Archive for the ‘YouTube’ Category
Social Media by the Numbers: Languages, Apps, and Mazda
Friday, July 30th, 2010
Numbers and Stats:
- Portuguese, Arabic, and Spanish lead growth of Facebook’s top languages.
- Windows Live Messanger is this week’s fastest growing Facebook app.
Changes and Additions to Facebook:
Facebook launches beta version of “Questions” in its publisher (see pic) to 1% of users. Questions are public, but it what else? They also removed the ability to post videos and events from your publisher. Here’s a more in-depth look. Facebook also launches a company run Page the hosts best practices for media companies.
Brand News:
Ford launches their reinvented Ford Explorer on Facebook. Reveals new content throughout the day and surpassed its goal of 50K fans to 53K (started at 42,500).
Mazda puts fans behind the wheel with its Facebook game, DriverVille.
Amazon launches an integration with Facebook that will pull data from you and your friend’s movie, music, and book preferences to make recommendations.
Twitter may be getting embeddable videos and photos in the tweet stream. Sweet!
Kanye gets on the Twitters – Aziz Ansari predicts them.
Oldest Twitter user, Ivy Bean, dies at 104.
…Increases video time limit to 15 minutes.
…And is banned from Russia!
Old Spice sales double with the Old Spice guy YouTube/Twitter campaign. Sales have increased by 107% in the past month!
4K Seems Like Too Much
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010The internet has an incredible innate ability to make people feel that their lives are inadequate, or otherwise lacking, on a regular basis. In most cases, technology seems to be paced with consumer demand, but here’s a case where the sheer abilities of technology seem to be outpacing the need or even availability of content. Basically, everything about the whole situation is completely absurd – and when I say “situation” I don’t mean the guy from Jersey Shore, I mean 4k video content.
For those who don’t own an IMAX movie theater, 4k video is video with a resolution of 4096×3072. That’s basically 4x current 1080p HD standards and equates to an optimal video viewing size of 25 feet. Here’s a breakdown of the current hurdles that make the format basically useless to users:
Display – Sure, displays for 4k content are available to consumers and the prices are coming down…from a quarter million. JVC just released a new compact 4k projector that’s a steal at only $175,000.
Content – YouTube launched the service with 5 videos. This is about the extent of publicly available 4k content. Forget movie studios catching up and releasing their content quickly for a format that no one has the capability of even using.
Production – It seems that the equipment to create videos of this quality starts at $20,000 and easily can skyrocket over the $100,000 mark. Obviously movies are made in these formats all the time, but don’t count on widespread adoption anytime soon.
Broadband – The file sizes for 4k videos are obviously tremendous and it will take an improved broadband network before streaming these files is even practical in America.
The better question to ask than “why?” is “why not?” In typical Google form, they just release their capabilities to the consumers and see what they can do with it. These moves never seem to be about a larger strategic move, but rather opening up their platform and hoping for innovation on the part of the masses.
And of course, despite every ridiculous obstacle I’ve listed above, I still want to purchase every single one of these contraptions I’ve mentioned.
Move Over Rachel Zoe: YouTube Stylists Haul in the Views
Thursday, July 15th, 2010For fashion-obsessed girls around the world, the most important thing is to get approval from their friends on the purchases made. Teens today have taken this to a whole new level. Social Media sites for teens have become a way to not only communicate with their close friends but also to build a community from around the country, or even the world. Now teens are looking to put their shopping finds on YouTube and this has provided a large return for retailers. Good Morning America aired a segment this morning on how retailers are capitalizing on this phenomenon dubbed “haul videos.”
American Eagle, JCPenney and Forever 21 have began marketing campaigns utilizing this new trend. According to a report by USA Today, JCPenney has made deals with 6 girls to create videos in exchange for gift cards to their stores. JCPenney hopes that this will in turn create an increase in purchases for the back to school time period. Two of the most popular shoppers are the Fowler sisters, Elle (21) and Blair (16) from Tennessee, whose videos have accrued more than 75 million views. These girls not only have potential deals on the line, they have met a variety of important people in the fashion industry including Editor in Chief for Marie Claire Magazine, Joanna Coles. These videos are by no means carefully produced and edited; rather, they rely on single camera taping and minimal editing and are peppered with teen-speak (“omigosh…I love it”). The most-telling story of the sisters came when they were not only able to influence their viewers into purchasing a new Guess watch, but also caused Guess to sell out of every color and eventually see the increased traffic crash their site.
Forever 21 has tapped the sisters to promote their back to school line, although they haven’t made anything final. Girls are impressionable when it comes to fashion and these sisters are becoming the “it” girls when it comes to telling others what they should wear, all through YouTube. Like others, these girls are being sponsored and must comply with the Federal Trade Commission governing sponsorship regulations – mainly that they must disclose the fact they are being compensated for their content creation.
The biggest question is: will teen viewers accept these new sponsored messages or be skeptic al of these major brands with big agendas?
