I’ve seen YouTube’s power as a community, and occasionally it rallies on behalf of an individual or cause related to health. However I’ve yet to see a health community that’s truly powered by images and video (and involves patient-to-patient peer support leveraging webcams and the Internets).
In general, I like when the power of new-technology marketing is put toward a health cause.
Some of the graphics are a bit more compelling than others
Like imagine the video campaigns that can come out of the FDA’s imagery for cigarette packs! Graphic cigarette labels: Will they work? You damned straight they will… at least compared to text. The proof is in other countries.
They challenge, of course, will be to use these negative reinforcements the drive urgency, then positive-reinforcement and behavior change to help people. A scary imagine alone can have moderate effect, but people are generally more eager to change when you tell them how and try to go beyond scaring them into change.
Now on a happier but related note:
PatientsLikeMe is a health site where you can specify your illness(es), see how other people rated various treatments, and (if you wish) engage with other patients. The site jumped on my radar when it launched years ago, and I wrote the founder. It surfaced again when it surprisingly was able to publish findings on co-morbidities (if you have x illness, you may likely have y).
iJustine, the YouTube star and graphic designer, is holding a contest to benefit Charity:Water. Check out the 2011 version of a press release (here), by MASScanvas — a new type of online graphic design contest. “Creating synergy among celebrities, designers and charities, MASScanvas aims to inspire a community of creativity and philanthropy – Design with a Purpose.”
We like that. Because purposeless design is so 2010.
Here’s her announcement video, and then check out the “Why Water” video by CharityWater.org… it’s very powerful. Plus I friggin’ love the tagline: “Just $20 can give one person access to clean water.” It’s such a small and specific “ask.”
I used to write quite often about online-video contests because for many brands, that was their online-video strategy. It’s similar today when brand’s create a Facebook page to check off that nagging “social media” objective.
A lot’s changed in the past years, and Jared “The Video Contest King” has reengaged, even musters up some praise for Poptent (the video contest site he’s criticized before). I found this quote especially interesting…
Yes, $7,500.00 for a contest victory for three weeks work is decent pay, but if you really worked for three months, because it is the true frequency rate of your ‘wins’, than you now are netting about $26,000 per year. I pay more than that in rent alone.
This is a good reminder that, with some certain exceptions among recurring Poptent winners, few are making a “living” with online-video contest winnings.
Key Point: I would urge those pursuing contests to do so as a) a creative outlet, b) a way to build a good reel, and c) an additional income source. This is true for YouTube as well… a handful of stanky rich creators making way more than your salary and mine combined. Lots of people making what we’d consider a fantastic second income. But if money is the primary motivator, it’s not a safe bet.
The Sour Patch Cannibals are nice proof that there's gold in 'dem quasi-pro amateur hills
Beardy’s “Video Contest News” has some nice coverage, and even offers occasional production tips (I liked this one since I’m always having audio problems with my DSLR camera as a primary video recorder). We like Beardy’s homeless theme, which reminds us of our WillVideoForFood name.
Poptent Neil Perry told me the company has received increased investment, hired a team of sales people, and are beginning to attract larger brands that align with the company’s original vision (where the content is used on television not just online-video).
Weeks ago (during PattyTube) we crashed the Poptent office and binged on loads of new contest entries. Years ago many looked like bad CableTV ads, but the ones we watched were damned-well close to agency work. Common- who else loved the “Sour Patch Cannibals“?
Collaborations by independent creators with specific talents — like writing, acting, production, editing, music — are on the rise according to Tim Breslin, the mad genius behind Poptent’s technology.
King Jared teamed with Joel Berry (aka Tavin Dillard on YouTube) to create a Poptent entry for Trident Gum (titled “Grease Monkey Business,” which is a far cry better than the “consumer-generated” entries of past.
I recently found this collection of entries to the Poptent.net “Sour Then Sweet” campaign for Sour Patch Kids. While I can appreciate why cannibalism might have been too risque for the folks at Cadbury, I think they’re certainly bold, entertaining and memorable enough to get the WillVideoForFood “honorable mention” award.
Holiday spam time! I’m holding a contest to see who can identify the crappiest holiday e-mail greeting! Can you top these three? It shouldn’t be hard. And you get extra points if you uncover a really bad corporate eGreeting that’s trying to mimic a viral video and does so awkwardly. After all, we’re a video blog here… which means occasionally we talk about video.
Some winning criteria for the WillVideoForFood “Crappiest Corporate eMail Greeting of 2010” award: a) use the online medium for form over function, b) lack taste and humor, especially if it tries anyway, c) is unpersonalized, d) is self serving, e) it accidentally politically incorrect, f) is obviously providing the least effort possible.
