As a creative director at a creative agency, I am routinely faced with blank sheets of paper and empty whiteboards just begging for big ideas. This, I can handle. A harder proposition is being faced with a brand, business or organization that is looking for “something like this video” or “a little different version of that campaign.” On one hand, this is a great way for marketing executives to convey a creative direction. On the other hand, the approach betrays the potential reach and impact that can be earned with a completely original online video, social media, interactive or integrated campaign.

Chasing the Dragon

Chasing the dragon is an expression most commonly associated with heroin or other drug use that describes a user’s attempts to re-experience the thrill of their first high. Since we all aspire to achieve marketing success with each new product and service, the tendency is to study and follow those campaigns that have already been successful. There are two ways marketers chase the dragon.

Audiences are becoming increasingly fragmented in the ways they find and experience entertainment content and related marketing messages, which can be frustrating for the brands, businesses marketers and advertisers that are trying to reach them. There is indecision and hesitancy about where to best spend tightening marketing budgets and nowhere is this more true than in the explosive areas of online video and social media. Demographics aside, we must now contend with, and benefit from, media, platforms and devices that didn’t exist less than a decade ago. Strap on your helmet and lace up your boots because it’s only going to get wilder.

When brands, businesses, marketing executives and agencies consider developing and launching an online video marketing initiative, the assumption is often that the video or videos will be launched on their own, independent of other departments or media. There is often little or no budget or inter-team cooperation for promoting the campaign other than a press release, a tweet and some emails to coworkers and friends. If the video doesn’t perform as well as expected, many executives don’t evaluate the bigger picture but rather decide that other factors must have been involved, including:

• The audience didn’t like the video — or they “just didn’t get it.”
• The video was too long, or the video was too short.
• The product or service is B2B and video is only good for B2C.
• The production quality wasn’t good enough — or the production quality was too good.
• The message was too strong — or the message wasn’t strong enough.
• There was no call to action — or there was too much call to action and we scared the audience away, as if consumers are herds of skittish impalas (not the cars) gathered around some watering hole in Botswana.

There’s a wealth of information available contrasting online video advertising and broadcast advertising, traditional marketing to online marketing, whether or not social media will kill PR, push advertising vs pull marketing, lean-back versus lean-forward and on and on. Maybe the time has come to stop pointing out the disparities or trying to figure out which is better — and to start capitalizing on the similarities, identifying the places where the mediums intersect and, more importantly, where they can be benefit each other in the bigger picture.

Television. TV and radio are great at reaching mass audiences but not as good at engagement and interactivity. TV can raise brand and product awareness and tell lots of people to go do things, but viewers can’t communicate directly with the commercial, leave a comment or directly send the ad to their friends. Also, as soon as the media buy is over, the TV ad stops running.

Online Video. Online video is great at targeting and engaging specific audiences, is easily shared, and thrives on interaction. The video lives on regardless of additional media buys. However, reaching a critical mass audience — an audience that will take enough action to offset the budget spend and deliver a return on the marketer’s investment — requires a viral marketing strategy that includes ad placement, outreach, social media marketing, video optimization and cross-integration wherever possible.

Social Media. Social media describes multiple channels of distribution and engagement and is ideal for sharing online video messages. Basically, social media is to online video and brand messages as TV is to shows and commercials, but with far more interactivity.

So imagine if a simultaneously launched TV and radio campaign, along with press releases and blog and publication outreach, were to direct interested viewers to social media initiatives on Facebook, Youtube and other social platforms with additional online video content that would:

a. live there forever

b. encourage interactivity and sharing

reinforce, supplement and spread the brand message through the videos and surrounding conversation

d. allow for sustained reactive engagement

e. build audiences for future engagement

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Start thinking in terms of integrating bits of TV, radio, PR, outdoor advertising, print, guerrilla marketing and social media wherever and whenever you can. Get more than one department involved and share the success of the campaign. I like to equate viral marketing with trying to break boards with your hand. If you don’t hit with everything you’ve got, you’ll break your hand — which, in the words of Charlie, “really hurt

Originally published on MediaPost, written by Supercool Creative Director David Murdico

Supercool Creative is a digital creative and social media marketing agency in Los Angeles specializing in big ideas, marketing, interactive & online video production.

