Free 3-minute video that’s guaranteed (or your money back) to bring you to deep inner happiness.
It’s all based on music therapy, and it’s been proven in clinical trials by the 11 people that have watched this on Revver. I can’t post it to YouTube because the Partners are on strike. And ChristopherMast is leaving YouTube forever. And Chris Crocker is getting his own E! Show.
Folks, I give you “The Secret to Happiness.” I know I spelled it wrong (hapiness). That was, um, a search-engine trick.
Why haven’t I posted a video in nearly a week? You decide:
Balding white marketer desperately wants to meet smart, strategic media buyer. If you’re one, please recognize you’re not the target of this rant. But the rest of you are just so friggin’ short sighted and clueless.
There are some amazing online-video series that could be incredible opportunities for smart brands wanting to engage with early adopters of a medium that is changing the way we relate to content and brands.
Brands can reach depth and relevancy with their target, even if it’s not driving total significant awareness and immediately creating ROI through driving intent, store visits, and trial.
I give you exhibit one. iChannel. A mere 8000 people are subscribed to this series on YouTube, but the views of the weekly series are roughly three times that (I’m the inverse of that with 30,000 Nalts subscribers, but some recent videos ranging in the 8-15K views). So it’s a healthy and highly devoted and interactive audience. Episode 31 had 180K views alone.
And it’s deeply philosophical, well acted, intelligently scripted and short and addictive. I had the pleasure of appearing in one last May.
These guys spend more time setting up one shot than I do on my entire post production. The audience is like a microcosm of those watching Lost. Or The Office. They’re engaged, passionate, and hold their breath waiting for the next episode.
So why would a media buyer pass on this?
Why should an electronic manufacturer dye to have sole sponsorship?
What’s the solution to grabbing these types of opportunities? Have these deals championed by someone outside the regular media-buying job. While I was at Johnson & Johnson, the big deals between media players (networks and magazines) were done by folks that weren’t inline marketers like me, but had influence over the way media budgets were set across the many brands. After all, J&J couldn’t get interesting deals if each brand fended for itself, and the interesting partnerships required someone that could step outside the short-sighted world I live in when charged with P&L of a brand.
Yey! Nine people bought my “Best of Nalts” DVD, which is precisely 8 more than I expected. Thank you:
One of the problems about it is that you can’t select “play all.” Unfortunately, my Mac crashed and I lost the whole project so I can’t fix that. Thank goodness I produced the DVD, because some of those videos are gone except on this DVD and YouTube.
The quality is amazing, but people in general don’t like to pay for content they can get for free. So I didn’t expect to retire on this, much less cover my cell bill for a month.
Update: March 22. One more!
In further proof that I’ll not likely pass my next new-hire screening, here are two of many prank letters I wrote 17 years ago. The Internet never forgets, and Pat Kutack never forgets to renew his URL dedicated to his now defunct Georgetown University comedy troupe called “Rebels Without Applause.” Mind you, I never had the courage to join the folks on stage. But I video taped their shows (in exchange for an open tab at the bar).
We’ve come full circle haven’t we? Do you think I was kidding about this WillVideoForFood name? I once videotaped a wedding surviving only on olives from the bar.
Here are two letters I shared with Pat during college. They’re prank letters to two cereal manufacturers:
Highlights: November 18, 1990. To Quaker: I have two kids and they used to eat Cap’N Crunch all the time. But then once a friend of mine told me that Cap’N Crunch he’s an icon of the devil. I got to noticing that my kids acting realy strange when they eat the food. The last box I bought I won’t let them eat and its hard anyway ,so they shouldn’t eat it. We aren’t buying your cereal anymore because there scared and I am too of it.
In great diplomacy, Quaker didn’t give the devil his due. But a “consumer response specialist” did explain (see below) that the Cap’n artist was Jay Ward, the creator of Rocky the Squirrel and
Bullwinkle the Moose. So that pretty much cleared things up, and I’ve been a fan of Cap’n ever since. Especially peanut butter.
