socialTNT» Viral video

“Will YouTube Decide Election? Candidates Videos By the Numbers”

Christopher Lynn — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:08:31 +0000

Back during the primaries, socialTNT rated the social media strategies of the Democratic and Republican candidates. Based on their adept use of these tools, we chose Ron Paul and Barack Obama as most likely to succeed. (John McCain got a “barely passing.”). Has this changed? Today, we take a look at the numbers and ask if YouTube will decided the next president of the United States. (Also, check out socialTNT’s look at our top election viral videos)

Barack Obama’s YouTube channel has 1818 videos. With almost 19 million channel views. The videos include speeches, candid interviews, family stories, user-generated fun videos, produced ads and videos that serve as instructional voters’ guides for key states.

Compare that to McCain’s channel: 330 videos with 2 million channel views. The content is mostly produced ads.

In 1960, John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon squared off in the first televised presidential debate. For the first time, voters get to see the candidates instead of just hearing them through the radio. A TV-trained, tan, young and fit JFK sat alongside a tired, scruffy, old Richard Nixon. JFK went on to win the election.

If their really is a generational shift, will Obama’s superb use of social media help him win the election? Will user-generated videos steer people’s votes? Or is it all just superficial friending with nothing behind it. We will find out tonight.

NOW GET OUT AND VOTE!

“Viral Videos of the Presidential Campaign 2008″

Christopher Lynn — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:35:21 +0000

While it may be too early to predict the next president, we can declare online video the winner of this year’s presidential election. (UPDATE: Check out socialTNT’s look at the YouTube channels for both presidential candidates and ask if YouTube will decide this election.)

This election started really early, making it the longest campaign season ever. One of the first videos that stood out in this election was “Vote Different,” video created by an Obama supporter back in March of 2007. The video has over 5.5 M views and mashes up Hilary’s overly-produced YouTube videos with the iconic 1984 Apple ad.

In June 2007, a scantly clad, busty, Mariah Carey-like young lady named Obama Girl puts up a video singing why she loves Obama. The catchy song, “I Got a Crush…on Obama” features hip-hop beats and a sumamry of Barack’s platform. This hot video received over 10 M views and landed Obama Girl spots on several new shows.

Not to be out done by an unknown, music mogul Will.i.am from the Black-eyed Peas created a music video. “Yes We Can” samples Barack’s “Yes We Can” speech. To date, the video has over 11 M views.

After the conventions, the videos started to get a little heated. The below video of McCain-Palin supporters at a rally made national news. It also shows the darker side of the election.

As election day approaches, it’s no surprise that the candidates competitive nature starts to heat up. This video , “Obama McCain Dance Off,” highlights what happens when candidates step out from behind the podiums and go to battle.

What makes viral videos successful is their ability to resonate with the spirit of the times. In 2000, Budweiser created a “Wassup,” a commercial that became a catch phrase and the subject of many YouTube videos. In this next video, “Wassup 2008,” we see the guys eight years later.

What were some of your favorite viral videos from this year’s presidential election? Share in the comments!

“May I Have The Embed Code, Please? Evaluating the Oscars Social Media Strategy”

Christopher Lynn — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:01:11 +0000

Can’t get enough Oscar? Neither can we. But, unlike other blogs, we aren’t gonna recap the show or even discuss the stars’ outfits. Stepping out in true geek fashion, today socialTNT looks at the Academy’s social media strategies and offers up tips on how Oscar can stay young.

