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Archive for the ‘Video’ Category

Look no further for digital video content Monday, August 24th, 2009

Zazoo has produced a quick video displaying our digital video services. Contact us at info@zazoo.com.au if you would like any further info!


Zazoo Show Reel


Let’s go to the video Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Twitter has been getting all the media attention this year, but online video has also taken off in a huge way in 2009. Here are some interesting facts:

  • 62% of U.S. adult Internet users watch videos on YouTube and other video-sharing web sites, up from 33% in late 2006, according to a recent report from the Pew Research Center.
  • Also from the report: “Online video watching among young adults is near-universal; nine in ten (89%) internet users ages 18-29 now
    say they watch content on video sharing sites, and 36% do so on a typical day.”
  • Speaking of Twitter, check out how Twitter compares to online video consumption on the chart below:

  • According to a ComScore report, 157 million Americans watched 19.5 billion online videos in June, up from the 16.8 billion in April. The average viewer watched 124 online videos in June, up from 111 million in April. Google (read YouTube) still accounts for 40% of all videos viewed and more than half of videos viewed per user.
  • A report on ClickZ calls online video “the fastest growing medium in history, having gone from zero to mass market globally in three short years.” More good advice from this report: “Create ads that work as content. Create fun or arresting videos that tell a story and seamlessly integrate your brand.”
  • Another report from iMedia UK looks at the myths of online video and explains why it’s not as expensive, boring and unaccountable as you might think.

Prius projects pop up in our portfolio Monday, July 20th, 2009

Kermit the Frog was wrong: It is easy being green! Zazoo’s most recent projects for Toyota Australia, created with HotHouse, have revolved around this month’s launch of the new model Prius hybrid car in Australia.

The “Prius People” vodcast project employs a social media-oriented relationship-building approach, presenting a slice of life with interesting Australians. We got the chance to work with some inspiring and remarkable people including environmentalists Tim Flannery and Tanya Ha, Eye Foundation CEO Belinda Sullivan, Today Show nutritionist Joanna McMillan Price, and technology experts Peter Blasina and Nick Broughall. Three of the videos launched this week and you can see them here.

Also with HotHouse, Zazoo implemented a blogger engagement program for Toyota as part of the Prius launch, organising information sessions for several of Australia’s top bloggers.

For more information see the Our Work page.


Best job in the world - an analysis Sunday, June 28th, 2009

Earlier this year I wrote about Queensland Tourism’s “Best Job in the World” social media campaign, where applications were sought for a six-month gig as ‘caretaker’ on Hamilton Island. The reponse was phenomenal, with more than 35,000 video applications and 8 million hits on the website - all in all, $150 million worth of exposure on a spend of $1.2 million. Nice job if you can get it!

A case study put together on the campaign, which won a record three Grand Prix awards at the recent Cannes Lions, has been posted on YouTube. The winner, a carrot-topped Pom, starts his job on Wednesday.


In praise of the bizarre Saturday, April 18th, 2009

I know it’s hard for most companies to acknowledge that they are no longer in control of their marketing, and that their customers now strongly influence what happens to their brand. It’s harder still for them to take active steps to give control to their customers, particularly when stories of what has happened to companies like Chevrolet, Skittles and Domino’s abound.

Believe it or not, it hasn’t been that long that companies have used the Internet to let customers actively play with their brand. I was reminded of this when I read recently about ‘celebrations’ of the fifth anniversary of Subservient Chicken, that creepy guy in the chicken suit with garters who reponds to user commands to reinforce the message that you can ‘have chicken your way’ at Burger King (Hungry Jack’s in Australia). The guys who came up with the idea have written a huge screed about the origins of Subservient Chicken which makes interesting reading.

The most important factor leading to this iconic online campaign was that the client was open to left-of-field ideas. As The Barbarian Group director Rick Webb writes, “To be perfectly frank, even as we were building the thing, I never believed it would launch. We here at TBG are insanely good these days for convincing clients to take risks. But in 2004, there was no way we ever could have sold the Chicken through. Sometimes getting the green light is as important as the idea. Most of the time, if you ask me.”

Of course, the big question is, did it sell more chicken for Burger King? To quote from AdWeek: ”About a month after the sandwich debuted, BK reported that sales had steadily increased an average of 9% a week. Since then the company has seen ‘double-digit’ growth of awareness of the TenderCrisp sandwich and ’significantly increased’ chicken sandwich sales. And the TenderCrisp does sell better than the original sandwich.”

Yes, you can make some mistakes by trying new things. But you might also take on that concept that powers your brand to a new level - and have fun doing it. Go on, try something new this month!


