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.

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).

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).

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.