Online video

In my previous post, I wrote about Gunn’s 12 advertising formats – which were illustrated with video clips embedded in web pages. An interesting symbol, as video advertising is becoming more and more prominent online.

It is an easy way for TV networks and media agencies to follow audiences: people watch less TV, more online video, let’s just deliver the same TV commercials online.

In my humble opinion, there are a few things to consider when using video for marketing messages on the Internet. Here are just four examples on possible ways to make online marketing videos different from their TV predecessors.

1) Interruption vs invitation. Interruptions of the user experience are definitely not welcome online. Advertising is more effective when users choose to watch it voluntarily rather than perceive it as an intrusion. Users should also have options to come back or be reminded later, so that they consume the advertising on their own time.

2) Linear narrative vs. adaptive story line. Let users interacting with the story to increase their engagement. It does not have to be complex, it can be simple branching such as “yes/ no” or “go left / go right”.

3) One size fits all videos. The Internet is a very personal medium unlike TV. Sending different messages to different audiences or different audience segments is possible. It can happen without breaking the bank in terms of production budget – green screen videos combined with computer generated images open greatly the range of options.

4) Substance over production values. The most successful online videos are often shot with low-cost webcams or camcorders. Users’ expectations are different than on TV. Don’t spend extra budget for details that will be barely noticeable on a small size video window.

What are your thoughts about online video? Can all of Gunn’s formats be reproduced as such? Are there going to be eventually new formats that fit the online environment better? I’d love to hear from you.

Advertisers, break free from your TV addiction…

A few weeks ago I found this 12-step program to understanding TV advertising formats. I am not sure if it will remove or reinforce advertisers’ ingrained reliance on television advertising! But read on…

For those who don’t know him, Donald Gunn is a former JWT Creative Director whose claim to fame is the Gunn report – a third party assessment of the best advertising campaigns. Third party means supposedly objective – always an interesting concept in an industry where subjectivity reigns. Nevertheless, it’s gone like Robert Parker with wine – Gunn’s choices now garner almost as much attention as some other advertising accolades and awards like the Clios or the Cannes Lions.

Gunn recently talked with online magazine Slate and described what he considers the 12 types of advertising formats. Well, really he’s talking of 12 types of TV commercials formats… repeat after me: “advertising = television commercial”.

Gunn has been there , done that and his analysis makes for a very interesting reading, especially since he illustrates his theory with several recent campaign examples conveniently embedded as Youtube clips.

Are these formats universal? Gunn implies that little has changed in decades, and that new commercials are simply variations of the same old themes. But as video becomes more and more common online, can things evolve?

The Tipping Point

This is my first post on this blog!

What took me so long? I feel (for once) like I am a very late adopter. A lot of people around me – friends and colleagues – have had blogs for months, if not years.

The first person who I came across who had a “web diary” (I don’t think the term “weblog” had not even been coined back then) was Chris Worth, a very gifted writer and storyteller who was way ahead of his time. Chris was an archetypal early adopter – like all those people who may feel they have paid too much for their iPhones. Chris’ blog was started back in 1998 or 1997 and was hand-coded in HTML at the time. Chris moved to a “professional” blog platform a couple of years ago – not sure where all the fascinating stories from the previous years reside now

Are we past the tipping point for blogs? It depends on your definition of the market for blogs. We are probably way past the tipping point for blogs as personal diaries – but we are potentially only seeing the beginning of blogs as an information exchange tool, especially in a professional context.

In my case I have been toying with the idea of starting a blog for months. I had two main concerns, and certainly very unoriginal ones. How to commit the time to writing new posts regularly? How to keep coming up with relevant and interesting stuff?

A couple of weeks ago, my former colleague Idris Mootee invited me to write a piece to be published on his blog. It made me revisit my initial concerns, and I came to the realization that there was in fact a lot to talk about! I will try to prioritize quality over quantity: expect a weekly post or so.

I welcome any feedback you can give on the posts. Blogs are a way to start dialogs with others in spite of time and distance, and those who see blogs only as a one-way publishing channel are missing on the real potential. This reflects the direction where marketing is headed: brands should increasingly engage in conversations with consumers. Brands need to forget about the old mass media paradigm – pushing intrusive messages that consumers have learnt to filter out or whose relevance is sometimes questionable.

To finish this first post, I’d like to give you an idea of the things I (or rather, we) will be discussing here. This is also reflected in the “about the blog” section. Expect to see comments on business and marketing news, data, articles, blog postings, pictures, books and of course web sites of interest.

Topics that I am passionate about:

• business, technology and marketing innovation
• consumer trends, market research, data analysis
• creativity, design, advertising, brands, communication, digital experiences
• word of mouth, social networks, online communities, virtual worlds

Voila – I am very much looking forward to sharing stuff with all of you out there, and I hope that this will be a mutually rewarding experiment!