P.S. This brilliant comment from Marquisdejolie: I remember reading about that. Some poor smoker at General Mills was fired despite his vehement protests of innocence. His wife left him, taking the children and everything he owned except a ratty old recreational vehicle. He lived in it down by the river for years, cultivating a wicked bad drinking habit. Then one day, he snapped, parked the RV along the route of a city parade and began shooting at the floats screaming “There’s your butt! There’s your butt!” The sniper was killed in a hail of police fire, but not before he mortally wounded a much beloved math teacher and three school children. It was in all the papers.
You’re running a brand that is trying to “dip your toe” into social media and online video, and you’re facing some important questions:
Here’s a quick guide that encompasses a lot of topics we’ve covered on this blog. It’s the “least a marketer or agency needs to know” about online video, and will give you a roadmap for a good program.
With a few exceptions, I haven’t yet seen many online-video pilots driving significant, immediate sales for a brand. But I have seen online-video initiatives that have increased the awareness of the brand, and changed the attributes and preference of target consumers (as measured by awareness trackers). Most of my clients have enjoyed an online presence they wouldn’t have gotten on their own and found it a good investment. A few have confided that more people watched my stupid video than visited their big, bloated agency-developed website (which contained a variety of expensive videos they produced). It’s much easier to reach people on the highway of YouTube than to hope they’ll stop at the little rest stop you create (which is usually a huge expense and a “throw away” at the end of the project).
Other suggestions? Bring ’em on. This is a blog, for crying out loud.
Online-video creators are sobering up after an intoxicated 2007, as they realize that the “road to riches” via online video is fraught with challenges. Business Week proclaimed “amateur video hour” as over in December. Crackle and other sites migrated from UGC (user-generated content) some time ago. And here are some quite recent data points that, alone, aren’t really newsworthy but tell a sad story together:
For sure, some creators are doing well with sponsored gigs, DVD sales and rare television contracts. I’ve managed to augment my income by creating sponsored videos, and have done fairly well in the past 6 months. But it’s certainly not enough to quit the day job, and I’m not patient or risky enough to hold my breath for a lucrative television contract.
Solution 1: Pay for Content?
With few exceptions, viewers don’t yet pay for amateur content. This is especially true for early adopters of online-video, who have enjoyed free video, including amateur stuff, copyrighted material via YouTube, and free movies & music via P2P sharing. As the mainstream audience moves in, the market for paid content will increase, but mostly for professionally produced and well marketed video. Perhaps we’ll see a third-party aggregate some second-tier amateur content and develop a paid subscription model (especially if that content can be fed into PC, mobile and television). However an individual amateur would inarguably lose the vast majority of their audience if they required the audience to even move to an alternative channel (their own ad-supported site) or charged for it. Even Howard Stern lost most of his audience when he moved to Syrius. So it’s no surprise that I’ve sold only four copies of the “Best of Nalts” DVD.
Solution 2: Ad-Supported Content
As much hype as we’ve seen about consumers avoiding ads, this is the most viable, sustainable model. Simply put, good content won’t sustain for free, and amateur content hasn’t a prayer unless it’s supported by ads. Currently, this model is rate-limited by two sad realities. First, advertisers have been slow to buy ads around amateur content — even YouTube doesn’t appear to be selling its full inventory of InVid (overlay) ads. Secondly, there’s not yet broad enough distribution of this content.
I’ll argue that good video content and consumer demand exists, but people there aren’t yet enough viewers of amateur content to warrant significant dollars from advertisers. And we’re in dire need of an easy vehicle to view UCG via our mobile and television boxes, which will increase both viewer demand and advertising inventory (my next post will explore web/TV devices, which I believe are the lynch pin here).
Per my post in December, I finally received and approved my proof of the “Best of Nalts: Volume 1” DVD. So now you can buy 71 minutes of Nalts videos (with 29 videos) on CreateSpace.com by clicking here.