We know that a video viewed on YouTube is as much as four times more effective than a TV ad because the people viewing it actually want to see it and usually search for it. Also a word of mouth recommendation tends to be better received, especially when coming from someone considered to be a peer. The retailers using these videos in their marketing have tapped into a great new form of customer engagement that speaks directly to their target demographic. Talk about a dream job for girls across the country! Getting paid to shop and talk about what you love? Sign me up!
Spring Creek Group staffer Isabella Josefsberg contributed to this post. Read her recent post on Hollywood’s use of mobile here.
Sources:
Old Spice Man responds to your questions on YouTube
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010My longstanding quest to learn how to become a “real man” is over. It is over because the folks at Old Spice have not only taught me how a real man should look, smell, and act, but now, how one should tweet.
Earlier today, the already witty and masculine twitter handle of @OldSpice began answering fans’ @replies through personalized YouTube videos! The videos show the Old Spice guy, Isaiah Mustafa, wrapped in a towel in a bathroom answering @replies on Twitter, Yahoo Answers, and YouTube comments.
Here’s one of my favorites. A response to a YouTube comment from bballgirlsl981: “LMAO omg i freaking? love these ” – @OldSpice man attempts to clarify what “these” she means!
After watching a few of the other videos, I was “LMAO” like bballgirlsl981 and realized there was more to these macho six-pack ab videos: a well articulated, branding and social media strategy.
Although these videos only have direct engagement with one user, you could imagine the WOM and pass-a-long factor for bballgirlsl981 and her social networks. After the viral bug hit these Old Spice videos, I’m sure @OldSpice followership gained exponentially not only for the entertainment value, but due to the influx of @replies in hope of a video reply from a shirtless Mustafa.
I’d love to see more of these upclose-and-personal video replies – both from celebrities and brands. Brands could link instructional how-to’s or make important company statements, and celebrities can answer some of their Twitter followers’ most important questions. Questions like “@justinbieber: How do I get hair like the “Bieber-Cut?”
Those here at the office will tell you about my school-boyish excitement when Candace Cameron, aka D.J. Tanner from the 90′s hit show Full House, replied to my @reply with a “thanks, will do 
” Shoot, I almost screen-capped that baby! Needless to say, personalized video @replies create a greater connection with your fans, and brand ambassadors. It’s another way to get closer to your fans and followers.
Okay, I just mentioned Justin Bieber, D.J. Tanner, and Full House. I clearly need a little more Old Spice…
I’m on a horse.
Social Media Goes to Washington
Monday, June 14th, 2010
Wouldn’t it be cool to live in the times when government was simple? When you knew all the issues that were out there and you could put in your two cents. That was like 200 years ago but those were the days. Now, in these fast-paced modern times, I have no idea what my representatives are voting for in my name. But I can guarantee that politicians that I’ve helped put in office have voted for bills that would make me cringe. This isn’t something I’ll be able to control anytime soon (until I’m 35 and eligible to be the next Barack).
But there’s hope! The YouCut program was introduced a couple of weeks ago on Eric Cantor’s website. Each week the site gives you a choice of five porky government programs to cut and opens it up for voting by text or web. At the end of the week the votes are tallied and the winner is proposed to be cut before the House of Representatives. In its first week 280,000 Americans voted to cut an initiative that scales back welfare requirements that would have saved 2.5 billion dollars. The cut failed to pass with a vote of 177-240.
Regardless of your political persuasion you have to admit that this is pretty cool. I’d love it if more representatives gave their constituencies a say in the issues. Eric Cantor and his fiscally conservative posse are blazing trails and hopefully we’ll see more politicians jumping on social politics bandwagon soon.
http://www.republicanwhip.house.gov/YouCut/
Buffett (not Jimmy) Sings the Hits in New GEICO Video
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010That’s right, Warren Buffett has taken to YouTube. Buffett, whose company Berkshire Hathaway owns GEICO, appeared in an online video for the insurance giant known for its clever ads. In the video, GEICO customer service representatives sing a song of devotion to GEICO customers while a man in a gecko costume shreds some choice solos. Towards the 30 second mark, Buffet is enters, he dons a bandana, long hair and 1990’s era Axl Rose attire and croons in his raspy, 79 year old voice.
So far this video has gotten 61,292 views on GEICO’s YouTube channel, which is a respectable number for a video created by a brand. Even though it has not necessarily dominated the internet, it has achieved what social media marketers strive for in their campaigns, it got picked up by traditional media. Getting coverage from newspapers and television is a mark of a successful social media campaign, the irony of this notion is a whole other blog post, but social media marketers would have to agree with it. In this sense, Lizard Ballad is a rousing success not to be taken lightly.
If this video says anything about the state of corporate social media strategy, it’s that CEOs are now beginning to take it seriously (or in Buffett’s case, not so seriously). The maturation of SMM has been shown in many ways before but none have been as unique and personal as Buffett’s opus. This is the first time (that I can think of) that a big wig is joining the fun and being a content creator. So get ready for the zits folks, it looks like social media is hitting adolescence.
YouTube Rolls Out Site-wide Video Captioning
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010The previously announced auto-captioning beta on YouTube has finally gotten a site-wide roll out, but it’s still only available for English speaking countries. Although an extremely useful tool in theory, the results have been less-than-impressive for many users.
