Why brands need to get to the point on YouTube

There are a couple of things that bother me about YouTube. Leaving aside the angst about the future of the human race that reading more than a couple of comments naturally brings, the first is as a user.

When I’m trying to get my daily dose of Gangnam Style or watch yet another hilarious Harlem Shake video, I don’t yearn to watch an advert first. Nevertheless, it’s a free service and they have to make some money somehow.

The second is as a marketer. Although they are a bit of a pain, when these adverts pop up you can choose to skip them after a few seconds.

Yet because the ads are at least 30 seconds long, they’ve barely started setting the scene before they are bypassed. YouTube themselves say that between 70% to 80% of ads are skipped.

So in the end, rather than enhance the experience and engage a wide audience, the adverts become a frustration for the user and provide no real benefit to the brand. Nobody wins.

Tailoring the message for the medium

For some reason, brands aren’t designing for and exploiting the medium they are using. But as basic as this sounds, it’s not unusual. Early TV ads were essentially radio ads with a still image. Fifteen years ago, many websites were just glorified company brochures. It takes marketers a while to figure out how to get maximum impact from their new toy.

Parallels with Shopper

The same is occasionally true for Shopper Marketing.

Increasingly, brands are wising up to the importance of focusing on the shopper and the lead up to the purchase decision. They’re starting to invest accordingly, seek out specialist counsel and are rewarded with increased sales. However, there are still many brands who still think that a shot of their TV ad on a bit of cardboard is all that is needed to clear the shelves.

Sitting amongst Business Directors, I see the frequent battles they face as well-meaning partner agencies from other disciplines liberally suggest how shopper focused executions ought to look, but don’t want to take any feedback on their own work.

That every media opportunity comes with its own pros and cons, and plays a unique role in communicating brand messages and pushing shoppers closer to purchase, seems like something you would learn on your first day at Marketing School.

While forward thinking agencies can offer ‘integration’ and ‘joined up thinking’, individuals will inevitably show a bias towards their own particular field.

Seconds to Sell

Just like in-store comms, YouTube ads have to get their message across quickly.

So why don’t they?

Well, YouTube’s TrueView system doesn’t charge advertisers unless the ad is watched in its entirety, or at least 30 seconds are shown. To some, this means an ad should be at least 30 seconds long, because otherwise you are paying for something you could have got for free. It might make economic sense, but doesn’t consider the viewer, who should be the primary concern. Just as importantly, it doesn’t consider the purpose of the communication.

Sometimes brands get it right. This environmental campaign from Chile incorporates the ‘Skip Video’ option to encourage users to stop wasteful behaviour. But it is an exception, not the rule.

The challenge to brands using YouTube is clear.

Either sell me your product in the first five seconds, or at the very least, use them to sell me the rest of your ad.

Otherwise, I’m skipping.

Rewarding Advocacy and Retaining Customers

How “24”, Louis Vuitton and a London restaurant attempt to make their brands worth engaging with.

Eye-catching advertising – like the one mentioned by Zeitgeist in the previous article posting – that succeeds in converting a person to being a new customer of a brand is one thing, but keeping them dedicated is quite another. As The New Yorker cartoon above demonstrates so humorously and effectively, engagement is what’s important. It’s about incentivising and rewarding your customer for their association (and, hopefully, evangelism) of the brand.

Zeitgeist has touched on location-based services several times in the past, and as the service continues its maturation process, we are able to judge better as to what kind of benefits it brings to marketers of brands. One is still left with the impression that network effects have yet to fully take hold for the myriad platforms – Foursquare, Gowalla, and more recently Facebook’s equivalent – that provide these services. Logically, greater and more plentiful benefits for those that sign up to these services would encourage those users to advocate others to sign up to them.

So what is the current state of affairs for rewarding users of such services? Well, first you can count out anyone who lives outside a major metropolitan city; the service has nothing to offer them other than who gets to be arbitrary mayor of which location. Sometimes, locations can be inaccurate enough that it looks like people are having a drink in a subaqua bar, as is the case above.

In the past week, living in London, Zeitgeist has experienced two offers through Foursquare that have had real-world consequences. Tuesday before last, as one of the first people to unlock the “Louis Vuitton Insider” badge, Zeitgeist’s presence was requested at the Bond Street Maison for a drinks reception, attended by several Vuitton employees from the marketing and digital disciplines, from both London and Paris. The chance to get to talk to such people, while browsing the store’s significant art book collection while munching on macaroons and sipping various beverages, leaving with a small gift, all were clearly tangible benefits for those guests who attended the evening. What of the business though? What benefits does it reap from organising such an event at reasonable expense? Ideally it gets to know its customer base better, though in this case, some of those who unlocked the badge were not habitual customers of Vuitton. Still, for those that are, the event would no doubt have encouraged a greater affinity toward the brand.

Yesterday at lunch near Covent Garden, Zeitgeist was early meeting his friend and decided to check-in on Foursquare. The reward for having done so was a free glass of wine. The benefits of free alcohol need not be extolled or delved into greatly in this article. However, the execution was sorely lacking. The waitress, when presented with the notification of this offer, was totally caught by surprise, and was not aware of any such offer. When the glass was ultimately brought – Zeitgeist was presented with a choice of “red or white?” – it was of course some substandard plonk that wouldn’t have been fit for a university ball. On the face of it, of course, this was not surprising; but it led to the question of what is the point of rewarding the consumer / shopper / person with something that is pretty poor and leads to a less enjoyable experience?

Zeitgeist can think of few experiences less enjoyable than competing against others to stay awake. Yet this is exactly the idea that 20th Century Fox have had, on the eve of the release of an enormous, diss-it-and-you’ll-be-waterboarded, boxset of the entire series of the hit show 24. Starting last night in Los Angeles, several “lucky” winners of a competition run entirely on Facebook will be subjected to every single episode of the series, while they compete with other viewers in a glass cube to stay awake. The campaign is also supported by a Twitter feed and, as Fox would have hoped, has been picked up by “24” fan blogs as well as the mainstream media, appearing in the LA Times. The campaign will have relatively little long-term impact, as the series has now come to end – though rumours persist of a film being made – but the idea for the competition, one of endurance, is very on-brand for the series, and has clearly sparked much chatter online. It should be noted that endurance contests are not always on-brand, or safe. UPDATE: The winners.