Meet YouTube's Most In-Demand Brand Stars

Great summary from AdAge about the future face of 'talent'


For Marketers, Web-Video Celebrities Offer Trusted Voices and an Engaged Viewership

by Irina Slutsky
Published: September 13, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) -- Once upon a time, YouTube was considered the Wild West -- its so-called "stars" more likely to produce cringe-worthy performances than to displace the pitch-men and -women of traditional media. But now big-time brands like Lancome, McDonald's, Ford and Kellogg's are trusting YouTube celebs with their money and reputations. "The reason we turned to them is because they have a valid voice in their community, and people trust what they say and what they think," said Scott Monty, head of social media for Ford Motors.

They've got trust and, it turns out, engagement.

"What these YouTubers have proven is that they have engaged viewers -- they comment, they talk on the YouTuber's Facebook page, on Twitter. The brands want millions of views, but they also want engaged viewers," said Caroline Giegerich, director of innovation at Initiative, which was one of the first agencies to run a successful YouTube stars campaign with Carl Jr's. "If they're engaged with the stars, clearly they are engaged with the brand ... it means someone is not just seeing an ad and forgetting about it."

In the beginning, neither the brands nor the YouTubers themselves had much of an idea how much they were worth. But the price of hiring a YouTube celebrity to pitch a product is now comparable to hiring a B- or C-level Hollywood celeb.

Ryan Higa publicly lists his starting rate as $75,000 per appearance, a fraction of what someone like Paris Hilton charged for her Carl's Jr. commercial. Some, like Joe Penna, a.k.a. MysteryGuitarMan, feel as comfortable pitching themselves to brands as they do their audiences. "I get millions of hits, and I know my demographic -- I know what kind of video will be in line with my channel," Mr. Penna, a 23-year-old former pre-med student, said. "The best thing the brands can do is come to me with a blank slate and ask me, 'What can you do with this product for us?'"

Ad Age teamed up with TubeMogul to find the stars racking up the views.

CHARLES TRIPPY

Charles Trippy

WHO IS HE? Mr. Trippy, 26, and Alli Speed, 21, vlog a "home-made reality show" called "Internet Killed Television" that is widely known as CTFxC. Mr. Trippy has been on YouTube since 2006 and continues to vlog almost daily -- he hasn't lost interest or enthusiasm for the venue.

CONTENT: Daily life vlogs with his fiance.

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 159,489,749

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 2,122,380

BRANDS: Gillette, Google, Xacti Passion

DUDEPERFECT

dudeperfect

WHO ARE THEY? Garrett Hilbert, Cory Cotton, Cody Jones, Sean Townsend, Panda, Coby Cotton, and Tyler Toney -- a team of trick-shot basketball entertainers from Texas

CONTENT: Impossible basketball shots

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 27,712,318

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 3,241,856 (top campaign for GMC snagged 1,917,028 views)

BRANDS:GMC, NBA (Sacramento Kings)

FRED

Fred

WHO IS HE? Lucas Cruikshank

WHAT HE MAKES: Videos in which he pretends to be a child in a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic mother

CONTENT: Screechy voice, occasional meltdowns

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 585,136,315

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 101,698,863 (includes promos for films and his own merchandise)

BRANDS:20th-Century Fox, Hot Topic, Nickelodeon, Taptivate

IJUSTINE

iJustine

WHO IS SHE? Justine Ezarick, 23, LA-based freelance graphic designer. Ms. Ezarick's almost unbelievable ability to create videos several times a day, her deft editing skills, her Apple obsession and her long, blond hair and good looks snagged her a young, male techie fan base.

CONTENT: Techie girl vlog

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 171,403,990

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 7,408,587 (top campaign was GE, with 1,913,481 views)

BRANDS:AT&T, Fox, GE, Intel, Mattel, Nikon, Mozy, MTV, Carl's Jr. and Dick Clark Productions

MICHAELBUCKLEY

Michael Buckley

WHO IS HE? Michael Buckley, 35, is a comedian who started with a public-access chat show called "Table for Two." He's benignly malicious -- the opposite kind of meany to Perez Hilton.

CONTENT: Celebrity memes/gossip

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 261,715,708

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 4,370,345 (top campaign was for Fox's Teen Choice, with 865,885 views)

BRANDS:ABC Family, BabelGum, 20th Century Fox, Discovery Networks, Fox television, Nickelodeon, OpenFilms, PriceDoc, Pepsi

MICHELLE PHAN

Michelle Phan

WHO IS SHE? A Vietnamese-American who gained popularity afterher Lady Gaga "Poker Face" make-up instructional got 20 million views. Before YouTube stardom, Ms. Phan worked as a waitress in a sushi restaurant and studied illustration.

CONTENT: Cosmetics tutorials

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 221,989,434

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 22,095,935 (of which Lancome Paris represents 12,234,338)

BRANDS:Colgate, Lancome Paris, PriceDoc, Sandisk, Verizon

MYSTERYGUITARMAN

Mysteryguitarman

WHO IS HE? Brazilian-born Joe Penna, 23, is an L.A.-based filmmaker, guitarist and animator who graduated from UMass with a pre-med degree.

CONTENT: Music videos and clever mash-ups of himself in his apartment in front of the camera

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 138,614,194

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 5,125,862 (top campaign is for Microsoft, with 8 million-plus views)

BRANDS:Garnier, Pop Tarts, Microsoft, McDonald's, Coca-Cola

NIGAHIGA

Nigahiga

WHO IS HE? One of the highest paid YouTube stars, Ryan Higa is a Japanese-American comedian from Hawaii who started making lipsyncing videos with his friends during college breaks. YouTube stardom followed, and his content is now varied and wide.

