Spreading a Viral: Honda Demonstrates Content Integration on Vimeo
Honda recently did a take-over on Vimeo.com which was much talked about by marketing insiders.
Instead of posting or explaining the concept here, I’d like to suggest you’d first take a look over on the site and experience it for yourself -especially if you’re a creative/interactive professional and haven’t seen it already.
[Performance warning: close down any other browser tabs/windows or any other application that has a direct net connection right now, I know I suffered from some serious lag the first time.]
Apart from the novelty(?) factor of this kind of creative content-integration, I’m not quite sure where the real added value for Honda and its customers lies in this particular case.
I’ll get back to that thought in a moment though; first I’d like to point to a section on the page that caught my attention. It clearly depicts how a viral starts spreading (see the 2 images below):
Honda Insight - Vimeo Take over Stats
The table contains the statistics of said video on a daily basis, i.e.: how many times it was watched, “liked” and how many comments were made on the page itself, all in relation to each other and non-cumulative (note that the numbers are displayed on a per day basis!).
Clearly, the usual exponential viral mechanisms are at work here, which is fascinating in of itself, yet I believe that despite these pretty impressive numbers this mini-campaign as is will not enjoy a widespread viewer base and live up to its true potential, mainly because of the following 4 reasons:
- The content isn’t “spreadable”;
- A lack of a clear call to action;
- The quality of the content itself and
- There’s no follow-up.
The content isn’t spreadable, technically speaking:
Notice how I didn’t embed the video right here as I usually would, instead referring you to Vimeo, because there was no other way you could undergo it the way it was meant to be experienced.
In other words: people will first have to go to the Vimeo page and have a true broadband internet connection(!) to experience it smoothly and in full effect; detach the video from the context of this page and it becomes just another (attempt at a) cool viral. Pure branding, zero capitalization of the ensuing conversations.
Nowadays it’s more effective to take a channel-neutral and/or federated content approach to reach out to your audience on the net, and part of that means making your content spreadable through widgets, embeddable video’s, etc.. The Vimeo video is embeddable of course, but the page -and thus the experience- is not.
There’s no call to action:
The concept itself doesn’t trigger the visitor to do anything: You just sit and watch, just like on TV…
The creative team apparently embraced the technological and creative possibilities that the internet offers in marrying video with a webpage, yet somehow failed to capitalize on the buzz that it generated and thus at the opportunity to generate leads.
Honda‘s rich media take over is no interactive advertising but more akin to an online guerrilla advert, which could have been done offline, possibly generating more buzz and brand-awareness outside the digerati niche.
Then again, it was created by Wieden & Kennedy (Amsterdam), a traditional agency with it’s roots firmly grounded in offline advertising campaigns.
The quality of the content isn’t worth spreading:
If it’s aimed at the Marketing/Tech/Creative niche: they’re already accustomed to these “Breaking-The-4th-Wall” take-over actions by now on YouTube or dedicated viral mini-sites, and this example isn’t remarkable.
If it’s not aimed at said niche, then one has to wonder why on earth it was posted on a niche social video site like Vimeo.com in the first place…
Adding all the numbers together from the stats image above, there are over a 1.750 likes, 300+ comments and 177.000 views generated in less than two weeks(!), pointing to a cult hit and/or people watching it more than once (it’s not clear whether Vimeo filters out non-unique views/cookies).
On the other hand, the numbers in the table don’t depict all mentions of the video across the Social Media space, and it was only posted a few days ago, so this is just merely the tip of the iceberg. Here’s hoping that Honda’s campaign team has access to social media monitoring tools from Radian6 or TrackUr and have activated their BackType Alerts to keep a clear overview.
All in all, in terms of buzz and people interacting with the page this is no bad example of content integration at all, it’s just a shame there’s no apparent follow-up or integration in, say, a 360˚campaign for maximum effect.
