Reaching that coveted 20 something demographic is getting tougher and tougher. They are watching less and less TV, they feel both entitled and superior, and they typically don’t trust any form of marketing unless they discover it themselves.
That is why I was impressed with found a video on CollegeHumor.com. The video is sponsored by Trojan Condoms and revolves around the sexual exploits of a promiscuous reindeer. The video is funny, timely and has a great message… it’s a natural hit.
The really great thing about this video is that it is 100 percent marketing. Sure, its selling a hip, need to have product, but it is still marketing. I personally sent this video to three or for of my friends just so they could see it.
Why is this important? One of the biggest cost in getting your message out there is distribution; be it radio, magazine, or TV the more people you want to get your message in front of the more you will have to pay. If you are able to sponsor a great viral video than the distribution is taken care of for you.
There are a hundreds if not thousands of sites that are producing great content out there that need a sponsor. Talk to some of your customers or clients and find out what they are looking at. I am sure they can give you some in site to a video that you could sponsor.
If you are feeling really daring you could try creating your own video. Don’t feel bad if it doesn’t get the traction you figured it would, it takes practice, but you never know.
Do any of you out there have experience making or sponsoring viral videos? Let me know.
Yes I am home for the holidays. I am at my parents house in Pennsylvania digging out of 2 feet of snow and living on my cell phones outlook. I have been tweeting mobile and chatting using my phones chat client… ahh vacation.
The biggest news for me is the fact that Sony has made Playstation Home an open beta. I don’t know if you have been following what Home is, but it is a marketers dream. Basically, Home is a social network similar to Second Life, but more game focused.
While walking around home, and chatting with people online via the built in chat service that came back, I was exposed to ads, placed music, branded games and basically 10 times more ads than I see in the real world. But I stayed.
Playstaion 3, a system that actually loses Sony money every time they sell one, is using Home as a place to sell in game advertisements and create micro transactions. See, if you want to have a cool apartment you either need to get free branded furniture or purchase (99 cents) furniture.
Home represents a natural progression for manufactures to both sell advertisements and engage gamers. It offers gamers a way to connect with other gamers online and offers sponsors a way to engage a traditionally hard demographic. When Sony finally launches home out of Beta expect to see some truly great advertising opportunities… stay logged on in the coming year.
Ah the Metro in DC on a Tuesday morning. Cold, wet, and some guys forcefully shoving the local rag into my hand as I walk down to the subway. Now I am an MP3 player person, this means I listen to podcast and music while I ride the train. There are also book and knitting people, they do those things as well.
The most prominent person on the metro is the condensed news reader. These are the people who grab condensed versions of the newspapers and read them on the train in the morning. Here in DC we have a few but the biggest one by far is the Express, The Washington Post’s paper.
Most newspapers are bleeding money, but the express is making money for the Post hand over fist. Why? Well, its short, has very little news in it and has more ads than a Nascar. The paper also has one of the widest readerships in the DC area and no subscribers.
How is this accomplished you ask. Well I will tell you, men and women stand at the metro entrance and bus stops and hand them out to commuters. That’s right, people literally hand this thing to you when you get on the train. The thing that sparked my interest was that one of the was actually reading the headline off of the paper today.
For some reason I was thrown back to the 20’s (maybe it’s the economy) but I could see some scrappy kid crowing out the headlines while downtrodden workers went about their day. I had to laugh because screaming out headlines (ala town crier style) has to be a few hundred years old way of moving the news… and it still works today.
While newspapers are bleeding money and looking for new ways to create revenue many are turning to the internet. I understand the internet has made some people some money but its now a golden goose anymore. I use the papers as an analogy for how reinventing the wheel isn’t always par for the course when it comes to marketing.
Look at things that have worked in the past, will they work in the future, can you change something small to make it work in the 21st century. Have you noticed any age old marketing tools resurrected to work in today’s market? Let me know.
It’s an old adage, my dad is very fond of saying it, but in today’s market it doesn’t really make any sense. Take Pandora.com: For all the music sites in the web Pandora offers the simplest interface and the most music.
Today marks a great day, Pandora has made it to windows mobile. Being a windows mobile devotee I can’t tell you how much this excites me. My music, my votes, on my phone. Life is good. This brings me back to getting what I paid for.
I have never paid for Pandora. Sure the site has some advertisements on it, which I click through every now and then, but I have never given Pandora a dime of my money. This, I believe, has spoiled me as a consumer. I have begun to expect high level of services for no money.
I don’t think I can be the only person who sees it this way. I almost never pay for a web service, rarely pay for a mobile phone service, and truly hate buying software. My attitude is hurting innovation in our digital economy. Think about it, years ago if someone wrote software they could expect to get paid for it, now they have to find some way to attract a user base and then monetize it.
Is anyone else out there worried about this trend? Do we see dark days for software? Will all apps in the future have to be free ad based programming? Let me know.
Burger King has taken a good deal of flack lately about their new campaign Burger Virgins. The campaign is pretty simple, a film crew from Burger King went to regions of the world where people who have never seen a hamburger. They filmed the local’s interaction with the burgers and then asked them which burger they liked better, the Whopper or the Big Mac.
You can see the campaign here: http://www.whoppervirgins.com. The company that produced these spots is the same marketing firm that produced they ‘No Whopper’ campaign last year. Burger King is taking heat from groups proclaiming that BK is flaunting food to hungry people in impoverished countries.
Burger King went to great lengths, working with local governments, to find people who have food but who have never seen a hamburger. Still many groups protest the ad campaign and protest Burger King.
While people have the right to protest what they want, the protesters are actually helping promote Burger King’s new campaign. Burger King is getting a good deal of free press surrounding a campaign that in my opinion isn’t that bad.
I have been to close to 40 different countries in my life, have met plenty of people who have never experienced American cuisine. Am I some how denigrating them by putting a hamburger in front of them?
I don’t know, I might be missing something. What is your opinion.