CONTENT: Comedy, short films, parody videos, "rants," how-to comedy videos ("How to Be a Gangster"), advertising spoofs

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 546,333,874

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 13,405,781

BRANDS:Google, Carl's Jr.

RHETT & LINK

Rhett & Link

WHO ARE THEY? Comedy duo Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal

CONTENT: Humor that's actually funny; not as viral but high-quality videos like "Facebook Song," and "T-Shirt War"; actual commercials

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 66,294,209

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 25,093,462 (top brand campaign was Microbilt, with 9,986,225 views)

BRANDS: Alka-Selzer, AJJCornhole (not a joke), Baby Ruth, Coca-Cola, Dentyne, GM, McDonald's, Spy Associates, Taco Bell, Microbilt

SHAYCARL

Shaycarl

WHO IS HE? Shay Butler, 30, lives in Idaho with his wife and kids and produces family vlogs with a funny, edgy "cool dad" twist. His user name is ShayTards, his baby is BabyTard, and his other children are PrincessTard and SonTard. You get the idea. His most recent Footlocker campaign takes place in a school cafeteria and involves a giant food fight.

CONTENT: Family vlogs

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 250,954,220

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 5,725,254

BRANDS: AT&T, A1, Google, Kia, Kodak, Sanyo, Footlocker

SMOSH

Smosh

WHO ARE THEY? Comedy duo Anthony Padilla and Ian Andrew Hecox, both 22, gained initial fame with the "Pokemon Theme Music Video," and this led them to be featured in Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year issue.

CONTENT: Sophomoric teen humor; video games

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 465,534,527

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 12,310,844 (top brand campaign was GE, with 4,717,047 views)

BRANDS: Carl's Jr., GE, Google (Nexus One), Kia, Nintendo, Puma

VENETIAN PRINCESS

Venetian Princess

WHO IS SHE? Jodie Rivera, 26, studied opera at the New England Conservatory of Music before becoming one of YouTube's first partners. Ms. Rivera has said, "I can make anywhere from the mid-five to six figures per one- to two-minute video with product placement."

CONTENT: Parodies of popular music videos

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 258,098,945

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 1,697,996 (top campaign, for Pop Tarts, notched 1,562,269 views)

BRANDS: Pop Tarts, Samsung

WHEEZYWAITER

Wheezywaiter

WHO IS HE? Craig Benzine, went to school for TV, radio and film, worked as a waiter at Big Bowl before YouTube success. He's a hungry up-and-comer with a promising start.

VIEWS (ALL-TIME): 13,350,225

BRAND VIDEO VIEWS: 290,145

BRANDS: Ford

Viral mashing?

OK, not trying to coin a new term here but there does seem to be something interesting happening, and worth exploring further, in building on great content.

A few examples:

Snoops dog's Heineken fridge:


Will it blend does an Olympus camera blend


Numa Numa guy's piece for GEICO

Blend up!

Fantastic. ‘Will it Blend’ Tom has become such a star that he’s now selling other peoples’ products:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FWv21EgRZU

Great use of the site around the player

Honda Shine on Viemo makes an excellent use of the whole space to really make the video experience seem bigger: http://vimeo.com/4281939

Heidi Cohen Eight Ways to Use Video to Boost Your Marketing

Thanks ClickZ for this:

Online video is white hot. It's being used in many ways and delivered anywhere your target audience is. The U.S. election was a watershed mark for streaming video in terms of the length of time and number of viewers. Marketers should be device indifferent since users may view your content on mobile devices, computers, and flat-screen televisions.

To better understand the state of online video, consider the following:

• Almost 80 percent of U.S. Internet users watched videos for roughly five hours in December 2008, with an average duration of 3.2 minutes per video, according to comScore.
  
  
• 65 percent of online video views were streamed between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, making this video primetime due to the faster Internet connections available at work, reported Nielsen Online.
  
  
• In 2009, online video advertising is projected to grow 45 percent to $850 million, according to eMarketer's latest forecast.
  
  
• 5 percent of mobile subscribers accessed mobile video on their phones each month, according to Nielsen in its Q3 2008 Mobile Video Report.
  
  
• About one-third of online retailers offer video on their sites, according to Vovici Corp.'s September 2008 research for Internet Retailer.

Online Video's Five Subject Categories

Consider your target market's needs when creating online video content because they can have a major impact on the video's optimal length and its shelf life. An SIIA Information Industry Summit panel advised attendees to think about whether their audience snacks on short videos or engages with longer formats. Here are five popular types of video content you can use:

• News, including weather. Viewers often look for short tidbits to be informed about what's happening in their world. Think about the type of news most relevant to your target audience.
  
  
• Sports. Typically, these videos consist of clips highlighting a single sports play where the audience is highly engaged.
  
  
• How-to and research information. Viewers often look for answers to specific questions, so make it easy for your videos to be found. This content can be evergreen.
  
  
• Entertainment, including comedy, music, TV shows, clips, and movies. Everyone looks for fun diversions. While entertaining content can be short, users are also watching longer formats, such as complete television shows and movies.
  
  
• Social media, including user-generated content. These videos often focus on humor.

Eight Ways to Use Online Video

Regardless of whether you're a retailer, media company, or brand marketer, think holistically about how to incorporate video into your communications strategy. Here are eight ways to use online video to extend your marketing mix:

• Extend news coverage and other media events. While established brands like CNN dominate, any Web site can create its own channel.
  
  
• Provide product-related information to aid use, including how-to for complex products that require training or further help. For example, Janome sewing machines partnered with Threadbanger
  
  
• Create videos for product placement. Develop or partner with a video series that highlights your product and engages your target market, like Starburst has done with Nite Fite
  
  
• Portray products in a real environment to help customers experience the product without seeing it in person. Extend your Web site to give customers a more retail-like environment.
  