Online video on the rise Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

One of the topics getting an increasing amount of airplay is online video. It’s growth is bucking the downward spend pattern of most other forms of media. Here are just a few of the articles worth reading on this trend:

  • Is the Big Shift Underway? Talks about how relatively high CPMs compared with television to grab large audiences has been holding back the growth of online video. One of the comments on the story says, “We think there is another business model emerging for brands leveraging video on the Web: Brands hosting video content on their own site instead of running ads around someone else’s video at an aggregated site. Our vision is that brands will soon realize that a person watching video content on a brand’s website are easily worth 20 times the value of a viewer offsite watching an ad. We think a new metric will soon be developed. And it will define the ROI of brands creating their own engaging, fun content on their own websites that visitors want to see.”
  • Online Video Changes Game for Brand Marketers: “Video has expanded well beyond the media industry and into nearly every corner of the professional Web, as corporations, governments, non-profits and educational institutions look to use video as a cornerstone of how they communicate, market and inform on the Web.” Has some good case studies on the effective use of online video.
  • Online Video Subtitles (Duh!): Predicts that spending on online video advertising will grow by more than 50% a year for the next five years to more than US$5.8 billion by 2013. Cites research showing that adding subtitles to videos increased time spent viewing by more than 40 per cent.

Will be interesting to, um, watch what happens in Australia in this part of the online market.


I think I’m a bit hungry… Thursday, February 26th, 2009

An entry in this week’s Online Video Insider blog highlights a tasty new trend: online video snacking; or as Dave Jackson writes, “more people, watching more videos, more often.”

A recent ComScore report on the topic found that in November 2008:

  • 146 million people, or 77% of the U.S. Internet audience, viewed online video;
  • Those viewers watched 34% more online videos than they did last year;
  • The average online viewer watched 273 minutes of video (more than six hours), up more than 40% vs. the previous year;
  • The average duration of online video is only 3.1 minutes per video; and
  • The audience viewed 87 videos per month on average, 18 more videos per month than last year.

    • The blog post highlights that the average duration of online video was the only metric that remained consistent compared to ComScore’s 2007 survey, up only 18 seconds per video - despite the fact that long-form sites such as Hulu (which runs mainly TV episodes) did not exist in 2007. To quote: “Americans still have relatively short attention spans when it comes to their online viewing experience.”

    Gender differences are interesting:

  • Women watch 41% more online videos than they did last year.
  • They now watch 79 videos per month on average, up 33%.
  • They spend 227 minutes watching online video, up 46%.
  • The average video length for women is 2.9 minutes, vs. 3.4 for men.

    • The conclusion? “Video snacking is a real trend because online video meets a content need for viewers and is easily accessible to those viewers throughout their day. Marketers and agencies, particularly those that are trying to reach women, would be well served to look for ways to build on this trend to help achieve their goals.”


    Creator or consumer? Or both? Or something else? Friday, February 20th, 2009

    Paul Verna has published an insightful article at eMarketer looking at user-generated content online. He says it’s important to understand what makes up content creation and consumption, as well as “appreciat(ing) the complexities of the content ecosystem, which means looking at gray areas between creation and consumption.

    Forrester Research has broken down the user-generated content universe into several categories of users:

    • Creators
    • Critics
    • Collectors
    • Joiners
    • Spectators
    • Inactives

    Verna asks: “Do critics and collectors create content by generating reviews, comments and lists, or are they simply reacting to content posted by others? Are joiners actually part of a content exchange if their main interest in social media is to use online networks for interaction and communication?

    “These are the kinds of questions marketers should be asking as they dive into social media. The better marketers understand the habits of the various groups that make up the content spectrum, the better they will be able to use social media to further their campaigns.”

    He writes that marketers need to ”accept a fluid exchange of marketing information across multiple media…. marketers must be prepared to share control with their customers and prospects…. (and) encourage and empower their customers to post feedback, even if those efforts put the marketer’s product in a harsh light. And it means marketers should tailor their campaigns to people who fall into gray areas along the user-generated content spectrum.

    He concludes that ”rules that worked in previous generations need to be refreshed, and in some cases completely rewritten.”


    Beautiful one day, perfect job the next Wednesday, February 11th, 2009

    Tourism Queensland’s Island Reef Job campaign has struck a chord with economically battered people everywhere. Well-executed across a variety of social media, including Facebook, Twitter and the Web, the campaign, soliciting job applications for an Island Caretaker for the Great Barrier Reef, was expected to generate 400,000 website visits by the end of February. More than 200,000 people visited the first day of the campaign and as of last weekend more than 2.5 million visitors had checked out the site.

    The campaign is one of the few Australian initiatives to garner extensive overseas media attention.

    As the job description says, the six-month, A$150,000 gig is ”a live-in position with flexible working hours and key responsibilities include exploring the islands of the Great Barrier Reef to discover what the area has to offer. You’ll be required to report back on your adventures to Tourism Queensland headquarters in Brisbane (and the rest of the world) via weekly blogs, photo diary, video updates and ongoing media interviews. On offer is a unique opportunity to help promote the wondrous Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.”