Now of course at this very moment we have no idea what Honda’s campaign objective was in the first place: It could be a proof of concept, trying it out for a small fee, with little risk, before scaling it up on YouTube allowing the numbers game to come into play, leading to massive exposure and off course more ways for the community and consumers/prospects to interact with the brand.
As I’m a firm believer in the merits of content-integration instead of plain display bannering, for me personally it will be very interesting to see how this plays out and if Honda will release an evaluation on their company blog or industry titles like Ad Age or ReadWriteWeb.
Why the Click Is the Right Metric for Online Ads (On Adding Value and Thinking Beyond the Display Advertising Business Model)
“…many advertisers in the past gave most of the credit for a sale or conversion — which in the web world could include anything from visiting a website to printing an online coupon — to the last ad clicked on or seen by a consumer. But that means brand-focused sites such as NYTimes.com and MarthaStewart.com and even social-media sites such as Facebook and MySpace lose credit because they are often not where a consumer will see that last ad. And when they lose credit, they lose advertisers, and when they lose ad revenue, well, you’ve read that story.
“Publishers have a lot to gain,” said Steve Kerho, VP-analytics, media and marketing optimization at Organic. Mr. Kerho has been doing lots of analysis on how online-display ads affect search and conversions and found that in some cases, a display ad can increase a search ad’s click-through rate 25% to 30%. If he had simply measured the clicks from search, he would have missed the display ads’ influence.”
Source: Adage
So… If we’d translate the above model to, say, a real world situation; that’d mean that the sales guy in the local electronics store should get a piece of the provision pie, and maybe you’re neighbourhood whiz kid should be offered a small fee too, since they were the ones that influenced you before you decided to shell out on a new bleeding-edge desktop and order it directly by mail-order, no?
Of course, the conclusion presented above is preposterous to say the least. Not giving full credit to the last click shows a lack of common sense and of everyday reality:
If we’d were to apply this model to the offline advertising industry we’d might as well start charging less for TV ads during the Super Bowl or advertisements in general, since it has never been empirically proven that said ads actually sell significantly more cars, to name but an example.
(Actually I hereby challenge thee naysayers to tell me why the fledgling automotive industry in the US can’t be saved by throwing more money against Interruption Campaigns now that the going is though… Odds are it’s because it just doesn’t work that way nowadays…)
Publishers would of course love to use such a model, since suddenly those abysmally low Click Through Rates on social networks ´d become a license to print money, yet that’s not where the problem lies: it’s about engaging with the visitors of the Facebook’s of this world if and when they feel like it, adding value to the community, giving them something to talk about or a good reason to get rid of their friends. The engagement model is a far more viable one since it makes it very clear for all stakeholders what the true value of those brand interactions are for everyone.
Conjuring op schemes to charge more for a product -display banner- that, on it’s own, has failed to truly deliver on its promise up until this very moment, is not the way forward out of this recession. The research budget would be well better spent on innovation, adding value to the visitors, strategic alliances -you name it, just do not waste it on taking undercover pot-shots at “Go -Emperor CPC- Gle” et all.
There is one thing that does ring true about the statement that a conversion shouldn’t be attributed to just the Last Click alone; and that’s the reoccurring coincidence that carefully crafted, creative Crossmedia campaigns drive word-of-mouth & website traffic, allowing for a tighter control on conversion, ánd they also have the uncanny ability to tip the Attitude scale in your Brands’ favour. A little…
It’s common sense and it’s what marketing should be all about: influencing as many factors as you can to get the prospect to turn into a consumer, making her loyal, spurring her on to buy more and in the end becoming a brand-ambassador.
The communication mix as well as the quality of your product combined with the customer centricity level of your organization all contribute to that end.
As well as a million other tiny factors (does the sun shine, did THAT girl on the train give you a smile, do you have enough money to spare, etc., etc..)
Yet, if we’d follow the philosophy of Mr. Kerho to it’s conclusion, it’d mean we’d have to split the Cost-per-Click revenue and spread the wealth over all communication channels and creatives -and not just the display banner- in order to get a somewhat “fairer” representation of value/conversion for money.