Best CyberScreen Adaptation

Oscar makes his CyberScreen debut in style with his own YouTube channel. We have to admit, we were really impressed! The videos, numbering 69 at time of writing, cover the full gambit of what we have come to expect with video campaigns. The channel includes favorite acceptance speeches and greatest moments in Oscar history.
We’re suckers for behind-the-scenes videos, which is probably why our favorites were short video interviews with past winners discussing topics like: What it’s like to be nominated, the voting process, what it’s like to win and how to produce an Oscar montage. Aspiring Future Winners: Avoid the embarrassment of being drowned out by the orchestra, and check out this video on how to prepare an acceptance speech
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ President Sid Ganis did have some videos for a video blog. Check out the last entry chronicling final preparations before the big night.
We were a little confused by other cool features like the “Thank You Cam” and Antonio Sabato’s overly produced “Road to The Oscars” journal. They are hosted on the Oscars page, but not found on the YouTube channel. This schizophrenic offshoot requires that you watch a video ad before the clip and it’s not sharable or embeddable. What?!
How to make it better? Give nominees webcams and let them video blog the full experience, from nomination to post-awards. Sadly, not everyone can be nominated for the movie world’s top prize, so this could provide a more unfiltered look at the drama and excitement that is the Oscars.
Following in the footsteps of the Crunchies, maybe the Oscars could have 10-second video responses filmed by each of the nominees.
You know all the technical awards? Well, there are tons of aspiring young make-up artists, sound editors, and costume designers who would love to see behind-the-scenes of the award nominees in action. Those vignettes are shown during the awards presentation, so why not make the full videos available online!

Best Original BlogPlay

Yup, the Academy had an official live blogger, Joel Stein.
Now, we’re not knocking Joel, but maybe the Academy could have also invited a couple of bloggers from big entertainment or movie blogs to officially live-blog the show from the Kodak theater. Yes, they are probably going to blog it from home, but an official invite is a powerful gesture that could leverage preexisting reader communities’ excitement about the show.
Nominees are busy busy, but they could still Twitter The academy could also aggregate all discussion on Twitter regarding the academy awards and post it on the home page.
What if iJustine could videocast backstage?! HOT!

Best Application in a Social Network

You may not have known this, but the Academy has a Facebook widget. According to the Oscar site, the widget has a countdown feature, trivia game, and plays the ad-sponsored videos not found on YouTube.
Sadly, Oscar’s widget only has around 1,000 users, with only 32% of them active. This could be due to the oh-so-uninspiring description on the app’s page: “Follow the latest buzz about this year’s Academy Awards! Add the OSCAR Widget today. Click the blue “Add to Page” button in the right column!” *yawn* Also, it looks like it may have just been launched a few weeks ago.
Application adoption is really hard to break in to. Some suggestions for Oscar: let users earn points to send virtual gifts, or allow them to create mash-up montages of the nominees or past shows. Also, people love movie-compatibility quizzes.

Next Year’s Nominees?

The Academy should try to utilize preexisting communities like Facebook groups to build buzz.
Flickr photo stream to compile all the photos tagged with Academy Awards. Also, make the photos already on the site embeddable.
Wikis on all the Lifetime Achievement folks we might not know.
Tribute pages for the dead Academy members.

All in all, socialTNT was really satisfied with the Academy’s social media efforts. The Academy should be fully applauded for their YouTube efforts. In terms of strategy, our only suggestion would be to start the seeding process a couple weeks–if not months–out. The first videos to be posted were from 5 days before the event. That’s not really enough time to “go viral.”

As Hollywood starts to see online video as a valid and viable revenue stream, and as TV viewership drops, the Oscars will inevitably be faced with doing more CyberScreen adaptation. How did you think the Academy fared? Was there anything you thought could have been added that wasn’t? Tell us in the comments!

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[The above photo, “Oscar” by Alan Light, is used under Creative Commons]

“AwardShow2.0: A Crunchies 2007 Recap”

Marie Williams — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 16:01:51 +0000

[ Today's post is written by socialTNT's new contributing writer, Marie Williams. She joins us from her other blog, flackette. Please join me in giving Marie a warm welcome.]

Last Friday, socialTNT attended the very first Crunchie awards. For those of you who were unable to go or who missed the live webcast, we offer you a short recap with our picks for the best highlights.

The Crunchies 2007 were hosted by our favorite tech-blog monarchs TechCrunch, GigaOm, Read/Write Web and VentureBeat . With nominees like Twitter, Digg, Facebook, and TechMeme, the event was a who’s who of technology greats. My dates for the evening were the talented team over at UGOBE, whose adorable robotic dinosaur, Pleo, was nominated alongside the iPhone and the Wii in the best new gadget category (full disclosure: UGOBE is a SHIFT client).

