Tag Archives: xlntads

Online Video, Video Advertising

Starving Artists Take Note: Video > T-shirts

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A child peddling a light was the $10K winner that brought Poptent past the $1 million mark

I was happy to hear Threadless founder and former CEO Jake Nickell on public radio’s “Markeplace” tonight, and how he was “crowdsourcing” in Threadless’ decade of business… even before there was a name for it. “Last year we paid over $1.5 million out to artists,” he told interviewer Kai Ryssdal. Designers upload their creations, and the community votes for the best… which are produced and sold with artists getting a $2K cash prize, $500K in a gift certificate, and royalties.

Then I compared it to today’s news. Philadelphia-based Poptent (www.poptent.net), which crowdsources video production for large and mid-sized brands, has given out $1 million in cash payments. That’s certainly a first for online video, and considering in no doubt went to a small sub-segment of the 20,000 Poptent videographers, it’s a pretty good sign for the online-video creator community. The million-dollar man was hit by Sean Cunningham, a NY-based freelance videographer who received $10,000 for creating this video as part of GE’s “Tag Your Green” ecomagination campaign. Disclaimer: I worked with Poptent when it was Xlntads, and also participated in the GE campaign as a YouTube creator.

It’s a wonderfully inspired “amateur” creation that could easily fit as a broadcast television ad. Community comments on the video are positive, even if some might have been from competitors. Cunningham has been a member of Poptent since October 2008 and participated in previous Poptent assignments for Becks Beer, eHealth, and Snickers.  All four of the crowdsourced GE videos can be viewed here.

What’s even more encouraging? The assignment came not directly but via a major agency’s digital arm (OMD). That tells me the market is finally understanding that while agencies won’t soon lose their seat at the creative and strategy table, there are lots of Cunninghams with bright ideas. Even if it took six versions (see screen shot).

Online Video

Video Contests: Creative Awards & Popularity Contests (Butterfingers)

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Jared Cicon aka “Video Contest King” has some sage advice for would-be video contest entrants, and characterizes three types of contests (and which to avoid). Of course, he neglects to tell you not to enter a contest he’s entered. Your chances are slim against his polished creative. Don’t bother.

Jared doesn’t temper his resent against contests that allow video creators to leverage their existing fan base to jack up views and, in his view, manipulate contests. He prefers contests rely less on the creator’s social-media fan base and more on the video creative itself.

The problem, of course, is that the contest sponsor is often running a contest less to identify brilliant creative… and more to engage audiences. So a popular contest entrant with a luke-warm video entry is, to some degree, more valuable to the marketer or agency than a brilliant consumer-generated ad created by an unknown videographer. The advertiser benefits from free visits if the “popular” video creator sends his or her viewers to the contest site. Then the contest micro-site has actual visitors… something they don’t usually otherwise fetch without a significant online-advertising budget promoting it. Ideally when they get to the contest microsite, they’ll find more videos like Jared’s (versus some really poor samples I hazed on a previous post).

Nobody's Gonna Lay a Finger on my Butterfinger video contest

Fortunately for Jared — who creates television-quality commercials but has no major social-media fan base — most contests fail to capitalize on the audiences of popular video creators. For instance, I entered a Butterfinger Contest months ago (see contest site). Although the video was promoted heavily via Yahoo Video banners, my entry didn’t go to my Yahoo-Video profile but presumably to a dark FTP site. It’s not even showing up on the contest site, and I’m not even 100% sure it is being considered. Jared posted his entry on YouTube (an act of generosity or to show off his work) but says it’s disqualified because he used minors. Perhaps mine suffered a similar fate.

This is a contest built for Jared not me. I would not have likely entered knowing Jared was going after the same contest and the same category (gadgets). In fact I entered mostly because my wife kept asking me to do so (she was more optimistic than I that we could win the $25K grand prize). I typically avoid “top heavy” contests (where the winner takes all and the runners up get token prizes). Based on Jared’s previous post, I imagine he might have declined a runner’s up award… also more interested in $25K than a year’s supply of candy).

Had I teased my YouTube audience with out-takes of my contest entry, and sent them to the Butterfingers contest website to see it, the contest website would have likely had 5,000-20,000 visitors (generating that kind of traffic can cost $$$$ when you’re buying display ads). When you’re running a contest, you ideally want Jared-like creative samples (especially if you plan to use them offline) but also some actual traffic on the contest site so the contest is not an embarrassment.

So how could Butterfinger have engaged more target customers, and still ensure the winning video was actually good (and not just done by a popular creator who was able to mobilize fans to jack up votes)?

