Do Marketers Understand Online Video?

by Nalts on February 11, 2008

So it’s been a week since my last post. I’m rusty. Yet I’m down in Florida at the iMediaConnection Brand Summit, and the theme is “Turning Advertising Into Content.” I simply love that tagline, and quite possibly may steal it.

The event is packed with marketers from some of the largest names in the world — Coke, Best Buy, Bank of America, AOL, Cadillac, Martha Stewart, Target, Microsoft. Thank GOODNESS nobody is here from USAirways. The 6th best-rated video of the day on YouTube is my story of the horrible flight I took down here last night.

Highlight was meeting the guy behind the YouTube promotions for Intuit. We’ve all seen the Quicken tax ads (from the raps to the recent comedy contest), and it was fantastic hearing about how Intuit’s approach has evolved. Today is the one-year anniversary of the tax rap program, and obviously YouTube has grown a bit since.

To give you a sense of how much variance there is among marketers, I’ll contrast a few comments from marketers. On one hand, we have Intuit — the first brand I’ve even heard acknowledge (without any prompts from me) the value of promoting through creators who have established audiences. On the other hand, we have some eMarketing “administrators” that believe they’re exploring online video because they have video testimonials on their website.

The world is changing quickly, and Brad Berens (iMedia Communication) did a charismatic opening that allowed participants to vote on remote devices. I was encouraged to see that both agencies and vendors expect their television and print budgets to migrate online rapidly in 2008. Jeff Rayport (Fonder of Marketspace, LLC and former Harvard professor) gave a fascinating keynote that set the bar high.

Tomorrow I’ll be on a panel titled “The Golden Rule of Consumer-Generated Advertising: Know Thy Ad Creator.” If they videotape it I’ll post it. I usually take a camera with me on the panel, but I’ve yet to post a video… it’s not very entertaining to see me rambling about marketing. Maybe tomorrow I’ll fart audibly. That should make a good video.

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