Here are my the three leaders so far. Please put yours in the link, or e-mail me if that’s better. NOTE: remove any codes after & or specific numbers/letters… thus the penny-pinching gifter won’t know who “outed” them. Except in my case I guess.
1) CLIP FART: The anonymous company that sent an e-mail with this ass-face clipart picture. I asked the sales rep if his retarded son drew it, and he said yes… and the son aspired to be a viral video maker. I told him to turn up the retardometer. I’m convinced Tommy (not his real name) just didn’t know how to turn off the auto-greeter via his sales force automation software.
2) MIDI-OGRE This InVivo website a corporate friend sent me because a) you have to download software, and b) while you’re downloading (what is probably spyware) an annoying midi loops. I somehow have two sessions open, and the song is in a weird infinite echo that’s like Santa on acid. I can’t even find the open browser windows and it’s making me insane.
3) CHARIT-INABILITY Thirdly (and I won’t share this for obvious reasons) was the corporate eGreeting that invited me to click on one of three charities. I clicked on one, refreshed and clicked another. So maybe they’re not even tracking (or donating), or else I just tripled their donation and tomorrow may decide to bankrupt them.
What do you have? Special points if it’s a horrible viral-video holiday eGreeting… but it has to be from a company. And go for a stupid-ass pun name like my three to cheese it up even more.
Cheesy Gif I Just Got Reminding Us" Jesus Is the Reason for the Season."
Check out this invitation video, and submit your creative YouTube video by the end of July… 20-25 winners will have their artistic video played at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (it’s a collaboration between YouTube and Guggenheim).
Here’s the teaser video, which gives us a zooming look at the play button in various mediums. It rawks.
Hey, Peter. Yeah- Peter Justason. The guy I used to work with at Johnson & Johnson. I’m gonna kick your ass on Meskimen’s new cartoon-caption contest. Instead of semi-annual, he’s going for WEEKLY. I will destroy you.
For the rest of you… about 5 years ago before your fancy moving pictures, this was my favorite thing to do on the Internet when The Onion wasn’t fresh. See more at www.appliedsilliness.com.
As I commented on that blog post, my first thought about this TCBY contest is that it might attract people who wouldn’t otherwise be strong franchise candidates. A franchisee demonstrates their commitment to the franchiser by investing start-up capital. By waiving that, TCBY has removed a healthy “barrier to entry” that keeps away those lacking the fortitude.
As a military analogy, the franchisee capital investment (which can range from $50-$300K) is the equivalent of boot camp. While boot camp trains new military recruits, it’s also a Darwinian-like process that ensures those going to battle are ready to endure.
TCBY is waiving the startup investment for a franchisee, which is the equivalent of "boot camp" to weed out the weak before battle.
I’ve written about plenty of video contests (and read Jared’s “Video Contest King“). But this is not like most video contests. It feels like it was driven by an effort to increase franchisee interest (B to B: business to business), but it’s perhaps inadvertently turned into a B-to-C (business to consumer) campaign. In other words, what might have been designed to spur franchise expansion has turned into something that can’t help but create consumer demand for yogurt. Check out Google News to see all of the local press this has generated. Our local story (see part of it here, or the scanned version at tcbywinners.com) prompted a classmate of our daughter to send us something she’d written in 2004:
“One day I will own an ice cream store shop and make lots of ice cream.”
Given the costs of a video contest (advertising, public relations, interactive development, contest legalities, etc), I wouldn’t expect a company like TCBY to make that investment to reach a fairly narrow audience: franchisee candidates. There certainly are more efficient ways to reach that target audience (trade shows, franchise magazines, franchise bloggers). But given the massive amount of public-relations spawned by this, the payoff to TCBY will indisputably be broader… enhanced branding, increased consumer awareness, demand growth.
Wifeofnalts (Jo) is so passionate about winning this contest that I made her a website to help her word-of-mouth campaign
3 examples that are difficult to put into a video contest ROI model (and I’m sure each contestant has examples like these):
Our local public school sent e-mails to parents, sent kids home with fliers about our efforts, and I’ve seen word-of-mouth in our area alone that rivals anything advertising can do. My wife travels with cards announcing the website, and her campaign makes Obama look like a recluse.
Our “Yogurt Boy” entry (posted on my smaller channel “UncleNalts”) has surpassed 6,000 views. When I mentioned the contest on my Nalts channel in this video, it spawned some organic support. HappyCabbie, a video creator, surprised me with this “Help Nalts Family Win TCBY Video.” Jo plans to takeover my Nalts channel to make a passionate plea to my 150K plus subscribers (maybe I’ll give her a discount from my typical sponsorship cost- hee).