Two options: a secret panel of judges weighs NOT just the creative but the total views. Then I’ve got an incentive to send my audience to the contest (which I didn’t, if for no other reason because my video never showed). So Butterfinger gets the benefit of my audience, but I can’t completely manipulate the contest because Jared gets points for actually making a better video entry. Alternatively (and a more fair model): agencies judge a video strictly on its creative merit… then contract with popular social media and video “stars” to promote the contest by paying them to make an entry and invite their large audiences to check out the contest microsite. Babe Ruth has done this previously with Rhett & Link, although the video seems to have vanished. Maybe the pay-for-entry is disqualified from winning, or maybe the judges aren’t informed about these deals to avoid bias.

Why are contests still making obvious mistakes after three years of me ranting and ranting and ranting and ranting and ranting and ranting?

Perhaps the agency is cutting a turnkey deal with the video-sharing site, and is guaranteed a certain amount of visits/impressions (giving the contest owner little incentive to find more efficient sources of traffic).

Bottom line: Video contests are often under optimized, and its why PopTent (xlntads) and other companies exist. Jared and I offer two distinct benefits to a contest, and this is not well understood by most brands developing contests. Jared is a professional creator who will ensure the winning video can survive on television and impress visitors to the contest microsite. I have an active online-audience, and can help promote the contest to other video creators and ensure that the contest microsite actually has people to impress (without sucking away precious media dollars that might be better spent to promote the, er, brand not the contest).

book, Online Video

How Does an Entrepreneur Tap Online-Video Talent?

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I ran into the TubeFilter’s new job board, which has lots of California opportunities but little else. Then I was thinking about the bunch of inquiries I’ve received since I was mentioned in Entrepreneurial Magazine. 

  • The reality is that there’s a lot of amateur talent available to work without high cost structures — often folks who work part-time or are students. They can create incredible videos, brilliant graphic design, and understand social media.
  • Then there are countless entrepreneurs who need these skillsets on an adhoc basis.

But I’m not aware of a matchmaker service that allows people to post their skills & experience, hourly rate, and garner some “trust” rating (like eBay sellers). Are you?

I do know that Ben Relles, when he needed to produce his first “Obama Girl” video, placed an ad in Craigslist! Within hours he had people to help on various areas of the production. A number of talented video creators found Xltnads/PopTent via Craigslist too. But I doubt most less savvy buyers know how to surf for talent on Craigslist.

Have you seen a service that connects small companies or startups to freelance video creators, graphic artists and writers? I’m just struck that there’s demand for digital talent, and a lot of brilliant talent eager for cash and experience. The big buyers use agencies, who help reduce risk and vet talent. But those larger agencies are expensive because they’re often siloed and bloated with high costs (real estate, overhead, etc.). 

Entrepreneurs want someone reliable, talented, eager and not too expensive. I love linking entrepreneurs with talent, because both win. As an example, I was glad to introduce my neighbor’s startup (iamintown.com) to Brett Slater (slatersgarage.com). The former gets a good service at a fair price. The talent gets business.

But entrepreneurs are not my target clients for video creation or consulting. It’s very hard to tell if they’re serious, and they often want you to work for free/cheap with the promise of something bigger down stream. Of course, if I was in college or didn’t have a family and a big mortgage, I’d welcome a few hundred bucks to spend time I’d otherwise use to play video games. It would build my portfolio, and certainly be more profitable than working at Wendy’s. But likewise I’d probably have no idea how to find clients. 

I probably get a dozen random messages from individuals or startups a week, and it kills me to ignore them. Sometimes the note is so desperate and poorly written that I know I’d be sucked into a time-wasting vortex by even engaging (example: I’m gonna be big, you won’t be wasting your time, I want to give you a piece of my company). But other times I’m curious if I may be overlooking a chance to work with the next Zappos before they pop.

advertising, book, Contest, xlntads

How Much is that Viral Video in the Window?

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(This is a guest column by Erik Bratt, director of marketing communications for ProQuo. ProQuo helps consumers eliminate junk mail, and recently hired xlntads.com.

(a new-media promotion firm with whom I work occasionally) to solicit quality video entries that help ProQuo describe its value proposition in unique and entertaining ways.

Can you really buy a viral video?

by Erik Bratt, ProQuot
Conventional wisdom says no. By its very definition, a viral video is something that can’t be bought or made, forced or manipulated. A viral video – a viral anything – just ‘happens,’ striking some type of cultural nerve that prompts people to send it around.

Levi’s ad, levi ads doing model flips featuring male models doing back-flips (literally) into their jeans. The video, which racked nearly 4 million views on YouTube alone last time I checked, never mentions Levi by name, but it wasn’t hard to guess the driving force (Male models? Jeans?). I offer a more modest case in point: Our own video contest. Eager to spread the word about our service for stopping junk mail and managing catalogs (plug: www.proquo.com), we decided to launch a viral video contest earlier this spring in hopes of creating momentum for our free offering.

