YouTube Ceiling Tile Videos Will Set You Free!

Great write-up by Baljeet Singh, the Group Product Manager at YouTube, about how people use the network.

Interesting Stat number 1: three times more people search for “How-To” videos than “Music Videos”.

Of course most people just search for the artist or song over the generic “music video” expression but the same is true for a search for what you’re trying to do over the generic expression “How-To” so the point holds.

Interesting Stat number 2: Cellume, a company that produces ceiling tile videos, has seen over a million views.  Over a million views of ceiling tile videos.

Note to client and agency looking for a viral video concept.  Are all the basic, instructional, relevant videos produced and in place on YouTube?  If they aren’t then do not bring up the V word until they are.  Now go and do likewise.

College Kids and the TV Set

Some pretty compelling, and not surprising data, about college-age consumption of video content shows that 91% is consumed on Laptops.  Plenty still gets watched on TV sets but if you were a betting man/woman you’ve got to figure this trend just marches relentlessly forward.  

Wonder how cheap flat screens will have to get for Millenials to fill their apt’s/condos/houses with them in the future when they watch most of their content on laptops?  At some point they would seem to be like landline phones.  You might need one to cover off the basic social movie watching need but beyond that they’re overkill.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1008735&R=1008735

Marketing for the 99%

Bob Lefsetz, an influential music industry blogger, wrote a great post recently about music marketing for the rest of us.  He notes that while the Simon Cowell world of X Factor and Idol can power a a few artists down our throats, they don’t stick, and for real staying power you have to get your hands dirty a thousand different ways.   He calls it the DIY world.

http://bit.ly/uajzlG

This notion of the DIY world feels right for the rest of us marketers.  What we refer to as the Conspiracy of the Masses is just too strong to simply spend your way to success.  Not stunning news for all who’ve been slugging it out in the digital and social world for several years now but worth hearing again.

Abandon Men All Yee Bookstores

Riding the J Church line to work today.  Noticed five people reading real live books and three people reading on tablets.  Not bad, not bad. Books had a good showing.  Gender division among the readers was distinct however.  The only readers of printed books were women.  Tablets were all guys.  

Not shocking for sure.  Women took over book buying years ago but holy crap.  Dump any marketing dollars for men if you’re a bookstore focusing on print.  None of the printed books were library books though. That’s a big shift from 18 months ago when the local libraries were doing gangbusters due to recession.  At least on this train line some optimism and buying happening.

More telling though were the numbers doing email on phones.  It was probably 45 people doing email versus 8 reading books.  Every single phone was an iphone.  It was only 8:00 and historically that kind of email frenzy doesn’t happen until closer to 9:00.

Only one outlier amidst all of this.  A lone guy pretending to read some kind of poetry-slam journal.  Seriously, you might as well pull out a guitar and start playing some Donovan.  That rap is not going to work and probably never did.  Don’t think the modern day equivalent, the tablet, is going to get much play either.

HAVE A GOOD WEEKEND GENERAL MOTORS!

Over the last several months several of the multinational holding companies that I follow on Facebook have wished me a great weekend and even asked me what my plans are.  This includes General Motors as seen here:

Now I don’t want to pick on GM too much since my father, sister, and several generations of family have all worked for GM and I worked with Chevy a couple of times but please stop wishing me a good weekend.

There are a number of things I would like to exchange information about with my M.N.H.C. (multi-national holding company) friends and weekend plans aren’t among them.  I did a quick audit of GM’s posts and for the most part they’re great:  info about fuel efficiency across the GM brands and employee contributions within and outside the company all seem to fall within a sensible voice for the company on Facebook.

Hoping they and the rest of the M.N.H.C.’s ditch the faux friendlies and stick to the content we find valuable.
 If you have a quota of posts you’re supposed to make and you find yourself on Friday without something to say then consider silence the better part of noisy valor.

Good Morning!

Old McDonald Had a Frigging Great Billboard. Again.

I realize their food is the poster child of all that’s wrong with this country but damn they do good outdoor.

This new one in Stockholm let’s you play pong on the giant board through your phone.  If you last :30 or more you get coupon for free McDonald’s treat of your choice.  They also map it to the closest store so it’s nice and immediate. It may just be me but the McDonald’s workers at the store in the video are the best looking, fittest staff I’ve ever seen.  It’s possible everyone in Stockholm is good looking and thin but any chance they are plants for the video?

McDonald’s also did this brilliant SunDial billboard.   As the sun moves across the sky it reflects down on a different McDonald’s food as the morning progresses.

What’s the relevance to social?  Seriously?

They aren’t doing these exercises because a

few thousand play pong or see the sundial.  It’s because millions see them online when people

take pictures and post them.  It’s outdoor as social content.

Good stuff from Ronald

Arianna, The New Sex Ed, and her Twitter Profile

Nice analysis from Hephzibah Anderson on how Arianna uses her femininity and Clinton-like appeal to win over new media types (as well as old).

Also an interesting assessment of how well her Twitter profile picture captures both the intelligence and feminine playfulness of Huffington perfectly.

3D Coming To a Chrome Browser Near You

At the beginning and the end of social is Content.  In this case great, beautiful, stunning entertaining content.  A 3D immersive environment for the 3 Dreams In Black project from Danger Mouse,  @radical.media, Google Creative Labs, Jack White,  and Norah Jones.

I remember at the beginning of ecommerce we used to always imagine we’d “enter” a store someday using something like vrml.  The earliest 3-D rendering software. Seems like we might be getting closer with HTML5 and WebGL.  I know this is entertainment but the first commerce play that pulls this off for browser and iPad will be the talk of the town.

You can check out the video experience:  only restriction is you have to view in Chrome.

The Social Mouse-Story That Squeaked

The recent news that Facebook hired Burson-Marsteller to smear Google shocked me about  as much as Bin Laden turning up in Pakistan. I mean isn’t this Google deal kind of the same thing that led to the founding of Facebook?

Then:  Zuckerberg got mad at his ex-girlfriend and slammed her online.

Now: Zuckerberg gets mad at Google and decides to slam her online.

I just found it to be kind of a yawn of a story.  I think we’re supposed to be outraged that the leader of social media seems to be violating at least the spirit of the new world order in social marketing but come on.

Zuckerberg isn’t the little brother of Sergey and Larry, the “do no evil” crew.  He’s much more like Gates (pre-Melinda) and Ballmer, or Larry Ellison.  I can understand a variety of reactions to this story but surprised or shocked or outraged just feels naive.

Iceland and the greatest tourism video ever.

A great tourism video for Iceland was released recently:

It’s fun, Bjork-like I guess, and longish-form.  It will get distributed socially, get tons of links and inevitably do wonderful in natural search results.  It’s perfect.  Every time I see one of these, like the Johnnie Walker video, I am perplexed why more brands don’t tackle long form video.  It’s great for social, digital, search, brand awareness, brand reinforcement, consideration, employee satisfaction, and probably another dozen or so marketing benefits.

So come on marketers, get off your asses.  They’re hard to do well but worth it.