Digital Influence Mapping Project

How to Create the Next Video on the Web: Creative Marketing Models

This post is part of a 5-part series. How can we all be successful with the next wave of video on the Web whether you are a show producer or a brand? Creative Marketing Models are one of four important priorities. 

Previous posts talked about getting the show and the audience engagement right. But none of this matters unless you have a innovative and effective advertiser model. Pre-roll, post-roll, surround banners and product integration seems to be where we are at right now. Advertisers value click throughs and impressions tied to views. But even views are open to interpretation. Revision3 recently made a higher commitment by defining views as complete views. It's likely that few other producers do that.   

Beyond Product Integration

The product integration in magazine format shows like TMI weekly  and EpicFu are the most interesting models. Still, I am not sure that product integration in narrative story is as flexible or impactful. It's one thing to put Ford vehicles in network TV shows but quite another to drop product in the background of a niche dramatic video online. We need more.

Engagement

Advertising value is changing. Some marketers understand that and are working hard to put a value on engagement. The time has come for show producers to get more creative for how they deliver engagement with the brands that support them. We need to think in terms of "marketing" not simply advertising for the brand involved in a video program. If you want to ptoduce a show or are already doing so, what is the story you tell advertisers about the ad opportunity? If it's just impressions or even click-to-action your wasting everyone's time. If you are talking about engagement via product integration than you are on the right track.

But you need to go farther. The most entrepeneurial online producers I know come from the Joss Whedon school of creating a show as multimedia brand. That means the video program is but one touchpoint and experience. Email updates and alerts, merchandise stores, related media like music and pictures, live events (like Diggnation's meetups) are all part of the the engagement. Weave sponsors in there. Show them solutions at all levels of the funnel - drive some qualified leads or relevant inquiries. Make them a friend of the show brand and therefore a potential friend of the particpants - then your getting something done.

Idea Bar #12 Next Video on the Web: Threadless Meets Next New Networks

This post is part of a 5-part series. How can we all be successful with the next wave of video on the Web whether you are a show producer or a brand? Crowdsourcing topics is one of four important priorities and is technically one of my Idea Bar posts.  

This series started with this core idea. That's what makes it part of theIdea Bar series which is full of good ideas - each driven by expertise and naivete. Ultimately this simple idea led me to want to throw out my own model on how niche video programs can succeed online.

Threadless as you all likely know is the quintessential Cinderella story for crowdsourcing. T-shirt designers post designs, the crowd votes them up (or not) and the top designs are produced and sold.

Why not do this with your show? In the previous post on Focusing on Value to Niche Communities, I covered catering to the needs of a defined, lean-forward affinity group. Why not ask them for ideas and votes on what would make a compelling show for them? What would make them want to susbcribe? Just like Threadless has the "I'd Buy That" button, our show marketplace would have a "I'd Watch That"  and an "I'd Watch That Every Week" voting buttons. The principle is the same - prove there is an audience before going into costly production. What a great way to get marketers on board  before you have actually killed yourself bootstrapping production and building an audience.

Now lest you think I am slipping into the territory of the movie, The Player, where the studio exec decrys the need of writers by saying all we have to do is pick out a story from the paper and, "bam" there's our script, let me clarify. Let the crowd tell us what they would find compelling - what topics, what participants, what format - and then let the creative juices flow. We are not talking "exquisite corpse" here.

The biggest barrier to this model is likely to be "ego." Many show creators are trying to express an idea they are personally invested in. It's tough to become open to the audience. Beyond the poor quality of many videos, this issue - which can be called "control" - might be one of the larger barriers to success. Most filmmakers I know are passionate storytellers first. To win online, you must be passionate about your audience first. Diggnation seems to do a good job of this.

Next New Networks started with the promise of a hundred online shows for all sorts of audiences. They have quite a few today but more like 15 than a hundred. What would happen if married that ambition with a crowdsourced model? 

How to Create the Next Video on the Web: Niche, Affinity Communities

 

This post is part of a 5-part series. How can we all be successful with the next wave of video on the Web whether you are a show producer or a brand? Connecting with niche, affinity communities is one of four important priorities.  

The vast "interwebs" has been potent fertilizer on an English garden-growth of niche communities online. We all belong to multiple tribes some of which are more clearly distinuishable and formal than others. We may love a particular music artist, a passion like WarHammer, a craft like t-shirt design, travel to Indonesian islands, or whetever. Some are tighter communities than others. Star Trek fans waiting for the next JJ Abram's movie are a tight group yet they also belong to a broader 'tribe' of Sci-fi fans who are known for their engagement with shows and events. That tribe intersects with the comic fan tribe who may be watching the Next New Networks Pulp Secret. "Crafting" is another "lean-forward" community with lots of enthusiasts assembled from even smaller niche interests.

