What happens when the world runs out of oil?
Running on Empty from Ross Ching on Vimeo.
Saturday, 31 July 2010
Idiots of Ants Dad sketch
This is one of my favourite new sketches on BBC Comedy right now - partly because I guess there's a dreadful dad joke in all of us!
Friday, 30 July 2010
Ten tips for making video clips go viral
The following tips were taken from a session I attended recently that was run by a few folks in commercial UK social media and viral marketing sector. The focus of this post is mostly on how certain creative elements can help a video clip find its audience.
Oliver Newton from Starcomm MediaVest serves up an analogy from history to begin his talk on the history of viral.
Paul Revere was a prominent silversmith and American patriot who played a key role as one of three horseback messengers in The Midnight Ride – part of the battle for American independence with the British in 1775.
Revere was sent out by Dr. Joseph Warren to warn people about the approaching British army. William Dawes was also sent out but on a different route.
Revere was a prosperous and well-connected artisan, while Dawes was much less well-known in the area and connected to far fewer people. Where Dawes knocked on random houses to spread his message of the coming danger, Revere approached his local connectors who, in turn, alerted their local connectors, and so on.
While the message was simple - ‘the British are coming’ - it wasn’t enough for Dawes who lacked the quality of and scope of connections held by Revere. Flash forward 200 or more years to our marketing obsessed world and there’s a lesson to learn.
"In October 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary. A year later their footage was found."
The Blair Witch Project became the blueprint viral in movie world. Numerous fake sites were set up to support the legend of Blair Witch. A sheriff’s missing person’s report; Hi8 video tapes found by The University of Maryland’s Anthropology Department; stills films and a mix tape from the car that was left abandoned. All of this contributed to the mystery of the film and left clues to try to solve, and share.
Facebook, Twitter, You Tube etc. have become social accelerators. Where once your inbox was clogged with jpegs and clips, information is much more easily and rapidly shared with groups of people all over the web. So what makes people share?
• To strengthen bonds – people like to feel liked, and spreading stuff they think their friends will like increases that bond
• Define our identity – are you IN or OUT in terms of the quality of stuff you share?
• Increase status - in product terms, Google juice, audience reach
• Create value:
As a result its videos have achieved 120m views on YouTube; 700% sales growth while Blendtech became leading US blender company. They also made £50k alone on first video in ad sales alongside the clip alone.
Matt Smith from The Viral Factory on what makes good virals…
4) Start with the audience – think about what they would really like to see, not so much what you want to force upon them. Then work back from there.
This Lynx example demonstrates the art of the escalation gag. The premise? What would it be like if you sprayed on more Lynx deodorant? Here the team took the idea as far as it would possibly go. Then they ended on a high, and got out quick. Result: 45m+ views.
We all love a bit of packaging porn don’t we? Ummm, err, yeah! The idea here was to tap directly into this community by saying ‘We made this for you’. It targets early adopters and says ‘we understand you’ in the hope that it would directly connect with that audience. Result: 5m+ views.
Breathing Places festive viral. £12k budget, 3m views in 2 weeks.
BUT...it's not just about clip views!
It's also worth noting here that if it's not just general brand awareness you're trying to achieve, and instead you want people to come back to your site from YouTube or elsewhere, think carefully about how you get them to do so. I'm told by BBC colleagues that this clip did very little to bring traffic to the Breathing Places site. For example some video annotation on the clip linking back to BBC might have helped (though perhaps that wasn't available as a feature at the time). Also, adding a link back to the site from the intro might have helped, rather than simply milking the fluffy animals angle in isolation.
The YouTube HD Camera trick challenge below appeals to the puzzle fans, the problem solvers, the folks who are happy to waste their morning figuring out how something was done. It played on the power of the collective mind. It created buzz by getting people talking about how it was done. The more conversation the better.
For Diesel XXX The Viral Factory hooked into a meme that had been around for two years prior to this campaign, though this was just a stills image based one. Importantly, the agency made it obvious they'd nicked the idea from the community who started it off. They offered some seeding budget to the original group of meme creators to get that community on-board because they were an influential bunch. The lesson here is that stealing ideas is only okay if you don't try to pretend that your idea is the original one. The internet answers back. Result: 10m+ views.
Chris Quigley, Managing Partner Rubber Republic
For this slo-mo surfer clip the team planned what conversations they wanted to start, and with which communities. For example, the clip obviously appeals to natural history enthusiasts, surfers and wider sports communities, but dig deeper and there's another potential audience - the HD camera/tech enthusiasts. The clip was filmed on a $100,000 camera. This was featured on Gizmodo not simply by chance, but because Rubber Republic told them to "Check this amazing camera, which this awesome clips was filmed with..."
Oliver Newton from Starcomm MediaVest serves up an analogy from history to begin his talk on the history of viral.
Paul Revere was a prominent silversmith and American patriot who played a key role as one of three horseback messengers in The Midnight Ride – part of the battle for American independence with the British in 1775.
Revere was sent out by Dr. Joseph Warren to warn people about the approaching British army. William Dawes was also sent out but on a different route.
Revere was a prosperous and well-connected artisan, while Dawes was much less well-known in the area and connected to far fewer people. Where Dawes knocked on random houses to spread his message of the coming danger, Revere approached his local connectors who, in turn, alerted their local connectors, and so on.
While the message was simple - ‘the British are coming’ - it wasn’t enough for Dawes who lacked the quality of and scope of connections held by Revere. Flash forward 200 or more years to our marketing obsessed world and there’s a lesson to learn.