The event lay in stark contrast to the recently canceled Golden Globes awards, the infamous snoozefest known in recent years for its boring lineups and watered-down content. Without official “script writers” and fancy schmancy talent, the Crunchies awards presentation was one of the most entertaining awards ceremonies we’ve witnessed in quite a few years. I mean, who needs the typical, scripted dribble when you can watch Fake Steve Jobs drop f-bombs from the comfort of your own computer? Take that, FCC!

The awards ceremony was broadcast live over the Web and integrated a number of social media components. The Crunchies’ heavy incorporation of Web video may foreshadow a whole new era in award show formats. One of the most entertaining social media integrations of the night was a video compilation of 10-second responses from nominees. Introduced by video blogger Sarah Meyers, many of the responses were filmed using unconventional methods, including personal digital cameras and webcams.

Without further ado, here are socialTNT’s video picks of the night:

Best Live Version of a Viral Video: The upbeat crooning of The Richter Scales performing their popular You-Tube video “Here comes another Bubble” on-stage.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7XveeXr7Wg]

Best Award Into Video: CrunchGear’s John Biggs, dressed in a chic blazer with a floral ascot and a pipe hanging from his hand, announcing the nominees for Best New Gadget. Am I watching “Animal House” or an awards ceremony? No matter. The video is hilarious.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=jez88kAbcSE]

Best Acceptance Speech: (Fake) Steve Jobs (aka Dan Lyons) accepting the award for the iPhone as winner of Best New Gadget. My favorite part: “Steve” talks about the new MacBook Air while bending and twisting a Manila envelope to showcase the Air’s awesome design (“it’s actually in there right now”).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmfP6aXNSis]

Best 10 Second Nominee Response Video: All of these were so amazing that we couldn’t pick just one. In the first video, the ProductWiki guys shows you how to bootstrap like a pro. In the second, Nova Spivack of Twine shows off THE most disruptive technology of all time. I promise, you will be blown away.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG41Bzf1zpU]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Sd4d6SkIRs]

And that’s a wrap! Still not satisfied? Take a look at the full list of winners, or check out other recaps to munch on:

“Please Standby: Rethinking Online Video Strategy”

Christopher Lynn — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:07:02 +0000

Ahhh, what a difference a year makes. Last year, “You” won Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, user-generated content was king, and everyone wanted to create a viral video.

This week, there has been a lot of discussion of online video. The magicians are telling their secrets. And as the magic wears off, it seems many times the Emperor is actually wearing no clothes. Today, we’ll take a look at what the last year has taught us about online video and try to find ways we can make it a conversation.

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

This week, two articles came out, both promising to provide readers with tips on viral video making. Let’s take a look at some of the tips and see if they are fully utilizing social media to engage the consumer

The first, a post on TechCrunch by Dan Ackerman Greenberg, felt like I was reading something dirty. He does outline several good specs on the video itself, but it’s the more outreach oriented tips that pose dangerous:

“We reach out to individuals who run relevant blogs and actually pay them to post our embedded videos.”
“…kickstarting the conversations by setting up multiple accounts on each forum and posting back and forth between a few different users.”
“We get a few people in our office to log in throughout the day and post heated comments back and forth (you can definitely have a lot of fun with this).”
“Also, we aren’t afraid to delete comments…We can’t let one user’s negativity taint everyone else’s opinions.”

Sounds like old-school, one-sided, totally opaque marketing to me. This is truly pushing content at the consumer without caring what they have to say. In fact, it reminds me of a modern day laugh track; the consumer is fooled into believing that others have thought about, commented, and enjoyed the video.

The second article comes from Kevin Nalts in a guest piece for Advertising Age. He offers several of the same specs (keep it short, quality doesn’t matter, proper tags, etc.) but gives brands suggestions that seem more community-focused.