    You have until 22 February to apply, so start working on that application!


    Make ‘em laugh Monday, February 9th, 2009

    Jim Nichols at iMedia Connection has reviewed successful viral campaigns, and concluded that the biggest common denominator was the clever use of humour. Take a look at his review of 14 of the funniest, most effective campaigns (warning, political correctness alert).

    They include a pint-sized Gordon Ramsay-in-training, a graphic depiction of the effectiveness of condoms, a scatological ditty about toilet paper and Australia’s own ‘Flashbeer’ campaign for Carlton.

    Nichols writes: “Humor is hard to do, but perhaps even harder is crafting funny programs and messages that deliver real brand benefits. As we all know, assessing the impact of any creative on brand strength is pretty squishy science. But we can identify creative programs that drove buzz and virality online, and through this identification process attempt to tease out some core principles of brand beneficial humor.”


    Self-actualisation through user-generated content: study Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

    People consume and create user-generated content in different ways for different but interdependent reasons, according to research just published in the journal Internet Research.

    The three main reasons are:

    1. to fulfill their information, entertainment and mood management needs
    2. to interact with content and with other human beings
    3. for self-expression and self-actualisation, which help to construct their own identity

    The study’s author argues that entertainment is more important than information-seeking when it comes to user-generated content, writing that “YouTube and its many imitators have dramatically reduced entertainment content to light, bright and digestible ’snack food’ so that users can consume it with increased frequency and maximum speed.”

    Pointing out that because people can fulfill their social needs through interacting online with each other, responding to content is “an integral part of community development since it can reinforce dynamic content creation.”

    Blogging and vlogging “not only allows the significance of who one is and what one does to show himself/herself, but also enables one to control the impression others have of him/her.”

    The study concludes that the three ways of using user-generated content are analytically separate but are interdependent. “They support one another, directly or indierectly, by helping people fulfill their respective social and psychological needs.”

    The usability aspects of user-generated content - how easy it is to use and how much control is given to the consumer - allow users to contribute only a little while getting a lot back, such as quickly uploading one video to YouTube while being able to view thousands of videos of interest. The study draws parallels between UGC and utility theory, which suggests people desire those things that will maximise their pleasure.

    The researcher argues that these kinds of controls appeal to people “not only technically, but also psychologically.”


    What makes users create content? Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

    Christine Beardsell has produced a thoughtful piece on ClickZ looking at what motivates people to participate online in brand-related user-generated content campaigns. Although money is a great external motivator, she says it can be over-used and diminish internal motivation factors. Based on her experience observing user-generated content communities at interactive agency Digitas in the US, she outlines 10 different ways companies can most successfully motivate user-generated content:

    • Make it easy
    • Make it fun
    • Give me cash
    • Give me access
    • Make me a star
    • Create something useful
    • Let me influence
    • Give me a challenge
    • Be altruistic
    • Surprise me

    The key question companies need to ask themselves when considering a user-generated content campaign, Beardsell writes, is “Why would anyone want to participate in a brand-developed experience when there are endless unbranded community outlets for people to be a part of?” The answer to that question is to create “a balance between both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, passions and reward.”


    Top viral ads and buzzwords Monday, January 5th, 2009

    OK, last word on 2008 wrap-ups - check out a comprehensive list of top viral ads, buzzwords of the year and holiday viral campaigns at the Big Wave Blog.


    We are all publishers Monday, January 5th, 2009

    In the digital age, if you’re a marketer you’re also a publisher. Rebecca Lieb has written a great piece in ClickZ which was republished the other day, and is well worth a read.

    She argues that “Marketers have been creating content in all sorts of media in all kinds of channels since the beginning. But now that virtually every brand, manufacturer, service, and product you can think of is online (and likely runs its own Web site), content has blown wide open. Almost anyone involved in any type of online business can no longer hope to survive without a solid content strategy.”

    In the 21st century equivalent of custom publishing, big brands such as Budweiser in the US even have their own online TV channel. Lieb writes: “Think of it as the online equivalent of a Disney or Warner Bros. theme park. You know the rides and merchandise are selling you something, but few people care about the church-and-state divide on branded territory.

    “….Strong, well thought-out and executed content strategies create rewards for marketers. They go viral. They attract community. They can blow out SEO (search engine optimisation) to epic proportions. Rather than a company’s Web page showing up in organic results, content can generate page after page of relevant results.”

    She concludes: “As an editor/marketer hybrid, I may have some bias here, but I’d be hard-pressed to think of a marketing problem that couldn’t be tackled head-on with a solid content strategy.”

    Couldn’t agree more.


    Worst ads - some are real stinkers Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

    Here’s a link to a list of the worst TV ads of 2008, according to BNET: http://industry.bnet.com/advertising/1000452/bnets-worst-ads-of-2008/

    Warning: includes racism, vomiting and fart jokes!


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