I have nearly “comedic” 600 videos online for free, but I think these are the best ones (although a few of you pointed out a few that need to be high on the list for volume two). I avoided videos that were too YouTube centric like Renetto shaving my head, or other inside jokes. So most of these are family-friendly and don’t require any context to appreciate.
So buy your copy now for the low, low price of $19.94. Yey. My kids and their friends just gathered around to watch the proof DVD tonight, and it’s frightening how clear the quality is since most of them are high definition… especially when you’re used to seeing them in horribly compressed format on YouTube. You can actually read little things in the background, so I’m sure I’ve inadvertently left a credit card number visible. But unless I sell about 30,000 of these DVDs (and something tells me I’m lucky if I sell 50), those credit card numbers won’t be much worth to you.
To see the full list of videos, click “more” below. To see the sleeve in higher resolution, click the image on the right.
Click here to buy one for $19.94. Click here to watch ’em for free in low resolution and with annoying ads. 🙂
P.S. I priced mine exactly one penny below HappySlip‘s, and I make big $6.02 per copy sold.
Continue reading Buy “Best of Nalts” Video Shorts on High Definition DVD
Well, you loyal WillVideoForFood.com readers, please reserve your front row seats, because the auditorium may be filling with some TechCrunch visitors. They actually crunched about my eBook. Here’s my original post about the book, titled “How to Become Popular on YouTube (Without Any Talent).” Here’s my video reaction to the coverage.
Or maybe TechCrunch didn’t write about me, and it’s a weird dream. I’m kinda sleep deprived. But if it’s a dream, then so is this post. So at least I’m not at risk of embarrassing myself by claiming something that… never mind.
Sales of my free eBook have tripled almost instantly. Naturally I promised TechCrunch a return link, because you know how desperate they are for inbound links. Mike Arrington’s always e-mailing me with this “can’t pass reciprocal link deal,” and I’m like… “find your own audience, dude.”
So if you have popped by for the standard 8-second “do I care about this site?” determination, take off your shoes, subscribe and stay a while. I’m Nalts. These are the other people reading this blog. They’re a little more quiet than me, but they’re here alright.
We cover online video trends, personalities and websites. We tracks interesting “viral video” case studies. And we reviews how marketers and agencies can leverage this visceral new online-video medium to engage people relevantly and promote their brands. Oh, and we occasionally self promote ourself. But at least we’re transparent, right? We don’t usually use the “royal” we, but we’re sleep deprived, remember?
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Had enough of horrible big-media interviews of your favorite online-video “weblebrities”? The same questions over and over? The 7 hours you spend, as a video creator, meeting with a television network, only to find your interview has been reduced to a 12-second soundbite?
Well it’s time for The Bubblegum Tree Show! Yey! (See trailer).
It’s my new weekly show that will feature 50 of the most interesting (not necessarily the most popular) online video personalities in 2008. There is, of course, no shortage of shows that feature online-video creators. In fact I also do one for Metacafe called Metacafe Unfiltered. And then there’s Veoh’s Viral.
But this one’s different. You see, there’s bubblegum. The interviewed guest will be chewing gum, and send it to me at the end. Next, the gum will be affixed to the official “Bubblegum Tree,” which eventually will be populated by dozens of pieces of chewed gum (each beside the name of its weblebrity chewer). The show is designed to be fast, quirky, informal and interesting. The balance I’m trying to establish is making it cheeky, but giving people a real glimpse of the creator’s personality.
Subscribe now (only 25 elite subscribers as of this post), and be the first to catch the premier. Who will be first? CharlesTrippy? MarkDay? LisaNova? We’re after all of them. And if you’re an interesting online-video personality with a fat talent agent, send them our way via “bubblegumtreeshow dot com at g mail.” Because before long getting booked on The Bubblegum Tree Show will be like trying to get your book on Oprah (a woman who has a television show).
