Josh Warner: Find Your Voice

Steve Hall at AdRants tipped me off to this campaign for Greenpeace running in Holland. It features a giant and forlorn red fish named Guppie who travels town to town drawing attention to a new Greenpeace website. The site (in Dutch) appears to be highlighting endangered fish species and Guppie is obviously on that list and sad about it. You should be too but people who see Guppie in person (or fish I guess) smile a lot and that’s the point. A simple, smart campaign with web, print, viral videos and a mascot to feel sorry for.

An animated tribute to the internet people of the world. With most every most memorable viral video of the last couple of years. Animated by Dan Meth, with music by Dan Meth and Micah Frank.

In a new report, “Viral Marketing: Bringing the Message to the Masses,” Jupiter Research reports that just 15 percent of viral campaigns achieved success in the last year. 15 percent effectiveness for any marketing tactic is pretty good. People expect viral to be a panacea, “Let’s throw some viral against it.” But just like any good creative or marketing strategy, a viral campaign needs its own big idea which is often far from what the client or agency intended. That’s not because the client concept is wrong or misguided (although this happens too), its just that the audience is more demanding, and they earn that right. After all you’re asking them to take an action -pass on a video clip, comment on a blog, send an email- so don’t expect them to do the work for you without a lot of your own effort.

If you’ve visited iFilm lately, you’ll see the website touts the SpikeTV network. This is part of Viacom’s plan to take on YouTube so while you’ll still find plenty of iFilm content, expect to see more SpikeTV programming integrated into the site throughout the Fall.

YouTube officially launched their new InVideo advertising program and the initial feedback within the YouTube community is negative - no suprise there- according to a quick scan of posts on a YouTube blog post.

Typical responses can be summarized by one user’s post “Yuck.” The new InVideo ads start as an overlay on the bottom of a video, and people can click and watch the ad if they want to. If the user does not click on the overlay, the ad will simply disappear.

VideoEgg, ScanScout, and other firms have been offering up similar overlay ads as an alternative to traditional preroll and postroll for awhile now so, uncharacteristically for Google, the move isn’t seen as revolutionary. The big questions are whether these ads will also be used in user-generated videos on YouTube. For now, Google is selling InVideo ad space on professional partner videos for companies Like Warner Music Group and others. And also whether, in the long term, users will seek less ad populated sites and if advertisers will jump on board with the new ad unit in large numbers. Time will tell.

eBaum’s World, a viral video site that has been for sale for a while now, is being bought by HandHeld Entertainment for $15 million in cash and $5 million in common stock.

Shares of HandHeld Entertainment, which makes compact digital media players for delivering movies, music and photos, didn’t exactly spiked with the news, closing down $0.04 to $1.78 on just slightly-above-average volume on the news. This might have a lot to do with the company’s aggressive acquisition binge which has added over seven websites – including PutFile.com, Dorks.com and YourDailyMedia.com – to its core media player business.

The strategy - acquiring commercial content to drive media player sales - is solid for a big-bucks player (say Microsoft) but to me seems dated and dangerous for a small cap company like HandHeld. But Eric Bauman and his dad Neil Bauman, who started eBaum’s in 1998, have to be feeling pretty good.

The new in-video YouTube advertising is up and running. If you watch this Smosh clip, you’ll see an ad about :15 in for The Simpsons Movie. It’s even more like a below-line ad that turns into a video-in-video ad that then links out to an external site. In this case, 20th Century Fox. This is a beta so you would think, being GooTube, that you’ll see more contextual matching in future releases. This will definitely bring in some ad spends from the major studios and TV and cable networks. Especially if the get the contextual matching going. Because if I watch a Simpsons clip (I do), I might want to know about a new Borat movie (I might).

This amazing viral for Hydro, a Norwegian energy and aluminum supplier, was designed to get kids interested in engineering and has been viewed over a million times on YouTube and Break.com. The tag line is “There are many young engineers out there. We cant wait to see them grow up.” The agency is DDB Oslo. The studio behind the VFX is Fido Film out of Stockholm who added the CG train and loop into the plate of kids playing on the train tracks.

They also have another clip which is of the kids tinkering with their Dad’s car with hilarious results. The kids make it fresh and the concept is well-executed. But it also supports the brand message with dead-on efficiency. Impressive.
clip

When Cutwater came to Feed Company with the Never Hide Films project, the branding, or lack of branding, was already decided. The films featured people wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses doing strange and wonderful things. Bikini Body Builder vs.Rubik’s Cube featured a female body-builder in a bikini fiddling with a Rubik’s cube while a calypso band played in the background. Guy catches glasses with face had two friends throwing Wayfarer sunglasses at each other from a bridge, elevator, skateboard, and moving car.

The only branding is a fleeting reference to Ray-Ban’s campaign theme “Never Hide” in the dusted out window of a car and a hastily held sign with the words Never Hide penned on it. If the branding’s that subtle what’s the point? an advertiser might ask. Well the point is, social video networks like YouTube, Heavy, Break and the hundred others aren’t TV networks. People choose to watch video content away from the constant barrage of network TV ads. So if you run the same commercials you run on TV in these networks 9 times out of 10 (maybe 10 out of 10) users will also run away.

But if you’re subtle - another word for creative - and you’re content is good, people will watch your content and talk about it. Which is the whole idea. People, especially online - are smart about marketing, they know they’re being sold but don’t mind because you’re being cool about it. Threaded through over 11,359 comments for Catch on YouTube you hear -

Nice video! Congrats Ray ban…
For all the happy few who did not know yet, this is a viral ad for Ray Ban glasses. Just Google “Never Hide”
did anyone else notice they had ” neverhide ” written on the dirt on the car? :

So strike a subtle tone when you want a conversation to happen around your brand in social video environments, Your voice will carry.

Here’s a great post from Mashable (one of my favorite blogs) that lists 150+ Online Video Tools and Resources. From video sharing sites to video mixers, mashups and converters, Mashable puts it together in one list. Thank you, thank you.