  
• Show real customers giving their honest reactions, like an infomercial.
  
  
• Sponsor an ongoing video series created by a third party to associate your brand with special personalities or other brands, such as Degree's integration with TMI Weekly's Little Black Dress episode.
  
  
• Extend other forms of content you're already creating, such as Webinars, analyst presentations, and quarterly meetings.
  
  
• Use video to connect with remote staff or customers.

Keep in mind that you need to drive traffic to your videos. Matt Cutler, VP, marketing and analytics of Visible Measures, suggests releasing related videos at the same time and cross-promoting them to help concentrate views over a short period to optimize distribution of related videos. The goal is to help your video reach top-viewed status that increases video views.

Four Ways Online Video Contributes to Profitability

Media companies, brands, and e-tailers can benefit from using online video. Here's how it can add to the bottom line:

• Advertising vehicle. From a consumer perspective, quantity and length are an issue. Product placement and sponsorship are other ways to create revenue on media sites.
  
  
• Paid products. Depending on the availability of the information or event, viewers may be willing to pay for downloads.
  
  
• Product sales support. Retailers can gain by using videos to better illustrate product use prior to purchase and to support product use and community building after purchase.
  
  
• Branding enhancement. You can enhance branding through the use of online videos that engage viewers, like the Blendtec blender videos.

Seven Online Video Metrics

To ensure that online video meets your marketing goals, track the following factors to ensure you're on track:

• Viewers. How many people have seen your video? What's the pass-along rate? Is it going viral?
  
  
• Views and Time. How many times are the videos viewed? How much of each one is viewed?
  
  
• Interaction. Since online videos tend to drive user interaction, assess comments for frequency and content and watch how viewers are using the video to create mashups and the like.
  
  
• Branding. Have your branding metrics improved as a result of online video use?
  
  
• Revenues. How have the videos helped support sales in terms of supplying direct identifiable sales leads or adding to the prepurchase research phase? Also, consider whether videos have helped reduce returns through post-purchase support.
  
  
• Costs. What is the expense of developing the video and related Web site support? How does this compare to the benefits you are realizing?

As online video evolves, there are bigger audiences to be had and increasingly more exciting ways to get their attention. The cost of creating and serving video has come down. It is time to get creative by using video to extend your marketing reach and complement your marketing plan

What do YouTube's top 20 clips tell us about user-generated content?

Thanks to The Guardian for this

Given its reputation as the home of online user-generated material, YouTube hosts a lot of corporate content these days. Of course, it always has done, from vintage archive material to pirated recent output. But rather than trying to stamp it out, more and more entertainment industry players are getting into bed with YouTube and Google, its parent company: MGM and FremantleMedia, for instance, have entered into deals with the site in recent weeks.

A look last week at the site's current 20 most viewed clips of all time - all with more than 50m hits - offered a snapshot of the corporatising effect. A good half of them were professional music videos, including work by Avril Lavigne, Chris Brown, Leona Lewis and a saccharine Asian pop number complete with karaoke subtitles, whose popularity has been attributed to its misleading title, xxx.

Bafflingly, more than 60m hits have also been clocked up by Lezberado: Revenge Fantasies, an impassioned viewer response to the lesbian-themed TV series The L Word, and particularly the despicable behaviour of a character called Jenny. Although it appears to be user-generated, the clip comes under the branding of Showtime, the channel that shows the series.

Even among actual user-generated content, many of the most popular clips are based on bestselling pop culture, albeit in creative ways: the evergreen Evolution of Dance plays on its audience's familiarity with dance crazes, while Crank Dat Soulja Boy Spongebob is a cunning mash-up of the infectious dance hit and the infectious cartoon series. Potter Puppet Pals in The Mysterious Ticking Noise is part of an entertaining series of puppet-based fan fiction - this particular episode offers an a cappella song made up of the characters' names, and ends with a bang.

The only exceptions are moments of home-video larking about involving laughing babies - see Hahaha and Charlie bit my finger - again ! - and a virtuoso guitar solo delivered by an adolescent with his face hidden by a baseball cap (guitar).

When it comes to wholly original content conceived, executed and uploaded by a YouTube user, one video is in a league of its own - the Spanish-language short Lo que tú quieras oír (Whatever You Want to Hear) shown above, by Guillermo Zapata. It's a cute little story about a woman, Sofía, who returns home to find her husband has dumped her by answerphone; she re-edits the message, turning it into a plea that she take him back - which she then rejects. Whether it deserves more than 77m hits is arguable, but it's notable that the film engages with creative editing as subject matter - Sofía essentially creates a mash-up of her husband's message - and was posted under a Creative Commons license, which allows for wide redistribution of the material rather than attempting to assert conventional copyright control. In these ways, it shows both where user-generated content is, and where it's heading.

Viking Cruise - DANCE MATCH oh yeah

Listen up P&O people...
This is a cool site for Viking Cruises (a booze cruise party ship) where you send in a video of you dancing and are matched up with other people that share your dance style. You can then meet up with them on ship to share the disco fever... Very funny to watchhttp://www.dance-match.se/

Fox Mobiseries

Fox buys rights to Cell mobiseries

Posted by Teresa von Fuchs, on MobileCrunch.

Fox International, in its quest to expand its mobile content offerings, has bought the rights to Mobstar’s made-for-mobile series Cell.

First aired in the UK on O2, Cell consists of 20 two-minute ‘mobisodes’ about a man locked in prison with a mobile phone and a mystery caller. The show is produced by Endemol and was originally played in the U.S. on Sony’s crackle.com.

Fox plans to broadcast the mobisodes on a UK-only mobile channel, thecell.tv; Fox also has plans for more UK-only mobile sites coming in the fall.

Mobile Entertainment

Viral - some interesting observations

This is taken straight from Go Viral's newsletter - so big up to them!