[The Adage article starts with this quote: "The great paradox of the web is that it's an interactive medium and everything can be measured. And that's wonderful -- unless you're measuring the wrong thing."
I'd think what they should be stating is: The single greatest asset of the web is that it's an interactive medium, perpetuously capable of reinventing itself. And that's wonderful -- Unless you don't keep your feet firmly on the ground and try to look at opportunities with a positive mindset!]
Data Preservation & Storage: How Much is Enough?
“According to a 2008 IDC white paper, 2007 marked the “crossover” year, when there was more digital data created than data storage to host it. The IDC report also projected that by 2011 the amount of digital data created will be more than twice the amount of available storage.
Bottom line?
We don’t produce storage capacity at the same rate we produce digital information.”
Presuming that the scenario sketched above (taken from ReadWriteWeb.com) is true, in what ways can we tackle this dilemma? We already know that the use of streaming online video (mainly spurred by YouTube, Hulu and Tudou) will massively outstrip broadband uptake and network capacity in the coming years if no action is undertaken swiftly. So… Who’s responsible and what to do?
“…While most people agree that certain digital information is preservation worthy or of historical value to society, what about the digital pictures you took on your last holiday? Who is in charge of preserving them so that the next generation can access them?
In a nutshell, you are…”
The article also has some recommendations;
“…here are three things you can do right now:
1. Make a plan: Determine who is going to be in charge of your digital data once you are no longer capable of looking after it.
2. Make multiple copies: When it comes to valuable data, store it in different formats at different locations.
3. Migrate to new technologies: Don’t wait for storage media to become obsolete, migrate to new technologies and formats as they become available.
Finally, with some cloud services offering free data storage, it’s worth considering moving some of your data online…”
Read the full article on ReadWriteWeb.com.
Siri Challenges The Way We Interact Online, Enter Web3.1?
“Users’ online lives are becoming more complicated and getting out of control for mainstream users. What if there was an easy way for normal users (non-power users) to ask the Internet to help them.”
This, in a nutshell, is the elevator pitch from US start-up Siri on their secretive CALO (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes) project.
Together with DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) they’re working on a new, revolutionary web interface, geared not towards the digerati, but the mainstream.
“The CALO project is building an automated assistant to help manage and improve your life. The technology spans all aspects of interaction–natural language processing, speech recognition, and planning and reasoning capabilities–and interfaces with all kinds of systems, such as email and contacts…”
Siri co-founder and Vice President of Engineering, Adam Cheyer. For more, see CNET.
(Credit: SRI International)
If we zoom in a little further on this announcement and take in the background info, we can actually see that Cheyer is actually referring to the Semantic Web or Web 3.0; a place of “Virtual Warmth” where Intelligence at the Interface allows the internet to pro-actively make recommendations to the user, much like a personal assistant:
“The interfaces we use to interact with the world’s information are getting smarter. Web portals gave us someone else’s idea of the content we should see. Then came search engines, which let us tell the system what we want, one query at a time. We are about to see the next wave -intelligence at the interface- in which the system knows about us, our information, and our physical environment. With knowledge about our context, an intelligent system can make recommendations & act on our behalf.”
(Credit: Tom Gruber)
Source (via CNET): Tom Gruber.
Siri itself claims to have her business model and partners in place and is committed to success, though it is common knowledge that that hasn’t stopped other revolutionary tech-driven initiatives from failing in the past: in the end consumers must be convinced and budged to re-learn their online habits AND download and purchase the software.
At this point it seems Siri is ready to release its (possibly) Disruptive Technology during the first half of 2009, and they’ve got some impressive pedigree on board allowing them to become the biggest Nightmare Competitor since Google: their payroll includes engineering and strategic wizards from internet and tech giants/godfathers such as Xerox PARC, Google, NASA, Motorola and Yahoo!.
