We are always concerned when a client begins a conversation about digital influence with viral video. It's just that we want to create a strategy first. There are plenty of good uses of remarkable video. They can serve reach goals and they can sometimes serve engagement goals.
I wanted to take a look at individual videos that are being shared out there. Some I have discovered through my seemingly endless reading (ok, scanning), some came from my very smart students at Johns Hopkins, some from colleagues. This is a simple round up of what works (beyond the obvious grand slam of our Toronto group's success with Dove Evolution).
Entertainment
Getting a talent like Christopher Guest to direct a 2:33 music video - or a couple of them - is a great move. He obviously has a draw amongst a smart, well-educated audience and he embraces the geek in all of us through every movie he has done. This particular video for Intel (a client but we had nothing to do with this) is great - it's funny, dense-enough that you may watch it a few times, lives up to what I expect from Christopher Guest, and it associates Intel with someone/something that is uncharateristically cool. It's at almost 25K views over 3-4 weeks which is not huge. But it is very B2B and huge numbers aren't necessarily the endgame. There are lots of B2B videos out there with tech companies, specifically trying to have fun. Branded entertainment isn't as it easy as it looks. And Christopher Guest is 'A' - level talent.
Good for: Reach & Awareness (not much about it leads to engagement - there is no click-through call-to-action)
How-it-works
I am a big fan of white board How-to's and How-it-works and this one about social networks is particularly good. This format is deceptively simple-looking yet it relies heavily on the "presenter" - either by being compelling or being a great counterpart to the visual story. The visual story is tightly choreographed. I would be surpised to discover that this was not painstakingly rehearsed. This is part of the "in Plain English" series that also includes "Wikis in Plain English."
Here's one from another source that has been around about a year (610K views) and outlines the marketing potential of SecondLife
Good for: Engagement, Thought Leadership
Futurecasting
There have been a lot of compelling videos that portray a vision of the future. This one was shared by Steven Feld, one of my graduate students (and smart guy). Called Prometeus - The Media Revolution (Prometheus?) it paints a picture of the future with enough sprinklings of present fact to be super compelling. And the Italian accent doesn't hurt either. Intel has one called the Intel UMPC Vision Video (again client but not involved in this one)
I am a sucker for future visions. We used to do these regularly at ATT&Viacom back in the early nineties to vision out what ITV might become.
Good for: Engagement, Thought Leadership
Interviews & Notable Presentations
Hearing from someone you admire or who interests you is "of-use." This goes beyond entertainment by offering access to a thoughtleader's POV that you might not normally have access to. Google has an internal series, Authors@Google, which is pretty much what it sounds like. this one features David Weinberger, author of Everything is Miscellaneous and the Cluetrain Manifesto (co-author). So, Google has these on-campus events for the sake of employees and then posts the videos for the sake of everyone. Great move. I have seen David speak and know he is insightful and inspirational. This is a series which features many authors including Christopher Hitchens and Floyd Landis.
Good for: Awareness, Engagement, Thought Leadership ( I have added 'awareness' here as the authors or notables will draw their own viewers thus introducing fans of the author to the sponsoring company.)
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