1) Having a simple, powerful message is very important, but that isn’t enough if you want to get noticed. Getting the message sent to the right communities, and connecting with the right people (influencers) makes every bit of difference.
2) By creating a blur between fact and fiction you give people a reason to talk about you, to seek out clues and information.
The Blair Witch Project became the blueprint viral in movie world. Numerous fake sites were set up to support the legend of Blair Witch. A sheriff’s missing person’s report; Hi8 video tapes found by The University of Maryland’s Anthropology Department; stills films and a mix tape from the car that was left abandoned. All of this contributed to the mystery of the film and left clues to try to solve, and share.
3) Cross interest groups. Tapping into the social currency of the moment creates a connection that spans different interest groups.
Facebook, Twitter, You Tube etc. have become social accelerators. Where once your inbox was clogged with jpegs and clips, information is much more easily and rapidly shared with groups of people all over the web. So what makes people share?
• To strengthen bonds – people like to feel liked, and spreading stuff they think their friends will like increases that bond
• Define our identity – are you IN or OUT in terms of the quality of stuff you share?
• Increase status - in product terms, Google juice, audience reach
• Create value:
- Emotional - people like to get things, be it physical, emotional, or virtual
- Real value - what do I get out of this? Physical or material rewards...etc.
- Entertainment value
The Will It Blend series has been enormously successful at all of the above with its simple content theme that appeals to numerous audiences.
As a result its videos have achieved 120m views on YouTube; 700% sales growth while Blendtech became leading US blender company. They also made £50k alone on first video in ad sales alongside the clip alone.
Matt Smith from The Viral Factory on what makes good virals…
4) Start with the audience – think about what they would really like to see, not so much what you want to force upon them. Then work back from there.
5) Align yourself with niche communities
We all love a bit of packaging porn don’t we? Ummm, err, yeah! The idea here was to tap directly into this community by saying ‘We made this for you’. It targets early adopters and says ‘we understand you’ in the hope that it would directly connect with that audience. Result: 5m+ views.
6) Never underestimate the power of cute, preferably anthropomorphised animals.
Breathing Places festive viral. £12k budget, 3m views in 2 weeks.
BUT...it's not just about clip views!
It's also worth noting here that if it's not just general brand awareness you're trying to achieve, and instead you want people to come back to your site from YouTube or elsewhere, think carefully about how you get them to do so. I'm told by BBC colleagues that this clip did very little to bring traffic to the Breathing Places site. For example some video annotation on the clip linking back to BBC might have helped (though perhaps that wasn't available as a feature at the time). Also, adding a link back to the site from the intro might have helped, rather than simply milking the fluffy animals angle in isolation.
7) Tip: Give people something to solve
The YouTube HD Camera trick challenge below appeals to the puzzle fans, the problem solvers, the folks who are happy to waste their morning figuring out how something was done. It played on the power of the collective mind. It created buzz by getting people talking about how it was done. The more conversation the better.
8) Steal the best ideas!
For Diesel XXX The Viral Factory hooked into a meme that had been around for two years prior to this campaign, though this was just a stills image based one. Importantly, the agency made it obvious they'd nicked the idea from the community who started it off. They offered some seeding budget to the original group of meme creators to get that community on-board because they were an influential bunch. The lesson here is that stealing ideas is only okay if you don't try to pretend that your idea is the original one. The internet answers back. Result: 10m+ views.
Chris Quigley, Managing Partner Rubber Republic
9) Make sure your content is talkable; a catalyst for conversation. Not just another YouTube clip.
For this slo-mo surfer clip the team planned what conversations they wanted to start, and with which communities. For example, the clip obviously appeals to natural history enthusiasts, surfers and wider sports communities, but dig deeper and there's another potential audience - the HD camera/tech enthusiasts. The clip was filmed on a $100,000 camera. This was featured on Gizmodo not simply by chance, but because Rubber Republic told them to "Check this amazing camera, which this awesome clips was filmed with..."
10) Properly plan the theme, the community and the conversation
- Remember you're giving to the community, not taking
- Plan the right conversations with the right communities
- Know your communities well
- Be socially awesome
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Google upgrades to Metaweb
So the biggest company on the web just bought the biggest player in the semantic web space?
I'll spare you the details of it here as you can read that here, there, and everywhere.
No, what I found more interesting was Metaweb's great little video explaining not just what they're all about, but also how powerful this new age of machine readable websites will very soon become. And all without a single mention of the S------- word.
So, what might this latest acquisition mean for users of Google?
In short their contextual search results will become yet more powerful - adding to their already mighty armoury of snippets, squared and answers.
To get a flavour of what this might mean in very simple terms, check out the pink box in the grab below from Bing, who've already used Metaweb's open Freebase database in their search results. No wonder they're 'nibbling away at Google's market share'.
I'll spare you the details of it here as you can read that here, there, and everywhere.
No, what I found more interesting was Metaweb's great little video explaining not just what they're all about, but also how powerful this new age of machine readable websites will very soon become. And all without a single mention of the S------- word.
So, what might this latest acquisition mean for users of Google?
In short their contextual search results will become yet more powerful - adding to their already mighty armoury of snippets, squared and answers.
To get a flavour of what this might mean in very simple terms, check out the pink box in the grab below from Bing, who've already used Metaweb's open Freebase database in their search results. No wonder they're 'nibbling away at Google's market share'.
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