Building a show that will uniquely deliver value to a particular affinity community almost guarantees a passionate audience. That audience may not be large enough to satisfy the True Show Value (the cost of quality, value to the audience and advertising value formula ) but it creates that solid core who will work as your most vocal ambassadors. The user and brand value of niche video shows has always been about the level of engagement of the participants. Tomorrow I will talk about why we shouldn't call them "audiences" anymore as a passive viewing experience is not what the niche community will thrive on.

Identifying Niche Communities

Finding niche communities and identifying their members is relatively simple. We do it everyday with our Influencer Mapping for brands. Let's say your brand - Brand G -  makes some type of super energy efficient home appliance that is really designed to address current concerns about energy consumption, cost, and environmental impact. One niche community is the design and sustainability crew which includes all sorts of designers - product designers, graphic designers, architects, furniture designers (many designers are multidisciplinary). Many of them are concerned and focused on sustainability through design. Huge Ven diagram overlap. Brand G would focus on designing a show and the marketing behind it to appeal to the design and sustainability crew. Then they would broaden it - adjust the content slightly and expanded the marketing and outreach to grow the audience amongst design-concious consumers. As an avid, lifelong reader of Metropolis magazine, I guarantee this magazine which covers design and architecture and its impact is read by a ton of non-designers and non-architects.

Make a video show that they want and need. It might be a regular survey of new consumer products that satisfy our new green priorities. It may include interviews with designers, including audience members about their own experiences. It might be a episodic "How to Make Your Life More Green" with step-by-step instructions on transforming your life or household to reduce your carbon footprint, your costs, and more.

So, start with a core community and design your show around their needs. Then expand the focus to include the next ring of participants. You won't go so far as to dilute the show's value for the core and you will expand beyond a too narrow group fo participants.     

Next: Work the "Ladder of Engagement"

How to Create the Next Video on the Web: 4 Priorities for Brands

I love video on the web. The part I like best is not watching "Dollhouse" on every platform under the sun from Fox to Hulu to iPhone (actually, I don't know if you can watch it on the iPhone or not). I like the diversity of the programming coming from young entrepeneurs like Zadi Diaz, new net networks like Revison3, blip.tv and Next New Networks, more personal efforts from tradiitonal "stars" like Will Farrell. Brands have a great opportunity to connect and engage via video on the Web either through partnering with content programmers - like TerraTV on blip.tv -  or becoming their own programmers. Either way, we need to adopt a new discipline to be successful with video going forward.

I just met with a group of tremendously creative show "creators" in LA who will launch a program online over the next few months. They have all been enmeshed in the entertainment business and they know where the business has been and suspect where it is going.  I love their passion, their show concept, and their smartness about making the business side work. I have a lot of heart for their project. Still , succeeding is complicated.

While there are some breakout successes like Seth MacFarlane's channel, most video shows on the Web follow the reverse hockey stick approach where the highly promoted first episode draws a big crowd followed by depressing fall off in episodes 2,3,4. This freefall leaves many programs struggling in the long, long tail. Video production has a threshold level of effort and cost that it cannot routinely dip below. We all want "quality." And while we may be willing to accept Flipcam video interviews and an occaissional clever video thrown together in the backyard by two brothers and a dog, we generally want quality represented by the thinking, creativity, and even production value of the show.

True Show Value

Challenge is that the cost of quality, value to the audience and advertising value formula has not really been cracked yet or cracked consistently enough to spell out a path to success.That is the True Show Value and every producer should know their formula before trying the sell their program.  This is broader than TubeMogul's formula for success which focuses mainly on the creation and distribution of the video and the metadata associated with it. These things are important and I presume most video producers online get this. Too many programs either struggle to build an appreciable audience (size + composition) or to define the value to the advertiser. "Sponsoring" a show that may reach 10,000 uniques of which you know so little about may not translate into a perceived value to the advertiser. I am choosing my words carefully because I believe marketing integration with great content provides great value, I just don't think everyone is great at demonstrating that value.

Many brands want to suceed by reaching their customers or their influencers via video. Brands are learning that they can succeed by becoming content creators and building relationships via that content. Consumer marketers want to create their own episodics that draw moms in for 6-12 epsiodes. B2B marketers want to build a long term relationship with buyers and opinion-formers of their services. How can brands succeed where dedicated video entrepeneurs themselves struggle?

