I want to talk to you about three things today.Why video is important to us as peopleHow online video is changing what we consumeAnd how brands can get involved
So video is amazing, but why? It is because it is how we make sense of the world. It is the closest thing we have to real life experience. Think about the really big events in the world, we experienced them through video. Here are a bunch of clips we pulled together from YouTube, to show you what we mean.
This is why for advertisers TV was magic. It allowed them to harness...
…the power of sight, sound and motion. It allowed them to make an emotional connection with their audiences. If you are not sure about this, just watch this clip from the BBC’s “Child of our time” - that has followed the development of a group of 25 children from a range of genetic, social, geographical and ethnic backgrounds since their birth in 2000.
What we are finding now though, that it doesn’t matter what screen people watch this content on. We did some research on tablet and mobile usage, and found that they are adding 23% incremental video views to TV and Laptop. People don’t mind what device they are on, they just want to watch video - they’ll do it on whatever device is most convenient to them.
So people love video and they watch a lot of video. But what is it that people watch? What gets their attention and evokes emotion? Well you'll be surprised to see that great content really can come from everywhere! We are seeing a trend of what might be considered niche content in mainstream broadcasting, getting huge numbers of views.
I’d like to tell you a story about a guy called Michael. He started his career as a stage actor and director. Then in 2007 he saw a mashup of the trailer for the Shining on YouTube (reworking it as a comedy) and saw that it was getting millions of views. He thought to himself - ‘Hey, I shouldn’t be wasting my time making theatre for 20 people a week, I should be making video’ for Millions of people!He started making videos about science and technology. Just answering questions people are always wondering about, like “What would happen if everyone jumped at once?”. He is not a scientist, he doesn’t know the answer. He simply looks up the answer online (Wikipedia), and talk over it in his video. For visuals he uses screenshots from the documents he found or google images, no sophisticated animation whatsoever.Have a look for yourself. Here is an excerpt from a video he made about the colour of a mirror.
Another couple of guys that I love are the SlowMo guys. These guys bought a slow motion camera set up and just film stuff and put it on YouTube.
Gangnam style – ½ billion views(No I’m not going to do the dance!)We’ve DISCOVERED amazing content CREATORS gathering HUGE AUDIENCES without the traditional distribution channels of TV.
This is all great, but what should brands do about it? We have three ideas!
Firstly make great content.
Do you know who this is? She is a singer called Carly Rae Jepsen.
If you didn’t know who she was, I bet you have seen some of these. Abercrombie and Fitch did, and they decided to utilise the huge buzz around this video and remake it.
Sometimes you can be more authentic by letting others do the talking for you. We can help you find the right producers to sponsor, and to get your message out. They already have a following, they know how to do this and you can bask in the reflected glory.BECOME PART OF TRUSTAnother - Michelle Phan – 22year old – worlds most popular make up artist – 600m views equivalent global Olympic audience – lady gaga make upLancome using Phan as Distribution network. Audience Trust into TRANSACTIONAL Relationships.
Or get other people to make your content for you…Fosters used well known people and characters – like Alan Partridge and the Fast Show & commissioned them to make new materialBillboard- Fosters Kind of media used to promote big TV shows (like C4 do) but now they use them to highlight the great content they’ve commissioned TANGO brings us The InbetweenersVolvo COMMISSION Game of ThronesDUREX Commission twist on 50 shades of grey
But you don’t need to have a famous person – you could make them famousAnyone here watch this live?Over 8m people did – proper appointment viewing online.And a further 30m have been to the RedBull page to watch the highlights sinceFREE CONTENT and still OWN all the RIGHTS
Now it is all very well producing great content, but we want you to get it in front of as many people as possible. We have a bunch of formats that you can use on YouTube, the masthead on the homepage, pre rolls, and the trueview family, where you only pay when someone wants to watch your content, built in targeting to your consumers.One of those is called skippables, it is a standard pre-roll that you can skip if you don’t want to watch it. What I am really excited about is that people are starting to use this format in really interesting ways, for performance and brand. But it is when great creative is used with the specific moment that it get’s really interesting.
I love that. it is really clever usage of the media, and uses the media format to increase the power of the message, something that we should all be aiming for.
So, I have covered three things.Video is how we see the world,People want to watch great content on any screen and they don’t care who made it if it is interesting, useful or funAnd brands can easily get involved, cheaply and effectively.