Newsletter from GoViral
Cannes Lions 2008 and Females in viral campaigns

Dear Reader,
Welcome to our July newsletter. In this edition, we take a closer look at Cannes Lions 2008 winners Microsoft's "Halo 3" and Burger King's "The Whopper Freakout". This monthly insight tunes in on the lack of viral campaigns targeted against women.
In the last newsletter we introduced you to our new book "The Social Metropolis" – it is now available for free download here . You can also enjoy our seminar in Cannes here .
Enjoy!


Cannes Lions 2008 – Microsoft's Halo 3 and Burger King's "The Whopper Freakout"
We have again reached that time of the year, where advertisers from all over the world gather and celebrate the passing year and select their favorite commercials. This year's viral contestants included Burger King's "Whopper Freak out" and four spots from Halo 3.

Microsoft's Halo 3
T.A.G. and McCann made a homerun and won the Grand Prix prize in the Film category for the Halo 3 Believe campaign, which included 'Gravesite,' 'Enemy Weapon', 'John 117/monument' and 'Combat' for Microsoft's Xbox 360. The four spots are part of larger campaign, which initiated at the end of 2006. The campaign consisted of five major phases (that you can read about in our new book ) until its release on September 25th 2007. The overall theme of the campaign is rather untraditional for a computer game. Users are guided around in the remnants of a post-world war, taking place after the two first games. Real actors play the roles of surviving veterans guiding the users through a memorial walk of the wars. The four spots were a part of phase 5 and apart from them, it consisted of a Halo 3 website, serving as a virtual museum, providing an interactive fly through of the entire John 117 monument – allowing visitors to peek right into the fight. They could also learn more about our enemies and hear first hand stories from the men, who were there. The four spots consist of interviews with surviving veterans of the battle who served with Master Chief. They talk about their experiences and speak with reverence and awe about what it was like to serve with mankind's greatest hero.
Watch Enemy Weapon
Watch John 117/Monument
Watch Combat
Watch Gravesite

Burger King's "The Whopper Freakout"
This year, "Whopper Freakout" – created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Miami – stood out and won gold in the cyber category. Depriving Whopper fans of their favorite burger turns out to be a surefire way to get them to buy more. To coincide with the 50th Anniversary of the Whopper, Burger King conducted a social experiment removing the Whopper from the menu. On December 2007, a variety of television, interactive, radio and print executions rolled out and whopperfreakout.com was introduced. Hidden cameras show what happens at two Burger King outlets, when a actual Burger King customer is being told that the chain no longer serves Whoppers. The campaign explores the emotional attachment that people hold towards products and in this case – the Whopper. The clips document the reactions from upset customers. One reaction was: "What are you going to put on the logo now -- home of the 'Whatever we got'?". The message was clear – people didn't like it. The campaign was a huge success and drove sales of the Whopper up by 29%. The website created for this campaign received 4 million views by mid-March, and had 250,000 unique visitors in the month of December alone. Spoofs of the TV ads were created and posted on the internet. Not only did the campaign help strengthen the sales at Burger Kings restaurants nation wide, but also, competitors showed signs of slower traffic.
Watch The Whopper Freakout here

Insight of the month: Lacking focus on females in viral marketing.
One of the seminars at Cannes Lions 2008 was held by Cheil Worldwide: A Day In The Life Of A Mobile Phone In Seoul. The seminar positioned delegates in the minds of YMCs (Young-Minded Consumer) living in the modern digital metropolis of Seoul. And through that experience, delegates saw how today's youth consumer is making the mobile device an extension of his/her existence. As Pernille Fruensgaard write on her blog , one of the interesting parts of the seminar was, that the mobile services discussed by Cheil were primarily targeted young females, and that these served as drivers of the services making them a natural part of their daily lives and social connections.
Right now, the nature of viral campaigns in Europe seems to be driven by and to masculine humor and the nature of females, linked up to networking and sharing of information/stories/gossip, is not addressed in viral campaigns. Interestingly, their nature would be a perfect catalyst for spreading a message, if it is possible to use in their social activities.
A study from Lucid Marketing concludes that women uses word of mouth more than men. Women are more likely than men to share a positive experience with a business (91% versus 83%), or a product (95% versus 89%). The same conclusion is found at Jackie Huba's blog , where she ask Michele Miller, co-author of the new book "The Soccer Mom Myth: Today's Female Consumer: How She Really Is, Why She Really Buys", to share five tips for understanding word of mouth and women. "Ask any woman how she found her hairdresser, doctor, or favorite wine, and she is likely to tell you that it was from a friend. Women are natural word of mouth spreaders. They are wired that way – with four times as many connections between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, women tap deeply into that area that is responsible for bonding and connecting with others".
So, brands for female segments should definitely not disregard word of mouth marketing, when planning future campaigns. In fact, it could prove a very profitable decision.

Subscribe to Go Viral's newsletter

Wanted: larrikin social media marketers

I would like to draw your attention to this blog posted by Steven Noble from Forrester in the US; 1. because it features our ads and 2. because its a warm fuzzy 'pat on the back' to all of us here in Australia for just being us. Let's keep up the larrakinism.

If brands have personalities, then Australian brands often aspire to be larrikins.

Larrakins are much-loved figures in Australian society. In the 80s, we even elected one as Prime Minister. The larrikin is the one who knowns when to work and when to play, with an emphasis on the latter. The one who sees everyone as their equal — especially when it comes to humour. The centre of attention at every barbecue, flipping sausages and telling tall tales. The plain speaker with a big heart, a dry wit and a sore and sorry liver.

