Canada has a crush on YouTube. Even though it is an American company, Canada is the largest consumer of YouTube. This is with regards to the percentage of the overall population of the country that uses the site. During January 2009, 88% of Canadians viewed a video online, and viewed a total of almost 3.1 billion online videos. And half of those were on YouTube. This data is from a ComScore study done in January of this year found that the top 5 countries that consume online videos as a percentage of the overall population is as follows:
Canada 88%
UK 81%
Germany 79%
France 78%
USA 77%
Canada also has one of the highest broadband internet adoption rates in the world. Canada has a 72.3% adoption rate, which is very close to the United States (74.7 %) and is higher than the United Kingdom (71.8 %). So what does this say about Canada? It says that Canadians love technology, and love to consume vast amounts of digital content. That Canadians eagerly adopt new technologies and are always looking for the newest internet phenomenon. All this data is just more proof that Canada loves YouTube.
One of the great success stories of viral marketing strategy was the marketing of the film “Cloverfield.” The first trailer to appear was filmed entirely using handheld cameras and was made to appear very amateurish. A name for the film wasn’t given, just the release date. This all added to the intrigue and helped spread the word about this mysterious new film. Not only that, but shortly afterwards, MySpace pages of the characters from the movie started to spring up.
The director of the film, Matt Reeves, had this to say about the tie-ins and fusion between film and internet culture:
It’s almost like tentacles that grow out of the film and lead, also, to the ideas in the film. And there’s this weird way where you can go see the movie and it’s one experience… But there’s also this other place where you can get engaged where there’s this other sort of aspect for all those people who are into that. [...] All the stories kind of bounce off one another and inform each other. But, at the end of the day, this movie stands on its own to be a movie. [...] The Internet sort of stories and connections and clues are, in a way, a prism and they’re another way of looking at the same thing. To us, it’s just another exciting aspect of the storytelling.
Other tie-ins included websites that served as puzzles and provided text-messaging codes to reveal further clues about the film. It all adds to the intrigue and the desire to know more. The film-style of “amateur shaky-camera” is an appeal to the audience’s familiarity with YouTube and all aspects of amateur filmmaking on Web2.0. It is no coincidence that JJ Abrams is the producer of LOST and Cloverfield, both productions that rely heavily on the internet for marketing the brand.
When YouTube was first launched it was a place for the everyman to come and share his creations with the rest of the world. Where adding you favorite song to your video made it unique and personal, or making a new music video for that song was your way of paying tribute to its authors.
But with its rise to mainstream fame, YouTube must now answer to huge corporations who want a piece of the pie. Here is an example of how the large recording companies want to silence the little guy:
Major recording studios are filing lawsuits against YouTube for “failing to protect” their copyrights. The mega music studios are upset that there are people out there enjoying their music and not paying them what they think is due. This forces YouTube into a sticky legal situation; they can either pay up or shut down. The Music studios want a licensing fee to allow people on YouTube to upload their copyrighted material. Of course, the other solution that may arise from this is that YouTube turns into a quasi police state where all material is heavily scanned and censored. As of right now, videos that have copyright songs in them rarely stay up longer than a few days and some of them won’t even upload because of the software that YouTube uses to scan each uploading video.
In class Dr. Strangelove mentioned that very often global advertisements are either toned down or removed all together when they come over to North America an especially the United States.
Here is an example of an advertisement seen in Europe but created uproar once it came to America:
Calvin Klein Jeans Advertisment
What could possibly be the reason for there to be such a difference between the two ads? Some of the risqué advertisements that are removed from American media would seem tame compared to some of the commercials seen on European television.Strangelove also talked about how in European advertisements, exposed breasts are not an uncommon thing. However, if an ad that contained such a thing was submitted for printing in the United States the publisherwould have a heart attack.
Advertisements in Europe seem to address consumers as intelligent people with minds of their own. There is more entertainment and less hard-selling than in American campaigns.
He also argues that because there are so many brands in the US, companies have to focus their efforts on factual product differentiation rather than emotional connotations that are seen everywhere in European advertising.
In crowded, highly competitive product categories, advertising must be hard-edged and brand-specific. It also tends to be factual rather than emotional.
This is only one of many viewpoints as to why European advertising is so different from North American advertising.
Everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame, and a lot of people on YouTube get it. But there are those videos that stick, and become a part of popular culture.There are those who are mainstream famous, and then there are those who are YouTube famous.Most of these people have never been on TV or other forms of media, but their existence and their antics are known to a large number of people.Through word of mouth these videos are viewed over and over again, normally because theyhave a person doing something very embarrassing. YouTube can be a way of bringing people to the forefront because of their supremely unique performances.
This music video by Weezer highlights this display of individuality:
The song is about not caring about what other people think and just doing what you really want to do. It incorporates all the famous YouTube memes in one video celebrating individuality and freedom to do whatever you want. It includes a lot of the most well known “YouTube personalities” such as the Leave Britney Alone guy, Tay Zonday of Chocolate Rain fame, Star Wars kid, and Numma Numma guy. YouTube is a place where anyone can put up a video and express themselves.
Everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame, and a lot of people on YouTube get it. But there are those videos that stick, and become a part of popular culture.There are those who are mainstream famous, and then there are those who are YouTube famous.Most of these people have never been on TV or other forms of media, but their existence and their antics are known to a large number of people.Through word of mouth these videos are viewed over and over again, normally because theyhave a person doing something very embarrassing. YouTube can be a way of bringing people to the forefront because of their supremely unique performances.
This music video by Weezer highlights this display of individuality:
Viral marketing is a marketing strategy that employs word-of-mouth through social networking sites in order to spread a brand, intended to spread across the internet with no cost to the advertiser (Howard, 2005). One way to describe typical advertisements that we see on TV is “linear.” The advertiser pays a TV station money to show their advertisement ‘x’ many times. If this is the case, we can assume that viral marketing works in exponential fashion. The advertiser places their ad online in a few key places (popular social networking sites), it spreads through the internet like wildfire as users take it upon themselves to spread the brand.
It’s a simple premise, but there are a few key components that are required for an advertisement to go viral. First, the ad must be intriguing. It has to have the viewer wondering and/or left in awe. This is necessary because the user must deem the content worthwhile of telling others about it. Second, the ad should be interactive. Internet users in 2009 are sophisticated. They live in a consumer society, they crave consumption. If a viral marketing strategy is going to be successful, there must be something to do.
A popular viral marketing campaign occurred in 2008 for the film “The Dark Knight.” It employed websites that slowly revealed highly sought after material, such as first glimpses of Heath Ledger’s Joker, Two-Face, and other storyline elements. Websites appeared that had campaign slogans for Harvey Dent, websites were discovered where users were asked to send in pictures of certain areas in the United States, etc. It was very interactive and helped build hype for the film to extraordinary levels, becoming the biggest blockbuster film in years.
A viral ad that was used to market "The Dark Knight"
The television show “LOST” also used a viral marketing strategy in which it released films, which appeared like “hand-held” amateur shot videos that revealed storyline aspects of the show that the producers did not feel important enough to include on the TV show, but felt the story should be told. They called it “The Lost Experience” and helped build hype for the show’s return in the fall.
It is exponential. It is cheap. It is the perfect strategy to drum up hype. And it all comes down to the user. This mass viewership that can find something intriguing and spread it like wildfire. And marketers know it. It’s a fusion of media. A fusion of internet and television that culminates in an extremely efficient marketing mechanism.
Implied sexuality has always been around in advertising. However, as societal and cultural norms have changed, and sexuality has been more widely accepted, implications of sex are becoming increasingly less veiled.It has almost reached a point where implied sexuality is so thinly veiled that some people can only see or hear the sexuality being displayed and not notice it in a tongue in cheek fashion.
Take for example this commercial for a new sandwich from Quiznos:
We can see that in this advertisement an employee and a talking toaster try to promote the new product. From the very beginning of the thirty second clip, the toaster wastes no time in getting the sexual innuendo ball rolling.The appliance makes numerous advances on the employee with lines such as “put it in me” and “say it sexy”. This ad separates itself from other implied sex advertisements because at no time does it make any attempt to distance itself from what is being implied, which is that a sandwich maker is having sex with a toaster.
This type of advertisement is quickly reaching its limits because as companies try to one up each other with implied sexuality you find yourself at an ad like this that really doesn’t do anything subtly.
YouTube started outin a garage by three peopleas a place for others to upload their videos to share with the world and for others to comment on them.Back in the early years ofYouTube it was a way for the little guys to represent themselves without interference from the large corporations that control the mainstream media.