If you’re considering an online video marketing initiative for your brand, product or service, the last thing you want to be bothered with is the aftermath of a successful online video marketing campaign. So here are five things you can do to make sure you’ll see little or no return on your online video marketing investment.

1.  Establish your online video marketing goals and expectations after the campaign is over.  There’s really no need to figure out all this stuff up front. Just look around at all the successful video campaigns that are launching every day. All you really have to do is get some videos produced and put them up on Youtube. The rest will take care of itself. After the dust settles, there’ll be plenty of time to figure out how you did at hitting the goals that you’re about to establish. Predicting a return on investment and setting goals and expectations beforehand would actually work against the most effective strategy, which is to cross your fingers and hope for the best.

Brands, businesses and organizations spend valuable time and resources targeting audiences, predicting where they can be reached and determining how they want to be reached. The answer is simple: They are everywhere, and they don’t want to be reached. They don’t want to know how great you are, and all the wonderful things you can do for them — so stop calling, emailing, throwing rocks at their windows and singing on their front lawn with a boom box over your head. It’s annoying.

Amazingly, audiences don’t think of themselves as targets. They don’t think of themselves as belonging to this demographic or that group, or as male and female 18-34. They don’t even think of themselves as consumers. They just do what they do and react positively to what they like and negatively to what they don’t. When they watch television, interact on social networks, watch videos on YouTube, read online magazines and newspapers, they’re there to be informed and entertained. That’s it.

A pivotal component of online video marketing is sharing. If your target audience isn’t sharing your brand, business or organization’s videos, they aren’t sharing your marketing message, either. While the call to action to buy your product, try your service, learn more, click here, sign up now, tell a friend, engage and interact may be realized primarily through the media surrounding videos like blogs, publications, social networks and discussion boards, the videos themselves are the vehicles by which these messages are spread. If the message is the story, then video is the conversation piece.

Understanding why audiences share video content is important in developing successful video and social media marketing campaigns.

Brands, businesses and organizations are fast adopting online video marketing as a valuable tool in their marketing approach. Considering that video marketing relies on the power of messages being shared through social networking, blogs, publications, PR and search, how far will good creative get you? Is a killer idea enough to do the trick or, conversely, can you put lipstick on a pig if you have a hefty enough paid media budget?

The key steps in building and executing an online video marketing campaign that will ultimately generate return on investment include establishing the goals, defining measurable objectives, designing the video marketing strategy, developing the creative and producing the video(s). Once that is settled, you can proceed with the video launch, measurement and reactive engagement.

Brands, businesses and organizations are fast adopting online video marketing as a valuable tool in their marketing approach. Considering that video marketing relies on the power of messages being shared through social networking, blogs, publications, PR and search, how far will good creative get you? Is a killer idea enough to do the trick or, conversely, can you put lipstick on a pig if you have a hefty enough paid media budget?

The key steps in building and executing an online video marketing campaign that will ultimately generate return on investment include establishing the goals, defining measurable objectives, designing the video marketing strategy, developing the creative and producing the video(s). Once that is settled, you can proceed with the video launch, measurement and reactive engagement.

When I began interning at Supercool Creative a few weeks ago, I knew there would soon be serious trouble brewing in our office.  Our creative director David is a graduate of USC, while I am a senior at the clearly superior university and cross-town rival, UCLA.   Tomorrow our two schools will have their ultimate showdown in the Rose Bowl, and, as a result, the Supercool offices have become a dangerous warzone this week.

To make the stakes even higher, David and I have made a bet.  Whoever gets the most people to express their support for their school gets

Brands and businesses have already begun to acknowledge and harness the power of online video marketing in the Business to Consumer (B2C) space. More and more success stories are emerging as marketing directors, brand managers social media managers and their agencies are beginning to grasp the core fundamentals of establishing goals, optimizing content for sharing and search and measuring results. Likewise, brands and businesses are now turning to online video marketing to raise interest in and awareness of their products and services in the Business to Business (B2B) space, but with caution.

What differentiates a B2B from a B2C online video marketing approach is simply a shift in the focus of the creative and the viral marketing strategy. Always keep in mind that businesses are made up of people… who are consumers. A business doesn’t watch and share videos, absorb a product or service message, read a blog post or article in a trade publication or share advice. People do these things on behalf of themselves and their brands and businesses.

This is not intended as a step-by-step guide but rather an outline to get you thinking differently about the perceived chasm that exists between B2B and B2C online video marketing.