No surprises: Australian advertisers often use larrikin themes in their work. For example, BBDO Clemenger created the Four'N Twenty Magic Salad Plate, so larrikins can pretend their Aussie meat pies are surrounded by greenery. Likewise, ex-footballer Sam Kekovich plays the larrikin superbly in Meat & Livestock Australia's Eat Lamb campaign, poking fun at everyone from hippies to New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark. (Of course, he's actually mocking the traditional Australian values that he pretends to spruik in the ads.)

But here's the thing: a true larrikin doesn't need the big budgets and great production values of traditional television advertising. The Paul Hogan Show proved that. The production values were low and the jokes could have been written by any larrikin in the country, but it was hysterically funny and an Australian television favourite for more than a decade.

With a camcorder, a supportive boss and some fun-loving staff, larrikin brands could do the same. They could be dry wits on Twitter, inspiring the rest of us to LOL. They could be YouTube superstars, and the Paul Hogans of tomorrow. They could say the things the rest of us love to hear, but never say ourselves. They could bring larrikin brands to life for their irreverent fun-loving customers.

http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2008/07/posted-by-steve.html

Earn mobile credit by getting your friends to watch ads!

Thanks Contagious

To anyone who’s on Virgin Mobile US and has befriended every man and his dog on Facebook, the ‘fund my phone’ application is a dream come true.

On adding the app to their profile, Facebook aficionados can invite their friends to watch ads by entering a phone number or email address in the ‘to’ box. They then receive an extra minute of free airtime for every four friends who give a minute of their time.

For Virgin Mobile, which has already experimented in the ad-funded calls area, ‘fund my phone’ marks a positive entry into the social networking space: not only do customers benefit directly, but non-Virgin Mobile users will be exposed to the brand and will see friends acquiring free minutes for themselves rather than relying on word of mouth.

‘Fund my phone’ extends Virgin Mobile’s SugarMama programme which offers customers up to 75 minutes of free airtime a month in return for watching ads (although no timewasters, please - participants have to answers questions to prove they were paying attention). Since it was first introduced in 2006, SugarMama has served up over 20m free minutes.

‘Fund my phone’ has already attracted 327 fans and five-star reviews from Facebook friends who, in the true spirit of social networking, are suggesting a ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ arrangement. It’s certainly refreshing to see an application that gives something meaningful back to users rather than the more run-of-the-mill vampire-bites or custard-pies.

Blyk, a similar service which has launched in the UK and is about to embark on a pan-European roll-out - has already sussed that the way to conquer the hearts and minds of mobile-obsessed 16-24 year olds is to give them free texts and free minutes in return for receiving between four and six ad messages a day. Blyk attracted 100,000 users in the UK six months ahead of its target and claims that response rates to its advertising messages from the likes of Xbox and adidas are averaging 29%.

If an ad does touch you in some way, the temptation to forward it to Facebook friends and earn free airtime will be hard to resist. Everyone’s a winner. But only if the ads are any good to start with…
www.virginmobileusa.com/stuff/sugarmama.do

Alternative reality games (ARGs)

Posted on Contagious a little while ago, this article provides access to a few of the bigger ARGs on at the moment:
McDonald's Olympic - The Lost Ring and The Dark Knight Returns. NB: the Batman wiki give a great overview of the volume of activity going into the game/campaign

The Alternate Reality Game (ARG) is becoming an increasingly mainstream marketing tool, with everyone from Guinness to Warner Bros to P&G getting involved. For the uninitiated, an ARG is a gigantic treasure hunt played out both on and offline in which participants collaborate to solve puzzles and reach the game’s conclusion. This week sees the launch of The Lost Ring, an ARG to neatly remind us that it’s not only the sexy advertisers - the movies, the games - that get to play in this space. In an odd yet intriguing pairing, fast food giant McDonald’s is sponsoring the game in conjunction with the International Olympic Committee.

So far , the action appears to be an effort to highlight the true meaning of the Olympics (apparently it isn’t just there to throw the East-West Cold War and some hefty sponsorship deals into sharp relief). The story begins as follows: ‘Late in February 2008, six people awoke, blindfolded and garbed in athletic attire, in labyrinths scattered across the world. None remembered their past, but all bore a tattoo on their arm reading Trovu la ringon perditan, or "Find the lost ring" in Esperanto.’

It’s compelling stuff. Rumours abound that the puppetmasters in this case are none other than AKQA, which would explain the beautifully produced trailer video designed to get you started:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV2taCwugzk

The video directs you to the campaign website, www.thelostring.com - again, gorgeous to look at and fun to play with. And as with all ARGs, at the centre of the campaign is a part user-generated part professionally steered wiki, here: http://olympics.wikibruce.com/Home.

As many failed attempts at ARGs have shown, the form works best when the game builds towards a definitive conclusion, such as a movie or game release - or the Olympics. We’ve no idea where McDonald’s fits into all this, but it’s going to be intriguing to see how the golden arches will be integrated as the game goes on, if at all. Many ARGs feature real world interaction, and using the company’s retail outfits as meeting points could be a tidy tie-in. Are we all shortly to be found staggering round the Maccy D’s on Oxford Street asking strangers if they know where the ring is in Esperanto?

With the trailer already standing at around half a million views, The Lost Ring is off to a flying start. Points to McDonald’s for some creative leverage of their sponsorship, and to the IOC for embracing the power of the web to engage and inform. Now if only they could convince the Chinese government to do the same...

BONUS NEWS! The activity surrounding The Dark Knight, the next installment of the hugely successful Batman movie franchise, looked set to take the ARG form firmly into the mainstream with its mixture of just-dark-enough subject matter, and digital and real world interaction. Despite a hiatus following actor Heath Ledger’s untimely death, the game is happily still going on, highlighting the form’s flexibility. Check it out here.

http://batman.wikibruce.com/Home

The anatomy of a great digital launch campaign

Taken from an article in the WSJ (Jan 24 , 2008. Marshall Crook & Peter Sanders), that actually about the death of Heath Ledger, this excerpt gives a good outline of the great multi-channel, long-term, viral based campaign used to launch the Dark Knight Film.

