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WSJ reported today that BMW (and their ad agency) took credit for a 30-minute mockumentary about a German town building a ramp to literally launch a new 1-Series BMW car to America.

The story was leaked to blogs and traditional press, and has apparently gathered some big attention for the German auto-maker, and for a fraction of the cost of a traditional 30-second TV commercial.

More than the film itself, which is a Guffman-style mockumentary about a independent film director discovering the strange event called Rampenfest, the creators continued to build out the world in which the events transpire: creating Web sites for the film The Ramp, the filmmaker Jeff Schultz, the event planner Franz Brendl, and the fictional Bavarian town of Oberpfaffelbachen. Many characters also have Facebook profiles.

What’s more, a store on cafepress actually sells the T-shirts and other merch featured in the movie. With a big enough viral push, this “commercial” could even turn profitable.

Active Rain posted a snippet of an interview with TurnHere marketer Morgan Brown.

It’s a quick discussion on how real estate agents are (and should be) using online video to sell houses. In this down market, every little advantage helps.

Online video is clearly a great way to reach out, emotionally, to a house hunter in a way an MLS listing could never do.

Selling houses is about getting the buyer to see themselves in the house. What better tactic than to film a quick video?

“The fact is making good video that is compelling, authentic and relevant to the viewer is difficult. To wit, of the millions of videos watched on YouTube each day the average view time is less than 10 seconds. This is a direct result of most video not meeting the needs of the viewer.”
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[Hat Tip: TurnHere is run by Brad Inman, whose real-estate themed Inman Blog gave my online series Flipper Nation some great blog love a few years back.]

Great tip for on-the-fly filmmakers. Use your tripod and your steady hands to get a fly-in-type dolly shot.

A friend of a friend of a friend makes these funny videos featuring a cartoonish Sasha Vujacic commenting on his own Laker performance.

It’s hilarious, though potentially offensive: “Kobe! I Machine! I open!” If any part of Sasha’s public playboy persona is real, he’ll love it. It makes him into a star (even if it’s just in his own mind).

The real Sasha is getting some great national coverage by performing well in the NBA Finals, so it’s no surprise that the latest spoof video got 211,000 views after being featured by MySpace.

Attention ad agencies and people responsible for marketing NBA teams: this is a clever (and relatively cheap) way to advertise your lesser known players, especially in a smaller ad market. Everyone knows Kobe, but how can you build an experience around the marketable characteristics of your supporting cast?

Sasha Vujacic – “I SHOOT LIKE MACHINE”

PS – The 2.5-D style reminds of a great online comedy series: “It’s Jerry Time!”

Here are four must-read blog entries, all dealing with creativity, effectiveness, and business. Why do I bring these up? Because whether you like it or not, your business (service or goods sold) is about creating and maintaining an effective, creative, and experiential relationship with a customer. Efficiency, delivery, and data are being outsourced to the Web, so only the strongest, most interesting relationships will survive the coming decades.

These guys have their finger on the pulse. Let’s join them…

How to Write for the Web: Lost Remote’s Guide for TV Newsrooms

“On the web, you’re writing for the motivated reader. Users impatiently scan headlines for anything that jumps out at them, and once they find a story they like, they click it. Once they’ve made that decision to read a story, they expect more details than they typically see in a 90-second TV piece — not as many as a newspaper story, but more than television. In a nutshell, web writing should be tighter and more conversational than print, but more detailed and a little more formal than TV.”

How to Be Interesting

“…the core skill of any future creative business person will be ‘being interesting’. People will employ and want to work with (and want to be with) interesting people.”

How to be Creative

Hugh McLeod’s 2004 rant is very close to my heart. Be authentic. Work hard. There, I summed it up.

So, You Want to Make Your Own Christian Videos?

Veggie Tales creator Phil Vischer built a million-dollar media company and saw it dashed before his eyes. As someone who moved 50 million video units, and did it with a talking tomato and cucumber, he has something to say about the intersection of art and business.