I’m not assuming TCBY, like my other sponsors, sees value in webstar video as a promotional channel to increase consumer demand. But whether we win or lose we’ll probably have volunteered what I would otherwise have charged at least $30K to do.
Some parting thoughts for those of you that dared read this long:
But have we discovered a new angle to the tired “video contest” contest? I think so.
Do I know how a TCBY can perform in rural PA versus some of the climate regions? Nope.
Is this really a creative video contest? Not in the traditional sense.
We’re up against some serious competition with solid experience, capability, and desire to run a TCBY frozen-yogurt franchise. Then again, we’ve got two things going for us: wifeofnalts‘ passion and tenacity, and her husband’s online visibility as a StreamingMedia All-Star and viral video genius. 😉
You may remember the video (below) called “Amazing Kitten.” Congratulations to the 5 randomly-selected commenters, and the 5 winners of the video replies (who I just finally contacted).
Client: Logitech (Freemont, CA) Agency: Ruder Finn (San Francisco, CA) Campaign: Logitech DVS YouTube campaign Duration: September – October 2009 Budget: $25,000 – $30,000 –no, I didn’t get all of this… prizes, Ruder Finn, Hitviews
Situation
After Logitech acquired WiLife in 2007, home digital video security cameras (DVS) became a part of its portfolio. Logitech PR manager Ha Thai explains that general awareness is low in this category, and the team hoped to change that fact.
Ruder Finn (RF) was hired to work on a broad DVS promotional effort. HitViews helped the team identify a popular YouTube content producer who could integrate DVS into one of its videos.
“We wanted to spread the word in an efficient and budget conscious way,” says Andy Pray, VP with RF. “YouTube provides a good audience with existing affinity— they create content and are used to webcams.”
Strategy
The idea was to create a video that highlighted the DVS system’s ease and positioned it as valuable for families. YouTube “star” Kevin “Nalts” Nalty, whose videos often involve pranks on his kids and wife, was chosen. Pray says Nalty’s large audience reach and family focus made him a great fit. An online challenge was designed to maximize engagement. The team also employed social media and blogger outreach.
Tactics
In his “Amazing Kitten!” video (launched October 13), Nalty used the DVS system to catch a kitten in outrageous acts. Pray says it was important that the video feel authentic to Nalty’s audience so it kept with typical tone.
For the contest, audiences could submit a response video to Nalty’s YouTube page or leave a text comment. Contest information and a coupon code were shown at the bottom of Nalty’s video. All entrants were eligible to win a DVS system.
Nalty also created a making of the video clip (“How Kitten Defied Gravity”), which Thai says was a surprise and bonus. Nalty used his Twitter and Facebook pages to spread the word to YouTube influentials and others. The team promoted the video and contest on Logitech’s existing Twitter page, its blog, and their personal social media pages.
Other outreach focused on cat and content enthusiast bloggers. Pray adds that messaging was based on the video (rather than DVS) to maintain authenticity.
Results
As of January 18, “Amazing Kitten!” has garnered more than 160,000 views (more than 2,000 five-star ratings) on YouTube and 38,369 views on Yahoo Video. Pray says it was a top 50 video on YouTube the week of October 13. The making of video drew another 14,200 views. The contest yielded 42 video and 2,270 text entries.
The team reports thousands of tweets from online influencers. Though Logitech won’t disclose sales, Thai says there was a “strong surge” on Logitech’s Web site around the campaign and coupon codes drove sales increases.
Future
Thai says plans include expanding on getting top-tier media coverage of customers’ DVS stories. RF will continue to work with Logitech on DVS promotion.
(Nalts Extra)
I have to thank Hitviews, Andy from Ruder Finn, and Logitech. But I’m also grateful for DavideoDesign, who helped with the concept and special effects. Thanks so much to all of the video replies. It was very hard to select the winners! See them all here. Parenthetically, while using the Logitech System I happened to bust my children with a fight, and was able to find the guilty party!
I’ve proclaimed it “Ugly Shirt Day” on January 15. There’s not much else going on this month, so why not? Dig into your wardrobe for the nastiest-looking shirt you can find, and e-mail a photo of you wearing it to uglyshirtday@gmail.com. Be sure to name the photo with your username (YouTube or other) so I can credit you. And you never know… someone may want to buy that ugly shirt.
Send it by Wednesday (Jan. 13) if you can. In fact, just go do it now before you forget!
I’ll post the video on January 15 (Friday), so if people give you grief for wearing the shirt that day, you can simply tell them to piss of and do a YouTube search for “Ugly Shirt Day.”