The viral campaign of "The Dark Knight" began to appear out of nowhere in May. That's when an inaugural political advertisement for Harvey Dent, aspiring Gotham City district attorney, appeared online without mentioning any movie. IBelieveinHarveyDent.com featured a photo of the candidate and was "Paid for by Friends of Harvey Dent." By following clues sprinkled on Internet message boards, fans then were led to a second site: IBelieveinHarveyDentToo.com. The page was the same, but Mr. Dent's picture was defaced with blackened eyes and a ghastly red grin. (The page has since changed, but visitors can scroll down to see a hidden message.)

The site was a fake, the candidate photos were of actor Aaron Eckhart, and the Web pages were the beginning of an elaborate attempt to stir up interest among fans. Throughout the summer and fall of 2007, the campaign served up a labyrinthine adventure set in an alternate-reality Gotham City. The drive of the campaign was the slow reveal of the Joker as played by Mr. Ledger. The actor's death puts into question the future of the Joker-centric marketing push for "The Dark Knight" and whether Warner Bros. will change tactics rather than risk a negative public response.

At the defaced Harvey Dent Web page, fans could get a code that allowed them to remove a piece of the overlying image. As more fans participated, Mr. Dent disappeared pixel by pixel, displaying the first official photo of Mr. Ledger's Joker: a grim white face appearing out of the darkness with dead eyes and an erratic, ruby smile carved into his cheeks.

With a playful but psychotic tone, the Joker character kept movie fanboys guessing for months. In late October, he requested that they participate in a nationwide scavenger hunt. Fans took photos of letter-shaped landmarks all over the country. The letters formed a message: "The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules," which then dissolved into a fresh Joker image. In November, the Joker encouraged fans to submit images of them and friends painted with white faces and red smiles. Each game resulted in a new image of the Joker or a new site with a new quest. Fans were updated on viral developments by editors of popular film news sites like www.superherohype.com and aintitcool.com, among others.

In late fall, fictional newspaper the Gotham Times launched its Web site, www.thegothamtimes.com, where fans could read up on Batman's exploits or Mr. Dent's war on corruption. Readers then discovered a second newspaper, the HaHaHa Times, at www.thehahahatimes.com, which was a frightening version of the original paper with edits made by the Joker himself.

In December, the campaign subsided when "The Dark Knight" prologue was screened before IMAX showings of "I Am Legend" and the first full-length trailer for "The Dark Knight" made its debut. Both featured footage unveiling Mr. Ledger's performance.

Such campaigns aren't new, of course. "The Blair Witch Project" in 1999 established that young movie fans could be enticed by online games that hold their interest for months before a film's release. Online campaigns have now become a standard feature of the marketing for certain films, especially comic-book fare like Batman.

Mr. Ledger isn't featured just in the online campaign. The movie's current poster includes a ghostly and haunting image of Mr. Ledger in his Joker getup, with the tag line "Why So Serious?" scrawled in red. In recent interviews, Mr. Ledger said the Joker was the most-fun role he had ever undertaken but was taxing physically and emotionally.

The movie's viral campaign is the work of 42 Entertainment, a Pasadena, Calif., independent producer of alternate-reality multimedia environments. The goal was to create a multiplatform story bridging the 2005 film -- which cost $150 million to produce and sold about $370 million of tickets world-wide -- and its sequel.

Untimely deaths have interrupted movie marketing before -- from James Dean's 1955 death before "Giant" was released, to the accidental shooting of Brandon Lee on the set of "The Crow," to the murder of director/actress Adrienne Shelley in the run-up to "Waitress" last year.

Web movie campaigns often rely on movie fan sites to whip up and maintain interest in the online initiatives. "We usually help kick off campaigns by spreading the word, and fans take it from there," said Mirko Parlevliet of Coming Soon Media LP, which operates sites like comingsoon.net and superherohype.com.

Mr. Parlevliet said the viral campaign for "The Dark Knight" "was very detailed and got a great response from the fans," adding that fans were rewarded for participating by gaining access to trailers, posters and photos. Still, he says, "I personally don't think these games reach an audience beyond the Internet-savvy fans. ... Also, [the studios] should concentrate more on a world-wide audience instead of just the U.S. fans."

Mobile - 'Meet The Spartans' with Carmen Electra

While we've all seen this type of thing done before, this campaign using personalised video messaging really stands of with it's simplicity, great execution and nice mobile tie-in (US numbers only at this stage).

Subject choice and premise for the video also is also spot on.

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From branding unbound: 20th Century Fox Selects Celtra´s Mobile Marketing Platform for New Movie Promotional Campaign

Celtra's on-demand platform known as Fooch Campaign Manager (FCM) delivers personalized and video synchronized phone calls as part of an interactive campaign for "Meet the Spartans," starring Carmen Electra ( http://www.carmenhasacrushonyou.com/ ). Celtra offers an on-demand service for message-based mobile marketing. The Fooch Campaign Manager (FCM) platform provides Voice, SMS and WAP push connectivity through a powerful on-demand application for campaign management.

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Carmen Electra has a crush on you. And you. And you.

In an innovative new campaign from 20th Century Fox, the studio is teaming with Boston-based Celtra to bring personalizable, video synchronized promotional phone calls to mobile phones.

It all starts at Carmenhasacrushonyou.com, which features a viral video starring Carmen Electra, the star of the upcoming movie "Meet The Spartans."

