Tag Archives: office

Online Video

6 New Rules of Marketing: Get Enlightened, Stupid.

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Apparently I have to relearn marketing again, which is fine... it wasn't hard the first time.

The coolest thing about marketers are the titles they give their books. Common, right? They’re marketers. What do you expect?

Yep, while marketing and advertising may be dead, the business of proclaiming it even more dead... is booming. Here are the six rules, and as you can see they defy the 6 marketing rules I learned in my MBA (which I’ve added in italics).

Oh- I think it goes without saying that I haven’t read the book, but I am considering adding it to the prized bookshelf of “The Enlightened Stupid Marketer.” At least he embraces book covers over books, right? Is there any irony to the fact that years after shooting that video I’d write a book and, to date, not read it?

  • The Core is Everything (screw the customer, kill or be killed, don’t sleep)

Key chapters: Brand essence is important, customer knows best, your reputation is vital, play nicely, sleep soundly and work fearfully.

  • You Have Nothing Without The Foundation (integrity is for the unemployment line… Ps in 2006 were product, price, piss the customer, and pimp it)

Key chapters: Integrity, single word or symbol, whole is larger than parts, mind your P’s….

  • There Are Many Choices But Only One Customer (there’s a sucker born every minute; it’s easier to find a new customer than try to keep one).

Key chapters: Strategy is the heart and measurement is the blood, frameworks, perception really is your customer’s reality, communication, more than channel surfing.

  • Do the Right Things for the Right Reasons (we watched Wall Street in Ethics class, talked about Walmart, and then all proclaimed: greed is goooood).

Key chapters: Relationships matter, partner, it’s about them not you…

  • Infrastructure is More Than Pipes (in fact, a virtual tributary allows for add-drop multiplexing of subrate traffic… come to think of that, I might have learned that when my boutique web agency was acquired by Qwest Telcom).

Key chapters: Technology is just an enabler, right information, right people, right time… and don’t have wrong thought.

  • Lead And Others Will Follow (be a fast follower… let your competitor take the arrows, then pull them from their body and use them against anyone that tries suing you for stealing their idea; be sure to pluck out their gold fillings… they won’t need them anymore because they’re dead).

Key chapters: Leadership is a verb not noun.

So, yeah. I have to relearn marketing again, but this time there’s not a test (which sucks because I would have cheated off of my friend Mike Skoler). I wonder if my damned MBA comes with a money-back guarantee (It probably does, but the small print says “not valid on days ending with the letter Y”).

For the record, this marketing-satire video (“Enlightened Stupid Marketer”) was indeed shot in a conference room of an employer who shall remain nameless. You’d never know that unless you worked there, so while I maintained the spirit of the no-camera law (confidentiality), I broke the “letter” of the law. More importantly, it was a satire not of my co-workers at the time but of a Coke executive I’d seen a month prior at a conference. Nobody believed me, and a number of people took offense to this (like the guy who sucked my will to live).

The nice thing about this video is that if you’re offended by it, I’ve struck a vulnerability nerve haven’t I? Are ya offended or are you secure in your marketing competencies? Do you see yourself lampooned, or do you giggle at the absurdity occasionally? If your teeth clench while watching, you MAY just have gelatophobia. There’s only one cure. Avoid people unless wearing ear muffs and blinders. Or just keep reading the latest marketing book that proclaims the last guy slightly dumber.

Online Video

WTF is “Transmedia Storytelling”

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Just like OTT is the new viral, transmedia storytelling is the new online video.

“Transmedia storytelling” is not new vernacular, but we predict it will be the buzzword of 2011… pushing the term “currating” into the archives. I became familiar with the term at a 2010 television/web events in NYC, where large media companies defended their crappy dabbling in online video as “transmedia storytelling.” Some online-video content (Office webisodes) are quite clever.

But only about .05 percent of the audience for a television show will ever see the webisodes buried on some archaic network website… so at least the web “add ons” are not typically essential to the plot. Like the secret code on Fringe intro/outros, they’re additive to the experience… and for hardcore fans. In years to come, the interactive content may be more of a main dish than an optional appetizer.

Now you can learn via AdHack what “transmedia storytelling” is all about. The definition, what makes it work (communal, personal, tangible, discoverable, character development). Anyone doing this stuff particularly well?

As on-demand web video becomes mainstream, large television shows will increasingly win audiences to “online video” “lagniappes”  that rise above the allotted 23-minutes of a 30-minute show. More importantly, they’ll be vehicles to provide engagement with fanatic fans (oh, and provide additive direct ad revenue to a medium that could use some vitamins).

Content producers should be thinking of this content the way retailers think about the high-end or high-volume offerings that are less about incremental revenue… and more about growing the baseline. For instance if you’re Starbucks, you add the TRENTA not to sell a load of them. If you’re a white goods manufacture, you add a pricey “top of the line” product not to sell more of them. The introduction of these items grow your “baseline” or “middle of the road” offerings in indirect ways that are difficult for our executive brain to understand. It’s the dino-brain, folks. It’s all about the limbic brain. It drives most of our behaviors, and is the reason an emotional appeal works in marketing and entertainment… more on that later.

