YouTube Marketing - Brand-focused videos

Viral videos in this sense — videos that seem authentic, but aren’t — may be too time-consuming or difficult for what you need to accomplish. But this doesn’t mean you can’t still use YouTube to create and curate more brand-focused videos that have the potential to drive business for your company or brand. A good example of the potential of more straightforward, brand-focused videos is seen in Old Spice’s recent campaign featuring the Old Spice Man. The Old Spice Man is a character from a wildly popular pair of Old Spice ads. He is over-the-top manly, amazing at everything and funny. Recently, the Old Spice channel on YouTube asked viewers to submit questions to the Old Spice Man. Some of the selected questions were then answered by an in-character Old Spice Man. The campaign was an astounding success. Immediately after it ended, the channel became the most viewed channel on YouTube, and the third-most subscribed YouTube channel of all time. Here are some pointers to keep in mind when trying to replicate the success of these brand-focused videos:


1. Make it very engaging. The Old Spice Man’s responses lack any special effects but are all strongly written and well-acted by Isaiah Mustafa. And the jokes are so rapidfire they encourage viewers to rewatch the videos to catch all of them. The lesson here is to keep your videos short, dense and, if possible, funny.


2. Make sure your video has important content. If comedy is not your strong suit, or your product or service is not something that lends itself to comedy, informative how to videos can be just as effective. The Internet is seen as a give-and-take medium, and viewers demand more than just an unfiltered sales pitch from advertisers.


3. Make it interactive. Another factor in the success of the Old Spice campaign is that the Old Spice Man is responding to viewers. Even if you are not as popular as Isaiah Mustafa, the ability to engage with customers’ concerns in video form shows that you care. Amazon did a good job of this when they provided a video explaining why they acquired Zappos.


4. Work across platforms. The Old Spice Man answers questions from Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Reddit and more. By drawing attention to and encouraging viewers to use the different platforms, you encourage consumers to get more deeply involved with your brand or company. Respond to a question from Twitter on YouTube, for instance. Consumers will appreciate that you put a human face behind the response.


5. Make it professional. Don’t sink a lot of money into it, but since these videos are seen as messages from your company, make sure they look and sound good. Hire a professional videographer if you have to. You don’t want people’s first thought when they think of your company to be “shoddy.”

Source of Information :  Website Magazine October 2010

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YouTube Marketing - Viral videos

Sunglasses-maker Ray Ban has created a site on YouTube called Never Hide Films, where the company posts videos including viral sensations like “Cow Gives Birth to Dude” and “Guy Has Glasses Tattooed to Face”. The most popular one so far, “Sunglass Catch”, has hit nearly 5 million views. By watching them, you will see what many viral videos have in common:

1. Viral videos show something new or never seen before. This means that directly replicating a viral video — doing the same thing that another viral video shows — is impossible. The person or people shown in the video have to be doing something so unexpected that the viewer will be caught off guard and feel compelled to pass the video along.


2. The video, however, can imitate the types of videos that go viral. For instance, the “Sunglass Catch” video is similar to other homemade videos where basketball players or skateboarders do more and more outrageous stunts as the video progresses. Look at several different viral videos and see if you can imitate the types of things that are shown, if not the exact actions.


3. A good viral video lies on the border between real and unbelievable. The more gullible will be shocked and will pass it on. But even the more discerning will pass it along because they think other people have been fooled by it, and want to correct them. The sunglasses tattoo video left many people, including news outlets, questioning its accuracy. Even though it is clearly on Ray Ban’s site, commenters on YouTube still wonder if it is real.


4. The video should also look authentically homemade. Sure, there are many high-budget, visually rich ads that get passed around as viral videos — Sony Bravia’s are a good example — but with enormous budgets like that, the benefit of going viral is minimal. A good viral video will use its low budget as an asset. The lack of visual richness will also blur the boundary between real and unreal.


5. Having a place where viewers can easily connect the video back to other parts of your marketing plan is crucial. Ray Ban’s “Never Hide” tagline helps in this regard, but the fact that Ray Ban curates these videos on a single site is also important. Ray Ban also takes down copies of their advertisement from other posters so the connection to their home site is not diluted.


6. Most viral videos fail. Of the twenty videos on the Never Hide site, only four have reached one million viewers. Prepare to throw a lot of spaghetti on the wall before any of it sticks.

Source of Information :  Website Magazine October 2010

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