Electra becomes side-tracked with talk about a new love interest during a faux interview where she originally intends to plug the film. Users have the ability to personalize Carmen's story, by changing the subject of her love interest to someone they know. Users can then enter the phone numbers of recipients they designate and thereby send the video interview URL link to their friends.

Carmen's calling act in front of the camera surprises viewers in the much the same way as the recent Peyton Manning "Pep Talk" and "Dexter" personalizable videos and the 30 Rock promotional calls. In addition, they receive a personalized call invitation to see the movie.

How to do VIRAL

This guest post was written by Dan Ackerman Greenberg, co-founder of viral video marketing company The Comotion Group and lead TA for the Stanford Facebook Class. Dan will graduate from the Stanford Management Science & Engineering Masters program in June.

Have you ever watched a video with 100,000 views on YouTube and thought to yourself: “How the hell did that video get so many views?” Chances are pretty good that this didn’t happen naturally, but rather that some company worked hard to make it happen – some company like mine.

When most people talk about “viral videos,” they’re usually referring to videos like Miss Teen South Carolina, Smirnoff’s Tea Partay music video, the Sony Bravia ads, Soulja Boy - videos that have traveled all around the internet and been posted on YouTube, MySpace, Google Video, Facebook, Digg, blogs, etc. - videos with millions and millions of views.

Over the past year, I have run clandestine marketing campaigns meant to ensure that promotional videos become truly viral, as these examples have become in the extreme. In this post, I will share some of the techniques I use to do my job: to get at least 100,000 people to watch my clients’ “viral” videos.

Secret #1: Not all viral videos are what they seem

There are tens of thousands of videos uploaded to YouTube each day (I’ve heard estimates between 10-65,000 videos per day). I don’t care how “viral” you think your video is; no one is going to find it and no one is going to watch it.

The members of my startup are hired guns – our clients give us videos and we make them go viral. Our rule of thumb is that if we don’t get a video 100,000 views, we don’t charge.

So far, we’ve worked on 80-90 videos and we’ve seen overwhelming success. In the past 3 months, we’ve achieved over 20 million views for our clients, with videos ranging from 100,000 views to upwards of 1.5 million views each. In other words, not all videos go viral organically – there is a method to the madness.

I can’t reveal our clients’ names and I can’t link to the videos we’ve worked on, because YouTube surely doesn’t like what we’re doing and our clients hate to admit that they need professional help with their “viral” videos. But I can give you a general idea of who we’ve worked with: two top Hollywood movie studios, a major record label, a variety of very well known consumer brands, and a number of different startups, both domestic and international.

This summer, we were approached by a Hollywood movie studio and asked to help market a series of viral clips they had created in advance of a blockbuster. The videos were 10-20 seconds each, were shot from what appeared to be a camera phone, and captured a series of unexpected and shocking events that required professional post-production and CGI. Needless to say, the studio had invested a significant amount of money in creating the videos but every time they put them online, they couldn’t get more than a few thousand views.

We took six videos and achieved:

• 6 million views on YouTube
• ~30,000 ratings
• ~10,000 favorites
• ~10,000 comments
• 200+ blog posts linking back to the videos
• All six videos made it into the top 5 Most Viewed of the Day, and the two that went truly viral (1.5 million views each) were #1 and #2 Most Viewed of the Week.

The following principles were the secrets to our success.

2. Content is NOT King

If you want a truly viral video that will get millions of people to watch and share it, then yes, content is key. But good content is not necessary to get 100,000 views if you follow these strategies.

Don’t get me wrong: the content is what will drive visitors back to a site. So a video must have a decent concept, but one shouldn’t agonize over determining the best “viral” video possible. Generally, a concept should not be forced because it fits a brand. Rather, a brand should be fit into a great concept. Here are some guidelines we follow:

• Make it short: 15-30 seconds is ideal; break down long stories into bite-sized clips
• Design for remixing: create a video that is simple enough to be remixed over and over again by others. Ex: “Dramatic Hamster”
• Don’t make an outright ad: if a video feels like an ad, viewers won’t share it unless it’s really amazing. Ex: Sony Bravia
• Make it shocking: give a viewer no choice but to investigate further. Ex: “UFO Haiti”
• Use fake headlines: make the viewer say, “Holy shit, did that actually happen?!” Ex: “Stolen Nascar”
• Appeal to sex: if all else fails, hire the most attractive women available to be in the video. Ex: “Yoga 4 Dudes”

These recent videos would have been perfect had they been viral “ads” pointing people back to websites:

• Model Falls in Hole on Runway
• Cheerleader Gets Run Over By Football Team
• PacMan: The Chase
• Dude
• Dog Drives Car
• Snowball – Dancing Cockatoo

3. Core Strategy: Getting onto the “Most Viewed” page

Now that a video is ready to go, how the hell is it going to attract 100,000 viewers?

The core concept of video marketing on YouTube is to harness the power of the site’s traffic. Here’s the idea: something like 80 million videos are watched each day on YouTube, and a significant number of those views come from people clicking the “Videos” tab at the top. The goal is to get a video on that Videos page, which lists the Daily Most Viewed videos.

If we succeed, the video will no longer be a single needle in the haystack of 10,000 new videos per day. It will be one of the twenty videos on the Most Viewed page, which means that we can grab 1/20th of the clicks on that page! And the higher up on the page our video is, the more views we are going to get.

So how do we get the first 50,000 views we need to get our videos onto the Most Viewed list?

