This video, which has been circulating for quite a while, should be required viewing for introductory marketing classes. While it picks on Microsoft (admittedly an easy target) the real point of the video is to illustrate that less is more. Anyone caught in the ‘design by committee’ death spiral will be able to relate to the added ‘enhancements’ that get thrown into this packaging exercise.
The challenge with simplicty is that it is really risky and most companies are risk averse. Complexity in packaging is just another way of hedging your bets – making sure that no group goes undifferentiated and that no bit of information goes unmentioned. Having the confidence and insight to be able to communicate to your target audience in a very clear and very simple manner is not the norm.
{As the story goes, this is an internally produced video by Microsoft to illustrate the unnecessary management layers that gum up the marketing process. Good for them if this is true.}
We may have just quietly passed the point of no return.
“The Wall Street Journal has moved its video player front and center with a twice-a-day live newscast on WSJ.com.” The New York Times recently reported that the iconic and venerable print publisher The Wall Street Journal is now featuring video prominently on their website. I think I just felt the ground shift a little under my feet.
Remember when the WSJ added color (colour) to its newspaper? That apocalyptic change was debated for months in media circles. This is a couple of orders of magnitude more significant and consequently will get much less attention.
Why did the WSJ do this? Well, as the New York Times explains “A major reason is commercial.” Uh huh.
More and more people are going online to find what they want – information, news, entertainment, friends, etc. and video is quickly becoming the easiest and most compelling way to consume content online. Online video advertising, while still small compared to TV advertising is growing quickly. The money will follow the crowd.
Many things could have signaled the transition from the ‘text’ web to the ‘next web’ such as rich media penetration rates, the number of YouTube videos viewed per month or the percentage of companies using video on their websites. I think the symbolism of the worlds most prominent print publication prominently featuring video on its website is as good a signal as any to suggest that online video has finally ‘arrived.’
Q. What’s the difference between a salesman and a marketer?
A. Salesmen know when they are lying.
{Full disclosure: I love Starbucks, I go there quite often. I just find it silly when people take themselves too seriously.}
Caleb Hannon wrote a recent article in the Daily Weekly that concluded with directions on how to “cleanse yourself of the stench of Pfeiffer’s corporate-speak.” I’m not sure if the self-important proclamations he refers to are quite this egregious but you have to admit that Pfeiffer and many other marketers do tend to take themselves a bit too seriously.
Starbucks is opening new custom designed stores that attempt to blend in with their local environments. That’s it. Unfortunately that sound bite would only last for a few seconds so Tim Pfeiffer, Starbucks VP of Global Magnificence felt he needed to fill that void with over three minutes of Starbucks marketing dribble.
The following is a guide to help you better understand what Starbucks is trying to say in this video:
“Cafe Presence” – A store.
“Open the Throat” – I believe he is either referring to an in-store tracheotomy procedure or perhaps this is a euphemism for increasing cut throat business practices… not sure which.
“Major Coffee Theatre” – A clear indication that everything he and the company does and says is an act, they don’t really mean any of it.
“Elevate the offering” – The religious connotations are self-evident here.
“More bespoke and one-off” - ‘Mcdonald’s started building customized/localized stores a while back so we thought we’d copy that idea.’
“Availability of the interaction of the Barrista” … I got nothing here. It’s English (and he’s a marketer), so he was probably trying to make a point about something.
“The go-forward” - All marketing men of action are legally required to include ‘go-forward’ at least once in a conversation.
“Great coffee messaging” - Ads. “Our coffee authority” – Starbucks will continue to crush all competition (in an environmentally responsible fashion.)
So Tim, keep up the good work… but get over yourself, it’s just coffee.
Sure a lot of local commercials are absolute crap, but some of them can be quite engaging.
The creators of the commercial (and making of video) above are Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal, two self-proclaimed ‘internetainers’. Like Kevin Nalts, they have managed to make a good living creating entertainment and infotainment videos for the web. The two North Carolinians have created over 200 web based videos including some very successful marketing promotions such as The Alka-Seltzer Great American Road Trip. They certainly look like they enjoy what they do and I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before Hollywood comes calling.
Their most recent promotional adventure, I love local commercials, is sponsored by Microbilt a finance company that developed this promotion for small local companies encouraging them to enter a contest to win a commercial created by Rhett and Link. The promotion is coming to an end and there have been a lot of commercials created. Some of these are (c)rude, some are strange, some are funny and some are really engaging.
The Cullman mobile home commercial above features Robert Lee (no middle initials given), a no-nonsense business owner who says it like it is. This commercial is part reality TV, part parody, part local TV commercial and part documentary. It’s fascinating. I imagine it will make Robert and his mobile homes famous for a while and that will probably translate into more business.
The media have picked up on some of these videos and YouTube and other web hosting sites are seeing impressive take-up of this series.
Are the creators making fun of the people in these videos? Are we laughing with or at these people? Hard to say. Parody is funny that way.
The worlds of still photography and video are beautifully colliding.
