Alec

McNayr

Two quick links, both forwarded to me by Alan Beard in the last 24 hours:

How to Create Product Demo Videos that Get Social Media Attention: 6 Strategies to Increase Sales
via Marketing Sherpa

“Aaron Miller, President, ProGuitarShop.com, sees online video as the perfect medium for selling the retailer’s boutique electric guitar effects pedals.

In late 2007, ProGuitarShop.com was primarily an eBay retailer struggling to build traffic to their website. Miller’s team created a new strategy that avoided focusing on search engines. Instead, they built traffic through social networks, mostly by video marketing through YouTube.

Two years and more than 550 videos later, the team captures about 45,000 unique video views daily on YouTube and between 15,000 and 20,000 on their website — all from a niche audience. Sales have doubled each year since the effort began.”

Stella Artois Ditches Old-Time Campaigns, Creates Retro “TV” Station
via Fast Company

“How long is it until companies begin sponsoring full-on TV shows of their own and publishing them on the Web? That doesn’t sound too much different from television entertainment in the 1950s and the rise of soap operas. And now, the economics make tremendous sense: Why bother creating TV ads if you can get a few million views with no distribution costs while simultaneously creating and having final cut control over far more ambitious content?”

How long indeed?  It’s happening already.  One by one, brands are realizing the power of creating a constant flow of interesting, inexpensive media — forgoing the overhead-rich worlds of TV and traditional advertising.

The Fast Company asks how long it will be until a brand asks the creators of a show like Gossip Girl to create extended storylines with brands in center stage.  Not too long, I feel. But the question for aspiring and independent creators is — if I don’t work for a network and I don’t make a TV show, what career path can I take to get better cred with brands?

It’s something I’m wrestling with myself.

The answer is that you have to have proof of your work.  And, following the logic trail, you have to have work to get results!

If you’ve followed my career — and I know all six of you reading this have — you’ll see Pepperdine University (recognizable brand), Mann Theatres (regionally known brand), my own project Flipper Nation (350,000 views + awards), deals with ABC (again, a brand), Historical Tweets (4.7 million page views this year), and only now do I have an opportunity to step in front of brands.

The shackles are off.  Make something.  Put it online.  Do it again.  Brands don’t want a one-time hit, they want someone who can deliver results.  So don’t be the one-timer.  Keep working, keep crafting.  Keep getting better.  In time, the results will come.  And so will the brands.

Put your hot tea down and go read Hugh MacLeod’s blog post fat dumb happy.

Speaking about a friend’s relative who had to drop out of college, Hugh says…

But even though the situa­tion clip­ped his wings con­si­de­rably, he still ended up having a nice life in the end, with a home, a big yard, two cars, a steady paycheck, wee­kends fishing or hun­ting deer, and vaca­tions in Hawaii every year or so. “The days where a blue collar guy like my uncle could have a nice life without doing much,” my friend said, “those days are gone. Gone forever.”

I’ve spent 10 years cobbling together a hodge-podge of skills that are now paying off in a way I never had expected.  Web design. Acting.  Comedy.  Photography.  Writing.  Late nights.  Little pretense.   It doesn’t feel like the kind of career/life/path my University degree led me to believe I’d get, and I bet it makes my parents worried.

But it’s the kind of life that can give me a shot at living the kind of life Hugh describes: a normal, middle-class life.  And then the thought hits me: The lifestyle my parents thought was normal will be thought of as exceptional to my generation.

My generation may have to work harder to get less.

That’s scary.  And incentivizing.  Get back to work.

BBC America shows reruns of Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, and if you haven’t seen any episodes, it’s worth a watch.  Before he made it big with Hell’s Kitchen, Gordon traveled around the world walking into the emptiest, dirtiest, and shoddiest restaurants, and shaping them up in less than a week.

It’s the best type of reality TV; every owner is on the brink of bankruptcy, suffering from a tragic balance of professional ego and personal shame.  And by the end of an hour, they have a fresh new start.

After watching about seven episodes now, I see a bit of a formula of what it takes, in Gordon’s mind, to run a successful restaurant.  And — big surprise — they’re lessons I can apply to my own creative work.

