I think its fair to say that "digital" is no longer the poor cousin of TV and that it has become a key component of the marketing mix for most companies these days. What is yet to come though is a shift in thinking in how to go about commissioning video for digital. It still seems to be very "campaign" focused and made up of one-off projects.
There is huge potential for businesses to use video on digital media more effectively if they planned a sustained video approach. It would improve reach, engagement levels and could be more cost-effective. Some brands have already made a foray into Web TV which is an indication of longer term strategic thinking around video, but this is really just the beginning. How long will it take before we hear companies talking about their "video strategy" I wonder?
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I haven't blogged since May. Blogging for me is like going to the gym. I am now going to commit to changing my ways and to start to blog at least twice a week.
Why did I stop blogging? There was just too much else to do. Sounds familiar doesn't it?
Marketers who are using video for online marketing have to face up to that fact as well. If we want an on-line video to be successful we shouldn't underestimate the value the user will place on the time that they are giving up to watch it. Just because air-time is not limited on the web it doesn't mean we can be self-indulgent and subject users to anything other than a well-crafted and relevant film which gets its message over quickly.
My point? Put your best creative teams on the job and if it can be said in half the time, say it in half the time.
I cheered this morning when I read that the Broadband Measurement Working Group are developing standards for measuring viewing of online video. This is going to be a huge boost for everyone working in the online video industry as advertisers will be able to feel more confident about putting money behind online video campaigns once there is a standard and sophisticated way of measuring it.
It could also raise the bar as to the quality of online video campaigns once we have a standard to compare the effectiveness of campaigns against each other.
Bring it on!
According to the latest Comscore research, the UK average online video viewing time was 540 minutes in February.
The average online video was 4.1 minutes in length (it was 3.3-minutes a year ago).
More than 1.6 billion videos were viewed by 18 million viewers on YouTube.com in February, representing nearly 90 videos per viewer.
82% of the total UK web population viewed online video in February.
I would love to know how many online video projects got canned in February in the UK due to marketing budget cuts because, if my experience is representative of what is going on in the UK market, it's a lot. Seems such ashame when there is an upward trend and a clear demand for good video content that marketers are not able to embrace this opportunity.
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Deloitte has posted some research saying that advertising around online video is failing to influence consumers. Could it be something to do with the fact that most pre-roll advertising consists of repurposed TV commercials? If more advertisers started making pre-roll ads specifically for the internet and paid a bit more attention to their targeting rather than applying a TV model to online, I bet those ads would be a hundred times more influential.
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Today is my first day back in the office after a long break in SE Asia and having returned to a country steeped in doom and gloom I decided to ruminate on what the positives might be for video production in 2009. Here are a couple of my predictions:
1. DOOH (digital out of home) will get a real boost. With advertising budgets being cut, this often sidelined media may come into its own. Production and media costs are lower than TV and it is a space that, in my opinion, has been starved of good creative application because the best creatives have been focused elsewhere. With money being diverted away from TVC's and business slower, perhaps DOOH will get more creative attention. It's also still quite a fresh new media that consumers have yet to tire of so here's an opportunity to make an impact.
2. We will see an increase in the trend of "viral" style ads like the Liverpool Street Station T-Mobile Dance that has been able to extend its exposure far beyond its original TV audience with a large on-line following. Similar to the Honda Sky Dive ad, you only need to show it once on TV (and build up buzz about the screening of it) and then use the cheaper media of the internet do the rest. Next to come is the follow up to the Gorilla ad from Cadbury's ....
I am reading Tim Manners book "Relevance" and he talks about Philips who sponsored an entire episode of CBS 60 minutes and rather than using its media to run ads they donated the minutes back to viewers so that they could enjoy longer news segments. They repeated something similar with the NBC Nightly News programme.
I have always been in the camp that believes that disruptive advertising is an outdated way of building a relationship with a customer but I have always thought that it would be a long long time before TV commercials became a thing of the past because it is in our nature to hold on to the tried and tested route. With a brand company like Philips doing this though it is like them saying, "ok everyone, the game's up now ... we admit that interrupting what you choose to watch is annoying". Can they ever go back to advertising on TV after that?