• Blogs: We reach out to individuals who run relevant blogs and actually pay them to post our embedded videos. Sounds a little bit like cheating/PayPerPost, but it’s effective and it’s not against any rules.
• Forums: We start new threads and embed our videos. Sometimes, this means kickstarting the conversations by setting up multiple accounts on each forum and posting back and forth between a few different users. Yes, it’s tedious and time-consuming, but if we get enough people working on it, it can have a tremendous effect.
• MySpace: Plenty of users allow you to embed YouTube videos right in the comments section of their MySpace pages. We take advantage of this.
• Facebook: Share, share, share. We’ve taken Dave McClure’s advice and built a sizeable presence on Facebook, so sharing a video with our entire friends list can have a real impact. Other ideas include creating an event that announces the video launch and inviting friends, writing a note and tagging friends, or posting the video on Facebook Video with a link back to the original YouTube video.
• Email lists: Send the video to an email list. Depending on the size of the list (and the recipients’ willingness to receive links to YouTube videos), this can be a very effective strategy.
• Friends: Make sure everyone we know watches the video and try to get them to email it out to their friends, or at least share it on Facebook.

Each video has a shelf life of 48 hours before it’s moved from the Daily Most Viewed list to the Weekly Most Viewed list, so it’s important that this happens quickly. As I mentioned before, when done right, this is a tremendously successful strategy.

4. Title Optimization

Once a video is on the Most Viewed page, what can be done to maximize views?

It seems obvious, but people see hundreds of videos on YouTube, and the title and thumbnail are an easy way for video publishers to actively persuade someone to click on a video. Titles can be changed a limitless number of times, so we sometimes have a catchy (and somewhat misleading) title for the first few days, then later switch to something more relevant to the brand. Recently, I’ve noticed a trend towards titling videos with the phrases “exclusive,” “behind the scenes,” and “leaked video.”

5. Thumbnail Optimization

If a video is sitting on the Most Viewed page with nineteen other videos, a compelling video thumbnail is the single best strategy to maximize the number of clicks the video gets.

YouTube provides three choices for a video’s thumbnail, one of which is grabbed from the exact middle of the video. As we edit our videos, we make sure that the frame at the very middle is interesting. It’s no surprise that videos with thumbnails of half naked women get hundreds of thousands of views. Not to say that this is the best strategy, but you get the idea. Two rules of thumb: the thumbnail should be clear (suggesting high video quality) and ideally it should have a face or at least a person in it.

Also, when we feel particularly creative, we optimize all three thumbnails then change the thumbnail every few hours. This is definitely an underused strategy, but it’s an interesting way to keep a video fresh once it’s on the Most Viewed list.

See the highlighted videos in the screenshot below for a good example of how a compelling title and screenshot can make all the difference once the video is on the Most Viewed page.

6. Commenting: Having a conversation with yourself

Every power user on YouTube has a number of different accounts. So do we. A great way to maximize the number of people who watch our videos is to create some sort of controversy in the comments section below the video. We get a few people in our office to log in throughout the day and post heated comments back and forth (you can definitely have a lot of fun with this). Everyone loves a good, heated discussion in the comments section - especially if the comments are related to a brand/startup.

Also, we aren’t afraid to delete comments – if someone is saying our video (or your startup) sucks, we just delete their comment. We can’t let one user’s negativity taint everyone else’s opinions.

We usually get one comment for every thousand views, since most people watching YouTube videos aren’t logged in. But a heated comment thread (done well) will engage viewers and will drive traffic back to our sites.

7. Releasing all videos simultaneously

Once people are watching a video, how do we keep them engaged and bring them back to a website?

A lot of the time our clients say: “We’ve got 5 videos and we’re going to release one every few days so that viewers look forward to each video.”

This is the wrong way to think about YouTube marketing. If we have multiple videos, we post all of them at once. If someone sees our first video and is so intrigued that they want to watch more, why would we make them wait until we post the next one? We give them everything up front. If a user wants to watch all five of our videos right now, there’s a much better chance that we’ll be able to persuade them to click through to our website. We don’t make them wait after seeing the first video, because they’re never going to see the next four.

Once our first video is done, we delete our second video then re-upload it. Now we have another 48-hour window to push it to the Most Viewed page. Rinse and repeat. Using this strategy, we give our most interested viewers the chance to fully engage with a campaign without compromising the opportunity to individually release and market each consecutive video.

8. Strategic Tagging: Leading viewers down the rabbit hole

This is one of my favorite strategies and one that I think we invented. YouTube allows you to tag your videos with keywords that make your videos show up in relevant searches. For the first week that our video is online, we don’t use keyword tags to optimize the video for searches on YouTube. Instead, we’ve discovered that you can use tags to control the videos that show up in the Related Videos box.

I like to think about it as leading viewers down the rabbit hole. The idea here is to make it as easy as possible for viewers to engage with all your content, rather than jumping away to “related” content that actually has nothing to do with your brand/startup.

So how do we strategically tag? We choose three or four unique tags and use only these tags for all of the videos we post. I’m not talking about obscure tags; I’m talking about unique tags, tags that are not used by any other YouTube videos. Done correctly, this will allow us to have full control over the videos that show up as “Related Videos.”

When views start trailing off after a few days to a week, it’s time to add some more generic tags, tags that draw out the long tail of a video as it starts to appear in search results on YouTube and Google.

9. Metrics/Tracking: How we measure effectiveness

The following is how we measure the success of our viral videos.

For one, we tweak the links put up on YouTube (whether in a YouTube channel or in a video description) by adding “?video=1” to the end of each URL. This makes it much easier to track inbound links using Google Analytics or another metrics tool.

TubeMogul and VidMetrix also track views/comments/ratings on each individual video and draw out nice graphs that can be shared with the team. Additionally, these tools follow the viral spread of a video outside of YouTube and throughout other social media sites and blogs.

Conclusion

The Wild West days of Lonely Girl and Ask A Ninja are over. You simply can’t expect to post great videos on YouTube and have them go viral on their own, even if you think you have the best videos ever. These days, achieving true virality takes serious creativity, some luck, and a lot of hard work. So, my advice: fire your PR firm and do it yourself.