However, as YouTube entered the mainstream and became immensely popular, the bigger companies wanted a piece of the pie. In October of 2006 YouTube was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion in stock. Ever since this deal the combined target of Google and YouTube has been too much for recording companies to ignore. YouTube is almost constantly being bombarded by copyright infringement lawsuits and companies claiming that Google and YouTube aren’t doing enough to look out for them. Since when do huge multinational recording companies need someone looking out for them? I’m sure they think the little guy is doing just fine too.
YouTube has also begun to setup special pages for companies who want to use the site as an outlet for their advertisements and other special media. Companies such as Universal Music Group have their own special user page and have all other users who upload anything they believe to be infringing locked down. YouTube needs to resist the pull of large corporations and their demands and remember that it’s the unknown guy in his room with a webcam who will give them their next big hit.
How do you gauge viewer reaction? Of course, there are groups such a Nielson ratings which production companies use routinely to assess their market share demographics, but how do you truly connect with the fans of your product in order to serve up a better one?
John Deighton, a professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, argued in 1996 that interactivity is “the ability to address an individual and the ability to gather and remember the response of that individual” leading to “the ability to address the individual once more in a way that takes into account his or her unique response.” And boy was he right. This is exactly what we’re seeing with this fan-producer relationship and the advent of Web2.0, which is so focused on interactivity and user response.
More and more companies are turning to the web to gauge the reaction of audiences in order to tweak certain aspects of the product. A perfect example of this is the hit television show “LOST.” Early on during the first few seasons, the producers of the show, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, would hold audio podcasts and would read questions posed on their messageboards and give answers. As it evolved, they started to perform video podcasts after every episode. This is an example of the power of the web as a medium for fan-critics to influence the makings of a million dollar production.
Messageboards and blogs all over the internet clamoured their hatred for two characters that were introduced seemingly out of the blue, with comments such as this from Film.com:
In Nikki and Paolo, the show’s producers created two people that we all hated and then revealed that it was perfectly all right to hate them after all: they were truly despicable human beings who were totally self-absorbed and loathsome.
But were the fans supposed to hate these two characters? The producers commented,
I would say Desmond would also be in that category. The audience really fell in love with him right from the get-go and he quickly moved right into the mainstream of our cast. Nikki and Paulo were less successful. We tried to introduce them out of the show’s chorus as it were and the audience cried foul. We listened and killed them off.
The following is an example of a podcast that addresses certain concerns of the fans. It represents this relatively new connection between the fans and the “powers that be” that is only present in Web2.0. As you can see, the producers are clearly talking to the fans of the show and creating this connection.
“LOST” is known for its online relationship. It is a cult hit with many dedicated followers, posting endless fan theories and debating key points of the show to ad nauseum. The producers have embraced the online community for its input on some very important decisions. If something is annoying the audience, an appropriate response is taken. If they want to see more, they give more. It is the power of the fan-producer online relationship and we can probably expect this type of relationship to be prevalent in shows of the future, especially in the 18-25 age demographic.
Stay tuned for an analysis of viral marketing, something that “LOST” helped lay the foundations for.
Remember the good old days when you and your friends would rush in to the corner store to get a nice, refreshing soda. And, if you were lucky, when you popped the top off of your drink you would find that underneath it was revealed that you had just won another one. Those were the days.
McDonald’s Monopoly now uses a sophisticated and interactive online Monopoly game that makes use of “game codes” and a registered account.
Nowadays things are different, gone are the days of instant gratification. Anytime you buy something that is attached to a promotion of any sort you are greeted with a jumble of letters and numbers and a web address. And most times you don’t even know if you’ve won or even what you could win. This new “futuristic” way can get very annoying and tedious.
But marketers and advertisers love this new approach because it keeps you exposed to their brand for a longer period of time. And even during different parts of the day. For example, when you go for lunch at your favorite fast food outlet you get a code, and then when you get home you punch the code in to the company’s website, and navigate through all of their other advertisements that they want you to see. Suddenly you begin to get hungry, and feel you could really go for some more of that food. And suddenly, you are a repeat customer and they still haven’t told you if you’ve won anything.
Companies are getting more imaginative with their contests too. They want you to get hooked on promotions, and they have many tactics to do so. Such as having you collect different tokens before you can apply to win something. A perfect example of this would be the famous McDonalds monopoly contest. Because when you have Pacific Avenueand North Carolina Avenue, you will throw back however many Big Macs it takes to find Pennsylvania Avenuein order to win that$50,000.
These kinds of promotions are the way of the future, and will probably be included in a greater variety of contests. They will likely grow in complexityand will be used to link real world products to virtual world advertising campaigns.