“We’ll watch your advertising and even spread it for you — unless you promote gratuitously, insult us or, worse yet, bore us.”
“The smarter play is to sponsor popular video creators to create entertainment with product placement. This requires brands to let go of overt marketing messages and trust the instincts of creators to please their audiences.”
“Some brands fear running a contest because they don’t want to be ridiculed. But brands will be bashed by disgruntled consumers via online video whether or not their companies dabble in the space. Quietly watching from the sidelines is no insurance policy and certainly won’t grow revenue.”

I think Kevin’s piece gets closer to the idea that social media should engage a community. Considering the user-base and realizing the conversation is already in progress are great suggestions, but can we take it deeper? How can we better engage our audiences?

Turn That Pumpkin into a Carriage

In a NewTeeVee post yesterday from Craig Rubens, the question is asked: “Online Video: Is It Really Interactive?” Although specifically about online entertainment series, what he says can be applied to marketing and PR video campaigns:

Although the online video experience would appear to be this mythical, multilateral, interactive video utopia, the reality is, in fact, quite different. Because while it’s certainly possible for a network of collaborative video artists to work together, online, to piece together a long-term video mosaic of participatory brilliance, the reality has often been more of an ad hoc, trivial mess of mediocrity.

As we awaken from the spell of online video, we have to take it to the next level. I know online videos are entertaining ways to convey messages, but can we use the medium more effectively? It may be a Utopian dream, but we have to incorporate all the features and beauty of social media into our online video campaigns. What can we do?

Contests seem to be the most common approach to getting the consumer involved. Most companies simply have users generate commercial content for the company. But is this really two-sided?

In order to converse with users in their community, we have to learn how those communities work. On YouTube, most people post videos which are then replied to in either video or text form through comments. Full threads sprout and conversations go back and forth.

With that in mind, here are some tips:

You’ve got a blog, great! What about a weekly video series?
- You can create a company channel on YouTube and then embed into your blog.
- It’s Really easy to set-up. Just buy a digital point-and-shoot camera. I recommend the Canon SD-series.
Don’t spam. Offer tips or tricks. Or Industry trend commentary.
- Make the content valuable, not just forgettable. Give people a reason to share the video and return to your channel.
- Check out this great channel from California Cosmetics, an enterprising make-up artist.
Post casual conversations and interviews.
- Mini press conferences, these can inform your community or be re-purposed by vertical blogs.
Live videocasts of press conferences, company events or trade shows.
- Set-up a Ustream.tv account and do
- A spokesperson can be a newscaster interviewing other top execs.

Hopefully this infuse some creativity into the use of online videos. What other ways can we jumpstart our video campaigns to engage our audiences and actually communicate with them instead of just pushing content? Or is everything cool in YouTube-land?

Oh, and if you think consumers aren’t creating their own dialog with your “viral video” campaigns, check out this mash-up created by a guy who realized that Dove and Axe are both owned by the same company. Both have viral videos with conflicting messages. Take a look:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=SwDEF-w4rJk]

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“Ain’t nuthin but a CRM thang baby”

Christopher Lynn — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 01:43:34 +0000

Can B2B or enterprise PR and marketing campaigns include off-the-wall viral videos? You bethca!

Self-service direct email marketing solution provider Vertical Response recently released their version of Dr. Dre’s Mega-Hit “Nuthin but a G Thang” to get customers and partners excited about their services before Salesforce’s global tradeshow, Dreamforce.

Everything about the video is OTC. It’s shot around SF’s tech-heavy SOMA neighborhood, an iPhone makes a cameo, one of the rappers has a grill, and “ROI” and “dope” are used in the same sentence!

Ch-Check out the video (after the jump):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq4m2JnCTo4]

Yup Yup. These lines show the mass-ter marketing lyrical skills of VR’s rappers Furious Alf and 2fein:

“Email and CRM together/Now you know you’re in trouble”
“Aint nuthin but an app thang baby/we sendin mass emails like crazy”
VerticalResponse’s CEO and Founder–and blogger–Janine Popick posts a case-study of the video, offering a peek into the thinking behind and creation of this vertical marketing dork super-hit.

Mad props to the VR Crew for coming up with a unique way to hype people up about enterprise solutions.

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