Four Strategic Priorities

There are four strategic priorities that will help. each day this week, I will drill down into one of the four. They represent the disciplined thinking that we need in this next chapter of video on the Web. I believe niche, special interest shows will flourish and I believe brands will reap great value from being a part of or even outright creating their own shows that consumers will increasingly spend time with. One of the keys may be in letting the crowd within a commlunity tell us what they want in terms of programming. Stay tuned as I drill down into each as the week unfolds:

• Focus on the Value to Niche, Affinity Communities

• Work the "Ladder of Engagement"
• Idea Bar #12: Threadless Meets Next New Networks
• Design Creative Marketing Models

Brilliant Online Show: EpicFU

I had a chance to talk with Zadi Diaz and Steve Woolf from EpicFU. I have long been a fan. They are two of the smartest people creating online shows out there. I love their show. They know what it means to create a social experience around their content not just create great video. With their use of a NING social network, they now know about their participants (can't just call them an 'audience' as they are too engaged). that has always been the pitfall of many an online show for marketers who want to know who they are reaching.

Marketers should jump on board their embedded sponsorships. Check out the recent show aith Arianna Huffington (nice house!)

Up Close and Personal at the Olympics

A lot has been written about this particular Olympics being the first "Web 2.0 Olympics." Considering that the Olympics happen every 4 years, it's not surprising that consumer generated media hasn't overtaken the games before now. On the other hand, it is surprising as the games are happening in China and most westerners see China as a restrictive state. Our own experiences in China reveal how much social media conversation and activity there really is. Pictures, videos, and blogs tell a different story than our media would suggest.   They also offer access to a world's worth of personalities.

I love an insider's view of the Olympics. Here are my favorite bits (many made possible by our work with Lenovo - aggregated at Voices of the Olympic Games):

Athletes' photo galleries: when they all marched into the stadium at the beginning of the month, they snapped lots of photos from the parade. Now we can all see them (see Carissa Gump - US Weightlifter left). Flickr: See some neat in-the-stands and on-the-floor shots from Lenovo's team here. 

Blogs: Heather Patri - US Women's Water Polo gives us the skinny on her experiences in the athlete's lounge. Read Josiah NG - track cyclist for Malyasia - his  frank assesment fo his own performance.

Rohit's Video Blog: A walk through of the Olympic Athletes Village - enjoy a behind the scenes stroll on a rainy day last week and visit the special athletes-only store (yum - merch!)

Still in love with BlogHer

I know its right but sometimes it feels so wrong - my love affair with BlogHer. Tomorrow is the first day of the BlogHer Business Summit in NYC. We are hosting the "Best Practices" track. I continue to believe strongly in the value of the BlogHer community for marketers. They are unique. Maybe they don't have the same reach as Federated Media. But they have a vision and integrity (I mean, FM has that too but BlogHer's is special).

The tie that binds members to the collective is stronger than other affiliations. It's born from the relationships developed online in what for all intent and purpose is a social network. These are made deeper during the annual big conference event (July in CA).

The NYC event is really for brand marketers to come together with BlogHer and talk about real ways to collaborate between marketer and blogger. We will be video-ing a bunch of it and will publish soon after. I, of course, cannot be there. Butthe 360° Digital Inlfuence team - Virginia, Laura and Kaitlyn (and I think Matt, too) will all be on hand. Stop in. Say hi.

A window into BlogHaus at CES

Take a look at our buddies, Podtech's, Mogulus implementation for CES. As per previous years, they are running an "off-campus" house for all of the bloggers at CES. Our guys will be out there with Intel. It's fun watching the live feed.

Viral Video: Laughing With Us, Not At Us

Thanks to NewTeeVee, I saw this wonderfully produced video from the Church of Blow and laughed. Somebody should absolutely hire this man (not presuming that he is looking for a job or anything but he is a sharp talent....)

Take a look:

Our team is at Verge: London

Ogilvy has a conference series they run called Verge. It happens in different parts of the world. generally it represents an advertising POV but is now getting more engaged with the principles of participation, engagement and earned media (think of earned media in a new way - very broad and based upon doing something of value which authentically motivates people to discuss or tell stories...)

The London Verge just happened yesterday/today (time shift, right). Rohit was there and has neat interview with Bill Kircos from Intel (disclosure: client) There is another funny one with Bob Garfield who delivers his usual (and smart) death of advertising POV.

Check it out>