Up until recently still photography and videography have occupied very different spaces. Simply put, there are a lot more moving parts in video, sound being one of them and time (shooting a sequence of images over time) being another. Advancements in DSL camera technology are beginning to bridge this gap.
Tom Lowe from Timescapes.org filmed these incredible sequences in California’s White Mountains and in Yosemite National Park all on the Canon 5D2. (The Canon 5d2 is a digital SLR camera than can also capture HD video footage.) He used a special automated dolly rig that he built to capture the time lapse shots with tracking motion.
Another great example of this convergence is a video (not time lapse or a sequence of stills) commissioned by Canon and shot entirely on a Canon 5D2 called Reverie. This was shot almost a year ago when the camera was being introduced to show the camera’s capabilities beyond still images. Interestingly the video received either praise or derision depending on what image capture camp you hailed from. The photog’s loved it claiming it clearly showed the evolution of the trade and the videographers hated it claiming the story was thin and pointless – which really missed the point. The shots were amazing considering they came from a $2500 still camera. (In fairness the shooter probably used another $10,000 worth of lenses, not to mention a helicopter and a whack of other pricey equipment and services.) Whatever. The point of the video was to show what you can do with the new DSLR camera camera and anyone with an open mind had to be impressed.
Ultimately, having great equipment helps, no question, but both of these examples also show that equipment is only part of the equation.
We tend to take most things in life on face value. The earth is round, the universe is expanding, the internet is slow, but improving. This slow progression and acceptance of our ‘realities’ also tends to stop us from seeing what’s just around the corner. An example:
Imagine if television in the 1950′s evolved the same way that the internet has. What if TV in its infancy was little more than radio with text – much like the early stages of the web. What if television started with many, many channels but they all offered slow text, perhaps a few graphics. Over time, maybe ten years or more the television broadcast networks evolved to allow some blinking graphics, then motion graphics via flash files that allowed you to see moving images accompanied with text. How powerful a medium would TV have been up to that point. Would it have consumed our lives the way it has? Would it become the focal point of our entertainment, our advertising, our news consumption?
With the Internet today we are close (but not quite there) to where television started over fifty years ago. Video is widely viewable today online around the world but the experience varies considerably. That will change over the next few years as good or great quality video will be delivered to any screen you want it on (tv, computer, mobile devise). When that happens this will have a profound effect on how business communicate and evolve. Like the frog in the slowly warming pot of water, many businesses won’t even notice the change.
What makes the impact that much more significant is that all of the televisions are connected, everyone is creating their own television shows and you can watch what you want, wherever and whenever you want. Context is everything and the companies that win in this game will be the companies that can produce contextually relevant video products for their audiences. Content that has real value (not commercials), content that people want to share and content that changes how people see and do things.
No, text isn’t going away (in spite of the recent pain in the print industry) in our lifetime but we are entering a time where new visual languages, graphic interfaces and video content will change how businesses communicate.
Websites don’t matter. The content on them and the content that gets consumed and shared (wherever) is what matters.
I recently responded to a blog article that posed the question “are corporate websites dead?” My take was that the purpose and function of corporate websites is changing – they will still serve as a repository for corporate information but the days of websites being a ‘destination’ for information about the things you do are long gone. An Example:
Recent changes to driving laws where I live now make it illegal to hold/use a cell phone while driving. I needed to pick up a good quality Bluetooth headset. While scanning some recent tweets I noticed a comment about a new Plantronics Bluetooth headset. I followed the link to a YouTube video. It sounded interesting but I wasn’t convinced. I then viewed a number of related reviews on YouTube that seemed more credible and decided that this was indeed the device that suited my needs. I Googled to find the best price and ordered the product online. I never went to the Plantronics website – there was no reason to. I know the company and have purchased products from them before so there were no credibility issues to investigate.
The user generated videos I viewed provided good general information but ultimately the more professionally created videos sold me. The whole process took ten minutes and at the end of it I felt very informed and very comfortable making a purchase decision. Would I have been as confident if I just went to the Plantronics site and consumed their literature? No way. Would I have been as comfortable if I went to my local electronics store and waited to listen to an inexperienced sales clerk sell me on equipment he may or may not have a lot of real experience with? No.
We are moving from the ‘text web’ to the ‘next web’ ( or ‘web something dot something’) and many companies still don’t see it coming. I’d rather watch a video review or video product demo than read product literature because video and other rich media content show me things that a document cannot. It’s also easier to make value judgments about the presenter and the content.
There is huge value in showing your product/service being used, showing people talking about their experiences with the product and showing how it clearly benefits the potential buyer.
It’s the content (and where that content is seen) that matters, not the website and the implications of this reach far beyond simple consumer products. All companies have to take into account how social media, rich media, mobile engagement, word of mouth, and especially the creation of truly valuable content is going to affect their brand and their business. Even companies with long sales cycles that involve complex buying decisions need to consider how they are going to engage the ‘next web.’