The tricky balance here? The producers of network television can’t well justify investing in this content until an audience exists (and thus a financial marketplace develops). But viewers won’t be attracted to this storytelling extension until it’s more interesting than a silly “Black Ops” boat-racing game for Burn Notice. So it’s a catch 22 that will take years to escape. But we’ll get there.

book, Online Video

EepyBird Creates New Genre of Hyper Syndication?

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The EepyBird duo shows that if you have enough talent, you can move seamlessly from one major promotion to another — without anything particularly unique between. Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz are the mad scientists behind EepyBird, a physical theater company exploring how everyday objects can do extraordinary things. They’re the Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods of online video, only they don’t play sports. And they have apparently had 40 million views on their Coke and Mentos experiment, but fewer than 300 subscribers on YouTube (the duo used Revver initially).

Here’s the latest promotion by the performance artists in a sticky-note experiment (not Post-It, mind you). Sponsored by ABC Family, Office Max and Coca-Cola, “The Extreme Sticky Note Experiments” will appear on ABC’s Samurai, and was arranged by social marketing agency, DigiSynd.

Said a press release by DigiSynd:

By packaging EepyBird’s new experiment, social marketing agency DigiSynd has created a new genre of hyper syndication — capturing the excitement and the power of original content viral video and bringing it to mainstream entertainment marketing, while maintaining the innovation and integrity that makes a video viral.

A new genre of hyper syndication? Where do I sign up for that?

Parenthetically, I have my own story about sticky-notes. In my first marketing role ever I was asked to lead marketing for Georgetown University’s Program Board. The group brought to campus such acts as The Kinks and Adam Sandler ‘n David Spade. (As a side bar to this parenthetical comment, Spade, Sandler and I had dinner at UNOs, and Sandler leaned out of my white Honda Accord and screamed impersonations of his Cajun Man. People thought he was a cheesy fake, but it was the real cajun man. Spade was sick and a bit sarcastic, but Sandler was really cool and gave us some behind-the-scenes of SNL because they were bit characters then.

Where was I? Oh-sticky notes. I once ordered sticky notes to promote the Georgetown Program Board (GPB), and it featured the GPB Nun… (an illustration by Dave Hagen of a GU bulldog dressed as a nun… you know, the dean who is now GU’s president eventually made the group  change the mascot to the GPB Jesuit because he didn’t like the idea of a transgender bulldog). Anyway, I cheaped out with a fake version of Post-It notes to save money, and the darned things didn’t stick to anything. So that’s my point.

Hey that reminds me… I met my friend Justin because he volunteered to hand out fliers for a pig roast GPB was holding. He’d walk up to women on campus and scream, “PIG,” before handing them the invitation. Man that was funny stuff. I once convinced Justin to ride a moped naked in the rain with nothing but a batman mask on. Missy Gold went to Georgetown… I wonder if I still have some footage of her walking across campus. She and I never met, nor did I hang with Dikembe Mutombo (but I did see him a couple years ago at a reunion, and called him Patrick Ewing “by mistake.” He laughed and corrected me very gracefully).

Hey that reminds me… I did a voiceover for a film by classmate Breck Eisner (Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s son), but he stopped returning my calls long ago so don’t try to use me to get to him. Is he still making commercials and movies? I wonder if I still have a copy of that weird video he made- I always warned him I’d be pawning it to The National Enquirer when he became famous. Who’s going to clean up all the names I’ve dropped in one post?

Every once in a while you have to remind readers that this is, after all, a blog. And bloggers are entitled to off-topic memoirs.

Blogs on Video

“Made for TV Drama” to Feature NewTeeVee Pier Screening’s Judges

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The first NewTeeVee Pier Screening of 2008 is themed “pilots,” (as in pilot episodes of web series not airplane fliers, dumb ass).

Judges include Martin Sargent (Internet Superstar), George Strombolis (YouTube) and Marie Drennan (San Franscisco State University).

Who will play the roles of each judge on the made for TV drama based loosely on the screening competition? Here are our votes.

  • Jodie Foster as Marie Drennan
  • Ryan Howard (The Office temp) as George Strombolos
  • Eric Estrada as Martin Sargent

newteevee judges of pier screening (who plays them in movie)





advertising, Blogs on Video, book, Online Video, popular videos, Video Advertising, Video Business, Viral Video, YouTube

Swear Jar by BudTV Viral-Only Campaign

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The Swear Jar is a campaign by BudTV.

According to AP Business writer Jim Salter, this “Swear Jar” video is part of a “fast-growing growing trend, now increasingly embraced by beer makers and other mainstream marketers.”

  1. Known as viral ads, such Web-only spots have become YouTube staples and show up in social networking pages, get e-mailed between friends and co-workers, though whether they generate sales remains an open question.
  2. Viral ads have the freedom to run as long or short as they want – no 30- or 60-second constraints.
  3. They can cross boundaries even cable TV respects, and they focus on entertainment as much selling the product.
  4. Some are shot – or made to look like they’re shot – with hand-held cameras, just like the most of the rest of the videos in those Web venues.
  5. Viral marketing has been around for more than a decade, but viral video ads have grown in popularity as it has become easier to watch and share video on the Web and video-sharing sites like YouTube have grown.

This post is for those of you dumb m&thr f*rs that have only been looking at the pictures on WillVideoForFood for the past 2 years ,and needed to play catchup. Thanks, Marilyn, for this post. It’s about time you carried some of your own weight on this blog.
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