There are some fantastic commercials with big budgets still being made and the creative minds, and those that execute them, are to be admired. I can't wait for the day that those creative minds, and the people who are so skilled in bringing it alive on the screen, get to put that energy into creating branded content that is the event itself rather than something that just interrupts the event.
Toshiba's new TV Commercial, Time Sculpture, is a great production feat (3D, 200 cameras, no CGI and meticulous planning) and there is something nice and authentic about the fact that they were able to use Toshiba technology to help them achieve it.
Which makes it all the more of a pity that the final commercial doesn't really work. I don't really see how the images tie in with the strapline, "when what we watch constantly redefines itself, shouldn't how we watch it do the same?".
It also seems a pity that they did not make any noticeable effort to dress the studio they shot it in as it undermines the production values and takes away from their achievement.
Sadly most people watching this commercial won't even consider or care that it was technically difficult to make and I fear that, in this instance, the idea of the technology took over and ruled the creative.
The Blackberry Storm, the I-Phone and Nokia's N96 are locked in marketing battle in an attempt to get their phones on the Christmas lists of millions.
The great news is that they are all using VIDEO as a key selling point. Is this what we have been waiting for in the industry so that mobile video content will finally become a core component of the marketing mix?
Or is its marketing bark louder than its bite? Will this opportunity for mobile video to reach critical mass be dogged by poor viewing results because of data charges and navigation issues?
And will those of us in the content creation industry just get frustrated because the relationships between mobile operators, handset manufacturers and their various intermediaries are so complex that making original creative content designed for mobile will be harder than trying to get a Great Dane through a cat flap?
I have just come back from MIPCOM where the hot topics were branded entertainment, web and mobile as the new distribution channels and the impact of social networking.
Social networking sites like Bebo are now creating original content, are they the new CBS and the new ITV?
There were a few old TV guys trying to defend television as we know it now, but finally most of the industry have got the message that the world has changed and they understand that they are going to have to embrace the world of new media platforms and brands or lose out.
As if I needed more proof that this is the case, when I called my 63 year old mother last week she was watching live tennis on the internet and she had paid to watch it. Its not just the kids who have changed. This is happening now. It's not a fad and it's not the future. Oh and did I mention that it was broadcast to her by the ATP, not BBC, ITV or Eurosport?
For everyone in the entertainment industry it is time to get those new business models out and marketers are going to have to be brave and embrace new ways of getting their brand messages across to consumers. I wonder when the advertising community is going to catch up with this huge shift in consumer trends?
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Have Levi's given us a glimpse into what all non-UGC video on the internet might look like in the near future with their 501 on line premiere?
These HD films look great and they stream well. I wonder how long it is going to take for this kind of quality to become the norm for brands producing work for the web?
I think they are missing a trick by making the films too much in the mould of the TV commercial format though. The superb quality aside, the films themselves had the potential to be more engaging. I want to know more about the girl and boy that jump into the water. Tell me their story and I may just choose to watch your films because they are intriguing rather than just because they have high production values, have a clever twist and stream well in HD. Give me the opportunity to engage with those characters, let me spend more time with them and I bet you the brand recall and awareness charts will shoot off the scale.
The more I delve into the world of ad-funded programming and branded content the more examples I see of brands missing the point.
On line and mobile communities are only going to watch branded content if it brings some real value to them. For content to be valuable it either has to be about a subject matter that the viewer has a personal interest in or be informative or it can just be good solid entertainment and fun. What branded content and AFP should not be is a thinly veiled advertisement.
As I watch the trailer for Sony Ericsson's Xperia, Who is Johnny X , all I see is crude product placement which dominates the screen and immediately de-values the content in my eyes. I feel like I am being asked to watch a long advertisement. It's the wrong way of approaching branded content.
It makes my mind immediately jump to the tongue in cheek Orange cinema ads where the Orange board suggests to the likes of Snoop Doggy Dogg ways in which he could incorporate the Orange marketing messages into his rap song.
Eurostar got it right. BMW Films got it right. Sagatiba in Brasil got it right.
Eurostar have made a coming of age film about 2 teenagers in London. Yes it is based in and around St Pancras and yes the Eurostar appears in the film but they gave Shane Meadows free reign to make a film and not an advert.