The good folks at Wistia – a video tracking company decided to, in their words, ‘eat their own dog food’ by using their own online video tracking service to monitor the effectiveness of adding video to their email marketing activities. (I prefer ‘fly your own jets’ as far as marketing metaphors go…)
You can read the results on a recent blog post but here is a quick summary:
1. Click through rates were 3 to 4 times higher with video
2. Visitors spend more time on site with video
3. You can track specific benefits of video content – see where visitors lost interest or chose to engage the company further
4. They also used video engagement as an indication for further lead gen, with measured success.
Admittedly the last two items are associated with the services this company provides but there are hundreds of articles and blog posts that support the idea that adding video to your email can have a significant effect on the effectiveness of that email. Here are a few:
BMW or Mercedes, I can’t remember which, has successfully pushed ‘engineering’ as a key brand attribute for years. Volvo has wrapped it’s brand around ‘safety’ for decades. Toyota is the king of reliability. Volkswagen is going for fun. Why not? Fun is a great thing to associate your product or brand with. (Unfortunately ‘bankruptcy protection’, ‘restructuring’ and ‘didn’t require bail-out assistance’ are terms that don’t seem to resonate with car buyers.)
Volkswagen’s European ad agency DDB Stockholm have developed a series of viral videos which are getting good traction. The concept is simple – How do you make ordinary things more fun. (Having fun driving a car, ultimately being the end game in all of this.). As viral videos go these are well structured:
1. Video Production. The quality of the video is excellent. It’s not too glossy, has a natural feel to it and doesn’t rely on much more the action in the video – no motion graphics, minimal in style and the audio is subtle. It doesn’t feel over-produced.
2. Focus is on human response. Not all viral videos focus on human interaction/response but the ones that do, and do that well tend to be able to capture genuine emotion associated with the subject matter. In this case it’s easy to put yourself in the place of the people in the video and share the intrigue, excitement… and the fun that they are experiencing.
3. Branding is subtle. There are obvious exceptions (Will it blend?) but for the most part successful branded viral videos downplay the brand in the video – either including a logo at the end or subtly including the brand in the video itself. No branding is pointless unless you can sell tickets to see the video, but there are diminishing returns on how prominent your branding can be. By comparison, paid ads with prominent branding are simply the (disruptive) cost you pay for viewing content. People are more likely to share content that isn’t obviously promoting a product (unless, of course if the ads are exceptional.) Is the branding too subtle? Perhaps.
4. Brand association is direct and the message supports the brand. More than anything Volkswagen is associating it’s brand with fun. This takes a lot of money to do well and to support over time but all things being equal, fun is a great brand attribute to aspire to. This certainly isn’t a stretch for the brand. The Volkswagen Beetle in it’s old an new incarnation have always been associated with fun. By comparison, the benefits to any brand of say… catching a computer with your butt or herding electric sheep might not be as apparent to the viewer.
5. The video is very good. Not just the video production quality, which is very good, but the concept, the execution and the ‘pass-on-ability’ of the video. This is a video that many people will want to share with friends.
6. A series of videos with ‘teaser’ videos to support the campaign. Creating one viral video is a good start – if that video is successful. But even if it hugely popular it will still have a shelf life measured in weeks. Reach is important for getting noticed, but frequency is what changes behaviors. Volkswagen has developed a series of videos to support this campaign and is even creating teaser ‘coming soon’ videos to let people know that more are in the works. As video slowly begins to replace text (let the impassioned discussions begin over this idea) it will become more important to develop complimentary and overlapping videos that work together to tell a broader story.
Do your marketing videos do anything more than just sing your praise?
‘Content marketing’ is a term that is starting to take hold in online marketing conversations. The idea that it promotes is straightforward: Create content that helps your customers and prospects solve their business problems, content that informs them (rather than screams at them), content that they care about and content that helps them to understand something new, something they didn’t already know. Information about your company and the features of your product or service is less important. The benefits of your product and how your product fits into the ecosystem and community that exists around your product is what matters.
One of the fastest growing web content categories is the ‘how-to’ sites. These sites offer more than empty entertainment calories – they help you do stuff. They intrigue you, they inform you and some even inspire you. And their numbers are sure to grow. Niches, sub-niches and micro-niches (I just made that up) will soon begin to proliferate. At the center of all of these sub categories of information and community will be trusted knowledge leaders – companies like yours who have positioned themselves in this community by providing valuable knowledge and insight into things that matter most to your customers and prospects.
A sampling of how-to sites (these are top-level aggregators but new sub-category sites will emerge):
eHow – One of the originals it covers a wide range of helpful topics.
WikiHow – A huge, slightly messy repository of open source knowledge and helpful stuff.
Howstuffworks – An interesting collection of trivia, tips and just about anything you could ever imagine.
Lifehacker – Definitely one of the cooler how-to sites.
Make – Geek heaven, chock-a-block with techno stuff.
5-min Started this year and is quickly building a good inventory of knowledge.
The companies and people who provide real value and impart knowledge to their constituents are the ones who will lead this next great movement.