Microsoft have already revealed some of their amazing achievements with their Surface Computer (interface, see the video above) & their Sphere, and scientists and digerati alike admit that the way we humans interact with the screen (The Office-trashcan-directory-folder Analogy) is anti-natural and the main reason non-power users such as my grandmother still don’t know how to send me an e-mail to stay in touch…
[And let's not forget the major leaps in productivity we could enjoy from innovations like these; the various office suites such as Open Office.org, Microsoft Office and Google Apps are said to be "productivity packages" but I suggest you'd take a stroll into any office anywhere in the world and witness for yourself how counterproductive most professionals are using it, even now in 2008!]
As the social divide grows between tech/web savvy people and those whom are not, I believe that ventures such as these -looming recession notwithstanding- could give a major and much needed boost to not only internet usage and web-app uptake by the mainstream, but to (new forms of) education as well: we really need a more democratic way of spreading (access to) knowledge.
Hopefully these developments shall be one of the many small steps in making the web a truly leveraging force for education, productivity and true interconnection worldwide.
Curriculum Vitae #2 met Internet Strateeg Jim Stolze (Interview door Joris van Heukelom op BlueShots.TV) UPDATE
Naast Jim’s (levens)visie is vooral zijn kijk op de onbewezen effectiviteit, gebrek aan accountability en vooral ook “zend-denken” van de traditionele reclamewereld (doorspoelen naar 06:39) “spot-on”; verplichte kost by all accounts (pun intended). [ let wel: Online kan er m.u.v. Google ook wat van: zie ook deze post van een andere grote denker op dit vlak; Alexander Vanelsas ]
Zeer zeker de moeite waard om naar te luisteren en van te leren dus, vooral ook gezien het feit dat er onder druk van de marktomstandigheden nu dan eindelijk een opmars van Results- en Permission Based Marketing zal plaatsvinden.
Het concept van zijn programma is als volgt: Twee stoelen, twee mensen. In Curriculum Vitae gaat presentator Joris van Heukelom in gesprek met succesvolle professionals met een dynamische carrière. Professionals die beschikken over een interessant CV dat altijd in beweging is. De gast en diens CV zijn voor Joris het materiaal voor een indringend en open minded gesprek. Curriculum Vitae, over de mens achter het cv. Ditmaal in de “blue chair” dus de man achter Marketing Podcast.
[VIDEO VERWIJDERD, ZIE UPDATE ONDERAAN POST]
Normaliter zou ik het betreffende filmpje uiteraard hier ter plekke embedden, echter die functionaliteit laat nog even op zich wachten, of zoals ze het bij BlueShots.TV zelf verwoorden:
“Binnenkort kun je met een embedcode per format altijd de laatste aflevering van je favoriete Blue Shots programma op je website zetten. Beschikbaar per 1 november 2008.”
[Update: De BlueShots video's zijn inmiddels "embedable" echter ze zijn helaas niet aan te passen aan de lay-out van je website: Zodra je probeert om zelf de afmetingen handmatig in de HTML code aan te passen, gaat er een ping naar de servers van BlueShots en co., en wordt het een auto-play film.
Daarnaast kun je niet meer bij de control/mediabay, dus kun je het filmpje vervolgens ook niet stopzetten. Iets wat om meerdere redenen vrij irritant is: De eerste reden is uiteraard dat de gebruiker c.q. bezoeker geen controle heeft over zijn webervaring, en de tweede reden is dat er ongevraagd dataverkeer plaats vindt zonder dat de gebruiker daar om heeft gevraagd.
Aangezien breedbandinternet daarbij nog steeds niet overal (in Nederland) vanzelfsprekend is, kan het daarnaast zijn dat het laden van de homepage van mijn Online Column ontoelaatbaar en onnodig lang gaat duren (omdat ik de laatste tijd nou eenmaal veel video’s hier heb staan, die overigens wel aan de eisen voldoen).
Om de bovenstaande redenen heb ik het betreffende videointerview voorlopig dus verwijderd, totdat er een verbeterde versie van de embedfunctionaliteit wordt aangeboden door het team bij BlueShots.]
