…or many more, if you’re lucky. We’ve all heard the old adage “a picture is worth a 1,000 words,” but how often do we stop to think about that. When it comes to creating pure emotional connections, drawing out laughs, or allowing us to see ourselves for what we truly are, visual stimulation be it photographic or videographic, has surpassed the written word in generating a response.
Marketing and advertising agencies have counted on this and spent millions of hours and dollars producing visual stimulation to capture the attention of their intended audience with a foundation typically built on focus-groups and demographic placement. The output has been firmly grounded in traditional marketing channels; print and television. With the advent of socially driven media sites like break.com and YouTube, it seems this process is about to change. User created content has become the way to communicate and media sites have become world-wide focus-groups. Content is still the king, but a more creative and natural implementation seems to be the most effective way to get a message across. Even more importantly, these sites are proving that high production value does not always translate into mass appeal. In fact, the opposite is becoming true. For a message to spread, it simply has to hit us where it counts; our humanity.
Viral messaging is still relatively new and been mostly relegated to juvenile attempts to document crazy stunts or scenes. Any user with a camera now has the ability to send a message out and connect on a global scale. Occasionally, when the message catches, the effects are astonishing, translating into millions of views from around the world. Even more astonishing is the information that the creator of the message receives. Since it is our nature to comment on the world around us, the anonymity of the internet has allowed us an open forum to do that with little restraint. This provides a fascinating and uncensored view of how we think as humans and has become one of the greatest influencers of content on social sites. Translated to the marketing world and you begin to see possibilities for a new frontier.
The effect of an agency using these resources to market to their audience can be exponential. Imagine a shift in the paradigm. By playing to these social channels, an agency has the ability to be much more flexible and cost effective with their marketing attempts, while understanding their effectiveness almost instantly. Beyond that, an instant understanding of who is talking about you creates measurement tools like we’ve never seen. To clarify my point, I’d like to relay a story about one of our companies’ successes in this space.
We were tasked to build a video message showcasing our client’s technology. Previous attempts at demoing the product had been met with limited success while trying to reach a consumer audience. We surmised this was due to the fact that while the demonstration was impressive, it hadn’t yet been seen in a place the audience could grasp its full potential. With minimal production value we constructed a new message platform and produced a piece we felt our intended audience could understand. Once released on YouTube, it was met with immediate viewing and feedback, which fueled how we intended to produce the next piece. The full ramification of importance to our client wasn’t felt until a few days later when our team overheard a conversation in the hall between our client contact and his superior. It went like this:
Client Contact: Did you see our new demonstration online?
Superior: Yes I did.
Client Contact: What did you think of it?
Superior: Well, it was alright. I didn’t think it looked all that produced, though.
Client Contact: That piece generated over 25,000 hits in two days and we have a community talking about what they like and don’t like about the technology; all online, all at this moment.
Superior: Really, I just spent a significant amount on an ad campaign and it will take quite a bit of time and many more dollars to understand how effective it was.
I’m paraphrasing, but the sentiment was there. This small-scale attempt generated far more views and useful responses than before. It also helped socialize this new view through our client’s up-line and create new business opportunities for all involved.
-Steve