The BMW Films series, "The Hire", consisted of eight exciting and action-packed short films featuring popular directors and starring Clive Owen. Yes he drives a BMW but the stories are as good as you would see in the cinema and so the viewer appreciates the fact that BMW has put this together to entertain them.
Sagatiba presents a film about "The Spirit of Brasil". The title of the film ties in nicely with their advertising strapline but the film itself is about what makes up the Spirit of Brasil and is about football, music and beaches and not about Sagatiba.
Brands are going to have to take a much more sophisticated approach to AFP and branded content if they truly want to come over as authentic to their customer base.
I think it is absolutely brilliant that Eurostar have funded a British feature film. It's so difficult to get film finance for independent films and to compete with the studio blockbusters, so an advertiser-funded solution is a welcome alternative option. If Eurostar had not funded this film I doubt very much cinema audiences would have had the choice of going to see a poignant British comedy about childhood friendship this month.
But our good old British negativity reared its head with comments from the press such as, "the 74-minute movie is being released in cinemas, and the marketing of the film omits to mention Eurostar's involvement. Audiences are being duped into parting with their cash to watch this glorified advert." IT IS NOT A GLORIFIED ADVERT. This is such a glib, badly thought-through comment. Who cares if it has been funded by Eurostar or the Film Council or the BBC, if it is a good film?
I will gladly go and watch it and I'll be clapping loudly in the cinema for the execs at Eurostar who had the nerve and the vision to pull this off.
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Come on you creatives out there, why aren't you making more of the brilliant opportunities to do something different using all the new digital panels popping up everywhere? I spent most of the morning trugging through tube stations this morning and all I saw were some animated graphics. Digital panels are not posters nor are they TV spots, they should be treated creatively from a different starting point of their very own.
The best use of the panels I have seen were the very first digital escalator panels (DEP's) for Shelter created by Hooper Galton. Having the children knocking on the panels begging all the passing commuters to let them out was hugely impactful and demonstrated that they had thought about them as more than just poster sites.
The most effective panel I have seen in the last couple of weeks have been the Coca-Cola panels running in London underground stations. The swirling liquid takes over the panel and it makes you thirsty in much the same way that the DEP's did for Heineken, created by Airlock and Film38, where the panel filled with beer. (Aplogies for the shameless plug, but I do think they were good!)
Heineken were also able to make the most of the day-part media buying that comes with digital outdoor so that commuters only saw it in the afternoon and on their way out for the night when they were most likely to be in the mood for a beer.
The only other creative use of DEP's that people seem to recall are the Purina ads, where the cat jumps from panel to panel, that came out of Publicis and Grand Visual.
With X Track ads about to be fully rolled out there is yet more opportunity to do something clever so please can all you creatives and brand managers out there step up to the plate and give me something interesting to watch while I navigate my way through London's old sewers.
I've seen a lot of dull and frankly pointless talking head video on websites but I think Isobar have applied that format quite successfully.
Their strapline is "creating time" and the philosophy behind it is that time is the root currency of marketing in the future. In a nice touch they demonstrate that they practice what they preach by offering the viewer the opportunity to tailor the length of the video to the time they are willing to give over to it.
Fundamental to the success of this video though is that it is well scripted in the first place. It gets a set of coherent ideas across in a succinct way. The script at the base of any film, whether it be a Hollywood blockbuster or a company presentation, is critical to its success.
There is often a view that digital media production budgets can be a lot less than TV or cinema because you don't need the same production values. It is true that if a film is only going to be shown in a small window on a website or a mobile phone then the resolution does not have to be as good, but production values are about so much more than the technical quality of the camera: it's about the script; It's about the director who understands how things will cut together and who knows how to work with the actor (professional or not) to get the most out of them; It's about the cameraman who knows how to compose and light a shot well; it's about the editor who understands pacing and how to tell a story.
Just because someone knows how to operate a camera or use an editing package it does not translate that they are any good at making films. Please can everyone working in digital wake up and start putting less emphasis on the technology and more emphasis on the talent.
Liz Smith
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Member since: 18 Jun 2008
Last login: 09 Nov 2009
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