Directa Networks video in YouTube went over the million views in three months after launching and it is one of the most viewed video in its category.
This was born as an experiment about what we could do with this new media and to explore other viral marketing options. Right now it went over the boldest expectations that we could have, being even linked from Japanese sites.
It is very clear that it is very complicated to forecast what will happen, who will be the target receiving the material, its impact and the public response, but on the other hand: How much are 1,000,000 spectators in an 8-minute spot (not 30 seconds) on open television?
The founders of Skype Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, after proposing a disruptive model in the telephone field and after selling their company to e-Bay, are working in an also disruptive model to create a TV platform without a cable or satellite operator, via Internet.
Originally it was known as ‘The Venice Project’ (because the decision was made in a conference room called Venice). The site were the platform was built is www.joost.com. Today “The Venice Project” remains only for some contents that you can see in the application or for the first t-shirts that were sent to the ones that gave the first feedback. The disruptive thing about Joost is that it is thought to distribute TV content through Internet, with Peer to Peer technology. This means that the content will be stored in (and distributed by) users’ hard disks, aside from being in the main server of Joost.
So it is like Napster or eMule but for video (understanding that Napster didn’t have its own Server) as a very simple interface , in real time and 100% legal. The great advantage of the Peer to Peer technology is that the more people requesting a file the easier and faster is to obtain it (because it will be present in more hard disks.) Joost is not available yet to be downloaded (is in beta estate). Currently it is a closed group of users that can invite other users the same way it was done with Gmail and other programs. This gives the beta subscription more virality because “it is not for everybody”.
Another interesting point is the way the amateur contents will be combined with the professional contents; the way to search and catalogue this content and the way of monetize them.
Maybe we are in front of what could be a 2.0 version of the media that can support the 30-second commercials in the coming years….
CTI has recently launched a TV commercial called “El tema del Verano” (The hit of the summer) that has become an excellent case of viral marketing.
Surfing through YouTubeI found more than 30 homemade versions imitating the commercial “numa numa” style.
There is no doubt that in 2006 the web has become a powerful media where small contributions of millions of people participate and interact with the brands. Time Magazine, dedicate its cover to this subject: Time’s Person of the Year: You
As the “Argentinean philosopher” Carlitos Bala used to say, you show movement by going, so Let’s Go!
This is our humble contribution to viral marketing. The best way to learn is by doing, measuring, testing, correcting and trying again.Our try outs start with the following:
The end of the year is a moment for making reviews and retrospection. If we take a look to 2006 and we focus on what was important during this year on viral marketing, without a doubt we have to say that the impact made by YouTube is one the most relevant facts.
YouTube named by the Times as the best invention of this year, became the media to chanel million of home, semi-professional and professional videos competing for people´s attention. If you want to watch videos 24 hours without repeating, you could spend 38 years watching YouTube without repeating a video. Just a few become relevant to million of users. This is why is very important to understand what the audience wants to watch.YouTube is not the ideal media to advertise any product, but it is a trial lab much more real than many marketing research in which are based a lot of decisions according to what is happening to people.In the middle of year end reviews AdAge magazine listed the 10 top YouTube videos that you must see.
When we talk about viral marketing we are referring to the way we make a product responsible, and not a bounce effect, of a person talking to another about this product. And what this generates, is good to build the brand and helps in a positive way position the brand in the mind of the consumer.
If the brands or the companies achieve certain relevance they are exposed to this Viral Marketing, whether they want it or not. They are always exposed to the opinion of consumers and them expressing the positive and negative feelings about their relationship with the brand. Unless the brand is not perceived at all by the client, in this case we have a greater problem.
Having all this interaction, and they being out of our control, it doesn’t mean that a brand can not have a bearing on it and do things to improve the perception of it, accelerate the communication rhythm, facilitate the process, and stimulate the communication between the satisfied customers and find a way to reverse the unsatisfied ones.
The first step a brand manager should take is to understand how viral marketing works and the different factors that integrate the communication between users. A good start point would be ¨Unleashed the ideavirus¨, quoting Seth Goding again, it a very easy book to read, that’s been around the industry for quite some time. It was one of the clarifying contributions in an area full of confusion and that it is still preserving the fundamentals value, even though some cases are not current anymore. PDF unleashed the ideavirus- Seth Godin (go to the Spanish version to see PDF)Nowadays, marketing 2.0 (Mktg20) is full of opportunities where companies can start talking to their clients, and where the can motivate the client to a be the co-brand manager of the company in its environment, where the client defines what the company communicates him, the same way he used to do it with his friends, but now, through the Internet, amplified and taken to other levels that were unthought-of of in past times. Brands need to learn how to develop communication learning with this new media and a practical way to illustrate this learning process is what Chevrolet is doing. Chevrolet is asking the general audience to make their own spot and send it to them. In this first action they did it with their SUV Tahoe. The received spots have gone over the 30,000.
Although most of the videos seen are very critical and ironic, like the one talking about needing an extra salary to pay for the gasoline that this car uses or the one that alerts about global warming illustrating it with SUV images.
This phenomenon allows a relevant brand to be influenced positively as well as negatively and with a stronger impact each time. It may be that the first impulse could be initiated by the consumer or the brand itself but it is critical that the brand understands how to work with it.
It is the consumer who shares today the position of brand manager where he can promote or punish a brand, and where viral marketing is every time more virulent and amplified. It wouldn’t be strange that in short term period we would be talking about marketing pandemic.
