23 Musings

Excellent bit of viral video which is guaranteed to get eyeballs to help get the message across!

From www.dothetest.com.

According to viral marketing specialist Go Viral.

1. Cadbury - Gorilla Drummer, launched online in August; agency: Fallon. Views on YouTube 5M+
   
   
   
2. Smirnoff - Green Tea Partay, launched online in August; agency: JWT, New York. Views on YouTube 3.4M
   
   
   
3. Ray-Ban - Catch Sunglasses, launched online in May; agency, Cutwater. Views on YouTube 3.2M
   
   
   
4. Blendtec - Will it Blend? launched online in July. Views on YouTube for the whole Will It Blend series 20M+, iPhone version scored 2.7M views
   
   
   
5. Lynx/Axe – Bom chicka wah wah, launched online in May; agency BBH, Copenhagen. Views on YouTube 2.6M
   
   

All fantastic examples of creativity and viralness being used to gain massive brand exposure!

A report has been released by Anderson Analytics as the results of a survey of the Marketing Executives Networking Group (a 1,700 strong network of marketers at VP level or higher). The survey asked what marketing concepts these executives thought were going to be the top trends and concepts in 2008.

Worryingly, when asked which marketing concepts they felt were going to be most important the second highest answer turned out to be SEO!

Now, I don't know whether marketers are unsure what search engine optimisation is or perhaps this was a particularly 'offline' group of marketers, but SEO is already hugely important and in my eyes if you haven't grasped that yet then it's a bit late. Saying that it will be the second most important concept next year is amazing to me. It's been part of my life for 12 years and is really just part of the routine I go through for any digital project.

Here's the rest of the list:
If you had to ask me what some of the concepts I thought were important for next year were (in digital), I'd say:

• Offline/online translation (getting your offline campaigns translated in a seamless manner onto digital media, something that really isn't being done very well at the moment)
• Viral (campaigns should always be thought of as viral if they touch the web)
• Widgets (cross pollination of marketing campaigns online using widgets)
• Social media (yes, it's huge this year, but next year should see it mature and the launch of OpenSocial will make it more important than ever)
• Banners (controversial one this but we are now at a stage where banners should become more like widgets and really start to become properly engaging, whether this will happen I'm not sure as most agencies who design banners aren't particularly forward thinking)

Underpinning all of those, and every other online marketing concept, should be SEO.

What do you think the key concepts of 2008 will be?

Here's a great viral website called Jealouscomputers.com. It's all about the backlash from computers due to the jealousy caused by the release of Nokia N series phones such as the N95. Guess PC's are feeling a little upset that users can do everything on their handheld nowadays.

Anyway, it's a well executed viral marketing campaign and sure to generate some buzz for Nokia!

I've decided that every time I come across a great piece of viral marketing I will post it up here. Viral is one area of digital marketing that I find fascinating. The effect a good viral can have is quite staggering, from massive acquisition of potential customer details to generation of huge brand buzz, and big brand who hasn't yet at least investigated viral is missing out!

Here's a great example from Carlsberg. It plays off the Coke & Mentos video virals really well and while not about acquisition, it will get many eyeballs and generate huge brand awareness for them. It's also pretty damn clever!

Google has announced the beginning of a practise I blogged about a few weeks back, that they would find a way to keep some copyright owners happy by sharing the revenue generated from advertising displayed when users view videos. Google has agreed to hand over most of the advertising revenue generated by viewers of a video from Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz, creators of the hugely viral Diet Coke & Mentos video. First reported on Googleblog it seems to be the first instance of a video sponsorhip program Google are now touting.

Up to now video on sites like Google Video and YouTube has either been the kind of fun videos generated by users, viral efforts or copyright owned clips. Giving publishers an opportunity to get the kind of audience these sites offer and a way to earn the lions share of the revenue from that offering will be hugely attractive to both copyright owners and viral producers.

It's video sharing sites like these that make or break a viral campaign, adding a new angle of earning advertising revenue directly from views (as well as the brand equity etc that a viral can produce) can only be a good thing for the viral sector! I'd expect to see a YouTube revenue share deal come to the fore as soon as the acquisition is finalised and out of due dilligence.