• Never send out crap. Often, the chef is running behind and sends out sub-par food to “get ahead” in his or her orders.  Never a good idea.  The only reason people come to your restaurant is to get a good meal.  If they don’t get that, then the core value of your business is wasted.  As a creative, I’m continually challenged to never settle on sub-par work, in favor of appeasing the client or getting it out the door.
• Put a sign up. On the show, many restaurants don’t have a well-lit sign in front of their business.  They’re hoping that customers will.  In my world, it means that you should have a business name, a pitch, a business card, a web site worth spending more than 8 seconds on.
• Make it simple in order to stand out. Often the menu is crazy complicated.  Mixes, sauces, meats, etc.  Never one single direction, but the owner’s “unique take on food,” which they believe will propel them to notoriety and success.  Gordon always makes over the menu, and normally cuts it in half.  And they balk at being good at simple things like “steaks.”  But “steaks” are what the people want!  How many items are on your creative menu?  Are you sacrificing quality for quantity?  Are you claiming to specialize in something that no one wants?
• Change the scenery. Gordon’s unseen “design team” always makes over the restaurant.  For the show, it’s a big reveal, but I’m consistently underwhelmed by what they do.  But it always makes a huge difference to the people working there.  Like to the point of tears.  Maybe just a little sprucing up can make a big difference.  If you’re stuck in a rut, change your view.  Your desk.  Your office.  People resist change, but they embrace investment.

Just some lessons I’m hearing and applying to my own life.  Any of these strike a chord for you?

[A part of my continued Pursuing Creativity series.]

Brittany Curran of Work it, Berk emailed me the other day, asking about the origins and strategy of Historical Tweets.  I was proud of my answers below, and thought I’d share.  Work it, Berk, by the way, is a very clever niche concept… photos of hipster students on the streets of Cal Berkeley.

1. How did you come up with this idea? Did it just develop out of your studies in history and interest in social media, or is there more to it?

We came up with the idea after seeing Mad Men characters Twittering in mid-2008. People were signing up as the characters from the AMC show, and the juxtaposition of fake 1960s characters using 21st century technology was interesting. Thinking as a marketer and comedy writer, I called my friend (and former boss) about the idea of Twittering as all the previous U.S. presidents — and having them comment on the then-current presidential election. Luckily for us, that idea sounded like too much work (plus, how many times can Taft be funny?), so we settled on single tweets from lots of historical figures.

2. I started a street-fashion blog a few months ago called Work It, Berk. Although I’m starting to get a bit more traffic, I’m interested in knowing how your site was able to jump to 4.5 million page views in a year. What methods did you use? Word of mouth, other sites, Twitter, Facebook?

We launched the site in October 2008 with 50 tweets in queue, and we probably made 100 more blog posts total during the next 8 months. Around June/July 2009, we were featured on Time.com and CNN.com — and even Ashton Kutcher tweeted about us — and we got 2.5 million page views over a weekend. Crazy.

Honestly, we didn’t do any extensive marketing, nor do we continue to do so. It’s kind of a lesson plan on what not to do. Our Twitter account is not very active. We don’t have a Facebook fan page worth looking at. We don’t really reach out to other bloggers.  As the book looms closer, we’ll probably do more of that; talking to history and education bloggers.

The thing that we do successfully, though, is that we keep the content coming. The sheer amount matters. 10 tweets would never have taken off. We needed a critical mass of at least 100 posts to really get noticed. I don’t know why that’s a rule, but I think it is. Totally unscientific, and with no real numeric basis.  When it comes to online content, it pays to be prolific.

The other positive thing is that we let others participate. From day 1, we put the Photoshop template on the site. The complexity of Photoshop keeps most fans from contributing, but it’s been a nice way to reward our true fans who want to do the extra work.

In the end, however, we just struck gold.  Our idea was right and the timing was right.  I’ve jotted down and created tons of sites in the past few years.  None of them have hit like this.  It was just my time.

And I’m not going to lie; every time I see someone tweet “I’m kicking myself for not thinking of this sooner,” the little malicious boy inside me grins and does a backflip.

