Archive for June, 2010

You Tube, like many other “social networking sites”, has great potential for advertising and marketing campaigns.   Many companies have had a commercial or video they produced go “viral” and spread incredibly rapidly in a short amount of time.   Here are some tips for producing a quality You Tube video that can generate interest or business for your brand.

Homemade videos are probably the most common offering on You Tube.  Far from being a bad thing, this can actually work in your favor since you don’t need a big budget to succeed.   Your goal should be to make a video that features your product or service in a unique way.   For certain brands that means combining Coke with Mentos.   Or using their product, a blender, to blend certain non-food objects such as an Iphone.   Videos that go viral tend to be funny, unbelievable, amazing, controversial, fascinating, or otherwise out of the ordinary.

Just like with a traditional commercial, people tend to have short attention spans, so shorter videos are usually better.   Two minutes is the time frame most advertising experts recommend for length.   This should be long enough for you to set up a simple plot or convey your message.

One mistake some companies make is not including a short description of their product or the message they want to reach consumers with in the text box that accompanies their video.   Many people use these descriptions when deciding whether or not to view a video and You Tube has provided them for that purpose so it only makes sense to take advantage of the opportunity to share with your audience in a very direct way.

“In its latest campaign, Tourism Queensland invited people to send in a 60-second video of themselves to apply for a $150,000 caretaker job for Hamilton Island, which it dubbed “the best job in the world”.   Local and international media outlets last week reported thousands of applicants had already sent in videos, including an Australian woman called “Tegan” who supposedly showed herself visiting a tattoo parlour to get a 10-centimetre tattoo proving her love for the Great Barrier Reef.   But Tourism Queensland has since admitted “Tegan” was not a genuine applicant, but a member of the ad agency that created the campaign promoting the Great Barrier Reef islands. “  Trying to fool consumers by posting “homemade” ads is a dangerous game to play.   Skeptical You Tube viewer’s are amazingly good at spotting fakes and the negative publicity they can generate isn’t worth the risk.