To get this done, we partnered with XLNTAds.com, a Philadelphia-based company that facilitates a community of 5,000 eager and talented semi-professional videographers. This was our first good decision. XLNTAds.com knows how to run a contest, and their members are fired up about creating great content. We were also fortune to have great subject matter – who can’t work with junk mail as topic? The contest rules were simple: keep it clean, make it funny, and focus on junk mail, not ProQuo. Because we are not as big of a brand as Levi, we also asked that they at least include our URL somewhere in their video.

The carrot? $1,500 for each of the top 10 videos. The contest “assignment” was posted on April 1. One month later we had more than 160 entries. Deciding on the top 10 videos was not easy, requiring several viewing sessions and at least one company viewing party (with blind voting). We finally picked our 10 winners and created a special page for visitors to interact with them: www.proquo.com/videocontest.

So, we had our funny videos, but what about the viral part? Instead of scrambling to post these videos ourselves, or buying space on different networks, we worked with XLNTAds.com to provide incentives to the winning creators to ‘viral-ize’ the videos on their own. We offered a tiered award structure for the creators who had the most number of views across multiple video platforms.

For the money, this was our second good decision.

We’ve been pleasantly surprised at the number of places our videos have popped up – on dozens of different video platforms, in blogs, and on web sites. At last count, we had more than 160K views on just those 10 videos (many of the runner-ups also got posted). We never could have achieved that many views on our own without paying for placements

So did we succeed in creating or buying a viral video? Not really.

We didn’t get on the front of YouTube (which requires at least 50K views) or any other video platform. We didn’t pop up in tens of thousands of emails within the span of few days saying, ‘dude, check this video out!”

What we did accomplish was to generate a large number of video views, as well as traffic and registrations to our site (made trackable from URLs placed high up in some of the video descriptions). We also provided entertaining content for our site visitors and registered users, whom we encouraged to help rate the videos

Another bonus was our engagement with the videographers themselves. We were touched by the effort that so many people and their friends put into the videos. In the end, that type of engagement and goodwill may be worth more than any viral video.

Editorial note (back to Nalts): This is a good case study, and shows a few key points: 

  • ProQuo could have tried doing this itself, but it would have been far more expensive and out of its core competency.
  • The value to ProQuo is being assessed comprehensively- as opposed to the views and clicks.
  • By leveraging xlntads creators with built audiences, Proquo had a way to reach far more potential consumers than they could have ever reached on its own.
  • Finally- with time, someone searching Proquo will find these creative executions instead of a video blog by someone who wasn’t keen on the offering. So for search engines alone, it might be justified.

Thanks, Erik, for sharing your story!

advertising, Blogs on Video, book, Making Money, Making Videos, Online Video, Video Advertising, Video Business, Video Contests, xlntads, YouTube

How to Win a Contest (Case Study)

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ZackScott, one of my favorite fearless video creators, returns for a guest blog post about winning a recent Xlntads ProQuo contest (disclaimer: Zack and I both contribute to Xlntads as members of a “creative advisor board, and he wins contests while I think about them). Zack told me yesterday, “I’m hoping people think I’m such an asshole when they read it.” See article below, and then click “more” to read some of the techniques Zack deployed.

Zack Scott has a big headHey party people. It’s the Zack Scott again. If you keep up with XLNTads, you might know that I recently won one of the ten prizes for the ProQuo contest that recently ended. I can’t take all of the credit though. My friend Samuel Seide and I both worked hard on putting together a cool video titled “Sick Mailbox.” I’ve decided to write this guest post so that I can give you a behind-the-scenes look at making the video.

I don’t know the exact reasons why our video was a winner, but hopefully analyzing the creative process will provide some insight. Maybe you’ll even find some of this information helpful when it comes to making your own videos. The main requirement of the contest was for the video to be funny while pointing out that ProQuo can help stop physical junk mail.

So my main goal was simply to make a funny video and then worry about how to squeeze the message in later.

proquo mailbox parodySamuel and I initially conceived a talking mailbox that vents its personal frustrations about junk mail. It didn’t really sound like a winning formula on its own, but we figured we could make it really cheesy and go for the “it’s funny because it’s so lame” type of humor. We then decided the mailbox should be sick of junk mail. Literally. And then we’d give him medicine. This turned out to be a great idea because the medicine could be ProQuo! Then the compact florescent light bulbs in our heads lit up, and we decided to do a spoof of those corny pharmaceutical commercials. I think we got a little mercury poisoning. When you see the video, it’s obvious that it is a pharmaceutical commercial spoof. But it may be interesting to know that we didn’t start working and scripting with that in mind. In fact, if I were watching the video for the first time, I would think the talking mailbox was a result of the pharmaceutical concept, not the other way around. I ended up being really pleased with what we did because it all fell together quite nicely. The pharmaceutical concept gave us a great template for a lot of different types of humor. I’m not sure how original it is to portray a product as something else entirely, but it did give us some creative leeway. If you haven’t watched the video yet, watch it now to avoid the spoilers below! 

Note: To read Zack’s techniques, click “more” below.

Continue reading How to Win a Contest (Case Study) →