shared experiences. Every Halloween there is a surge in online content related to outrageous or scary costumes. Valentine’s Day often coincides with a rise in the amount of “romantic” videos that hit the web.
As a brand marketer, how can you take advantage of holidays to not only create a video people will want to share, but actually take measurable steps to boost the viral reach of your video campaigns? Below are four tips to give your holiday-focused video campaigns a viral boost –- and examples of brands that used these strategies effectively.
1. Tap Into a Shared ExperienceThe eBay Holiday Special hosted by Samantha Bee | Love to Give – watch more funny videos
Since most holidays are about sharing a positive experience — giving gifts, enjoying a family feast, dressing up at Halloween, giving Valentine’s cards –- your videos should tap into these shared moments.
eBay is one company that successfully created a viral video campaign around the shared experience of gift giving at Christmas. eBay usually invests heavily in a paid media campaign during the Christmas holiday period, spanning television, print, online and outdoor. But in 2010, the company bet big on social video.
The central component of eBay’s campaign was a six-week web video series featuring Samantha Bee from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The series — called “The Unwrap Attack” — tapped into the shared experience of the “unforgettable, uncontrollable emotional moments” experienced when a child gets the perfect gift. eBay encouraged people to not only share the videos, but to upload their own “unwrap attack” videos to lovetogive.ebay.com.
2. Go for LaughsHolidays are exciting times, but can also be stressful. Thanksgiving, for example, is a time when families across the U.S. come together -– braving lines at airports, driving long distances, and getting everyone in the family together for better or worse. Everyone needs to let off a little steam during the holidays, so humorous viral video campaigns have a leg-up in terms of sharing.
Muscle Milk’s “Sexy Pilgrim” video was a comedy hit during Thanksgiving, providing a good laugh during a traditional holiday. The video, which depicted a pilgrim singing a sexy R&B ballad, was shared widely across the web, blogs and social networks, and was viewed over 3.5 million times. Sometimes, sharing a laugh is the best way to spend the holidays.
3. Get SentimentalPeople are driven to share something when it evokes a feeling, and a video that captures a positive emotion like love will resonate with a wide swath of people. People will want to pass along your video to share the “feeling” it creates.
JWT did a great job last Valentine’s Day with its campaign for diamond retailer DeBeers, designing a website that allowed consumers to record webcam declarations of their love at DropEverythingForLove.com. The site also featured JWT film crews documenting the journeys of nine participants to surprise their partners — people were encouraged to submit their own stories, or nominate others, on the site or through Facebook. Within just a few days of launching, the site had already generated over 300 videos.
4. Reward People for SharingPeople are inclined to share funny, touching, or emotional videos “just because,” but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t add extra incentives to encourage even more sharing around the holidays. One strategy that works is giving viewers a discount on their holiday purchase if they “Like” or share your video.
Gap used this approach effectively with its “Gap Want” viral video campaign. These videos featured young actors, models, and social change-makers talking about what they “want to give” to the world and providing information on specific charities they support. These videos tapped into the shared aspiration to give back to those less fortunate, and also added an extra incentive to share. When viewers “Liked” these videos on Facebook, Gap donated $1 to the charity mentioned in the video. In addition, viewers could mention a special “viral code” in stores to get 30% off one item.
Valentine’s DayWhen people come together around an experience at a specific time, this creates optimal conditions for sharing. So it’s time to get cracking on your Valentine’s Day video campaign. After all, almost everyone’s got a joyous -– or painfully funny –- Valentine’s Day story to share.
Like a 21st century version of the choose-your-own-adventure books, interactive YouTube videos can up the engagement factor by letting the viewer decide the course of the action, or just play around with the content.
With Tippex seeing success with its A Hunter Shoots a Bear campaign, and Samsung and Rogers also testing the interactive video waters lately, we expect to see more creative campaigns from companies in 2011.
More Video Resources from Mashable: - 10 Incredible Interactive YouTube Videos
- 10 Captivating Time-Lapse Design Videos
- 10 Excellent Examples of Guerrilla Marketing Campaigns [VIDEOS]
- 10 Stories Beautifully Told with Animated Typography [VIDEOS]
- 10 Incredibly Inspirational Moments on YouTube [VIDEOS]
Image courtesy of Flickr, chelzdd.
More About: business, Holidays, MARKETING, Valentines, video, viral, viral video
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