3. What did you do before this site?

I’m a self-taught web designer with 10 years experience building web sites, leading marketing strategy. I also have a lot of experience acting and doing improv comedy — which has led me to write a lot of comedy TV scripts. Somehow, all those skills have contributed to this site happening the way it has…. but I never saw it coming.

4. Is this site for mere entertainment or do you do “corporate social media” for your day job?

The site, originally, was for entertainment. But now that we’ve gotten some traction and a book deal, we see it as a way to promote ourselves as creative thinkers and creators — people that can make something memorable and viral out of something as “boring” as history. We’re hoping the site can continue to entertain fans, but also bring corporate marketing clients our way. It’s already working… we’re close to working with a couple of big, international clients to do social media for them.  We’re really excited.

Thanks for your email, Brittany.  Best of luck to you as you push forward (keep pushing, btw… it will come…. you just don’t know what “it” will be).

[Spoiler Alert: Light spoilers.  Don't read if you don't want to know what happens at the end of Season 3.]

What do you expect?

Unfulfilled expectations are the death of any creative-type, or anyone, for that matter.

At the end of Season 3 of Mad Men (one of my favorite shows on TV, hands down), Don Draper, the world’s best ad man (in his own mind… but then again, no one does anything great without first thinking that he is worthy or capable of undertaking it… right?), is starting off on a new adventure…

As Roger Sterling and Don Draper look at their old offices for what could be the last time, Roger asks, “How long do you think it will take us to be in a place like this again?” Don replies, “I never saw myself working in a place like this.”

Work as if you’ll never get glory or wealth (or pay, for that matter), and you’ll find a jagged stone of some original, creative idea.  Ugly, but yours.  Polish that stone for a while, and you’ll have a diamond.  Maybe.  But if you did it for the love, and not for the money, it will be worthwhile.

It’s one thing to BE thankful… it’s another to actually SAY “Thank You.”

My friend Sam Parmelee is composing some original music cues for a series of Generosity Water videos I’m producing, and he just sent me his invoice.

He’s doing me a favor and is getting paid very little compared to his normal rate, but he included this in his invoice: “Thank you for your business!” (I don’t think I’m a special dame — I bet he writes that for all the producers he works with.)

He might have said, “Thank you for believing in my talent,” or “Thank you for trusting me with this project,” or “Thank you for keeping food on my family’s table.”  It doesn’t matter.  He expressed his thanks for the business opportunity — that he, as a creative type, isn’t so precious about his artistry to not realize that I could go anywhere to get it, but I chose to work with him.  Thankfulness means a lot.

Expressing gratitude means you have to suck up your pride.  Be selfless.  Be humble.

And then, be crafty to use the tools you have — like an INVOICE! — to express it.

He probably sleeps, or hangs with his family.  Who knows.  I’m just saying he probably takes a well-deserved break.

But it’s a short break.  One or two days later, he starts the process over again.  Working out.  Training.  Lifting weights.

Similarly, a lot of people have asked me what I’m doing now that I’ve sold a book.

I’m writing it.  Working it out.  Doing the heavy lifting.  Thinking about promotion.

Remember this.  When you’ve “made it,” you’ve only just started.

Got an email with the subject line “Will the beautiful women of the world please stand up” the other day. It was from the innovate non-profit charity:water and thought it was an excellent use of storytelling.

View the story here.

I work with the non-profit Generosity Water (we’re friendly with charity:water), and we often talk about the value of turning negative causes into positive proclamations.  I just think this is a great step in creating media that brings value and dignity to a situation, and doesn’t ask us to dwell deeply on the ugly issue.

Now, if I were in charge of social media at charity:water, I’d make a parody video of Single Ladies
called “Beautiful Women,” but that’s just me….

Unless it’s funny.

Internet funnymen Rhett & Link made this commercial for Cullman Liquidation, and I think that, even though it’s fraught with stereotypes and humor, it’s a real commercial for a real local company.

Rhett & Link created a site called I Love Local Commercials, as a platform for them to create low-budget videos for small town businesses that normally don’t consider video as a marketing device.

It’s a smart move for two guys who got some street cred from Hollywood, but famously live in North Carolina, where buying a house is cheaper.

It’s a good example of making your skills work for you no matter where you live.  That you don’t have to live in Los Angeles to make good entertainment (but it helps).