Voice recognition software has always gotten a bum rap from the beginning and no one has been able to get it quite right – though, not without a lack of trying. Even though Google’s technology is some of the best we’ve seen, it can’t escape the inevitable mistakes that plague voice recognition services. Engadget turned its critical eye on some of the more hilarious auto-captioning results:
Of course Google understands it’s not perfect and most users have come to expect a tolerable amount of error. YouTube offers the following caveats in their latest blog post:
- While we plan to broaden the feature to include more languages in the months to come, currently, auto-captioning is only for videos where English is spoken.
- Just like any speech recognition application, auto-captions require a clearly spoken audio track. Videos with background noise or a muffled voice can’t be auto-captioned. President Obama’s speech on the recent Chilean Earthquake is a good example of the kind of audio that works for auto-captions.
- Auto-captions aren’t perfect and just like any other transcription, the owner of the video needs to check to make sure they’re accurate. In other cases, the audio file may not be good enough to generate auto-captions. But please be patient — our speech recognition technology gets better every day.
- Auto-captions should be available to everyone who’s interested in using them. We’re also working to provide auto-captions for all past user uploads that fit the above mentioned requirements. If you’re having trouble enabling them for your video, please visit our Help Center: this article is for uploaders and this article is for viewers.
For users and companies with a massive backlog of un-captioned video content, this tool is an invaluable head start in the race to make their content accessible to everyone. It’s far from a turnkey solution and requires users to manually submit their video for captioning, then perform a secondary quality check that can sometimes be daunting, and finally do a manual language conversion for non-English captions. However, given the alternative, YouTube has made everyone’s jobs a hell of a lot easier. Spending the time updating your video’s captions now could pay huge dividends down the road as Google starts properly indexing video content.
How Coca-Cola is Spreading Happiness
Friday, January 29th, 2010Remember the excitement you felt as a kid when a vending machine accidentally gave you two candy bars instead of one? Well, that’s the wonder and excitement (I mean, who didn’t love getting an extra candy bar as a kid, right?) Coca-Cola is hoping to bring into people’s lives with their new video “Happiness Machine.” And we think it’s working.
Two weeks ago, Coca-Cola released “Happiness Machine” as a sneak preview to fans and followers through their various social media channels. In case you haven’t seen it yet, the video shows how an overactive vending machine installed in a college cafeteria can bring lots of happiness. Everything from Coke bottles to flowers to a six-foot sub sandwich come pouring out of the machine, all to the great surprise of the students. And, of course, it’s all caught on film.
Here are three reasons why we think the video is successful:
It takes something ordinary and makes it extraordinary. It’s not about a flashy re-design, a buzz-worthy celebrity, or some other marketing gimmick. They took the simple act of getting a Coke out a vending machine, and turned it into an extraordinary event.
It shows people sharing. When bottle after bottle after bottle of Coke comes out of the machine, what else is left to do but share with the people around you? Same goes for the pizza and the six-foot sub. The scene was smartly framed by Coke to get the students experiencing the “Happiness Machine” conversing and sharing, and just like the college kids in the video, the viewer can join in on the fun too.
It lets fans spread the happiness. When the kids are sharing the pizza that just came out of the bottom of the vending machine with each other, you can log on and share the video with your friends and family on Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter. It empowers the viewers at home to jump in and participate.
In the past, companies like Coca-Cola would keep their Super Bowl ads under wraps until the “world premiere” on game day. If it was strong enough, the ad might generate buzz for a few days before it becomes just another ad. Today, we’re seeing these same companies open up and encourage their customers to participate in the build-up through various social channels, as opposed to keeping these customers at a distance. Already, the video has been viewed more than 1.2 million times, and in the case of the “Happiness Machine” the momentum shows no signs of stopping. We can’t wait to see what happens when it airs to the football lovin’ public next Sunday.
Measuring the (Marketing) Effectiveness of a Hodouken
Thursday, May 14th, 2009We’ve talked about how much we appreciate creative ways to make use of a YouTube channel before, so imagine how pleased we were when we sat in on a YouTube presentation at this year’s WOMM-U.
One was a presentation that highlights a Street Fighter video which displays a clever way to use annotations in order to essentially create an engaging game out of the video asset. This technique and video might be old hat to some of you, but hey, we got to hear about some of the potential uses/benefits of this method while surrounded by like-minded peers, so for us, it was a fresh take on the matter.
Feel like playing video games at work today? Go check it out, and if your boss asks what you’re doing, chalk it up to market research.
Good Night and Good Luck: Don’t Count Out Marketers Just Yet
Monday, May 11th, 2009
The namesake of my college at Washington State University, Edward R. Murrow, said many an important thing. Now, in a time where technology is moving at breakneck speeds and there is an ever-growing claim that traditional communication is dead/dying/on life support, his words ring as true as they did when he penned them.
“The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it.”
One could argue that the “computers” in this sense are new communication tools like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. While the technologies for delivery are changing faster than most can keep up with an RSS feed, the importance of having a well-versed, well-written, and cohesive team is still priority numero uno.
So chin up, marketers. You’re not going the way of the Betamax – not if old Ed Murrow and I have anything to say about it.
