Just a quick thought- I’ve been hearing and reading stories of marketers that are having problems conducting user-driven campaigns. A lot of this confusion seems to stem from the fact that companies are treating people like unpaid creative directors, and are expecting them to create :30s or print ads around products, and then fret that the results don’t accurately reflect the brand. Some of the thinking on this has been along the “You get what you pay for” line of thought, but I actually think that is secondary. Question: When was the last time you filmed a :30 to tell a friend what you thought? Or created a large visual with compelling copy? Users don’t speak in ad units, but the expectation is that non-traditional creative will be carried by traditional media, which is a large part of the disconnect. Most videos on YouTube aren’t :30 seconds long for a reason- people are done when they’re done, and though 99.9% of what is created is of middling/poor quality, it is far more genuine. The trick lies in loosening the creative restraints, and looking at vehicles that users are comfortable with already, not just in terms of media, but especially in format.

Funny or Die, a Will Ferrell-fronted comedy video site, has received plenty of coverage around its launch, more around his involvement and their intro clip, “The Landlord” than around the user-contributed content, which has been more tepid. That said, there is an onslaught of theme-based video-sharing launches, based around humor, non-profits, tech, etc., which brings up a familiar scenario- What if the audience that YouTube has aggregated fragments right as marketers finally figure it out? The struggles that agencies are going through trying to adapt creative to the online video platform will only be compounded when assets will have to be adapted to different formats, channels, tagging systems, and communities in addition to figuring out appropriate length. Clearly many of the start-ups around today will not be around to witness this additional shift, but as marketers focus on the “what?” in a message, they should also be anticipating a much more complicated answer to the “where?”. Oh, and the same thing is happening to social networks as well, but I’ll save that for another post.

From the TV section of today’s Washington Post: “And finally, the online analysts at Arlington-based New Media Strategies reported yesterday that the impersonations of mostly dead people delivered by Rich Little — who we also thought was dead — at the correspondents’ dinner had enjoyed 4,600 views on YouTube — but Sanjaya’s red-carpet arrival at the prom for politicians and news talent copped 7,000 views.” The most viewed clip, according to our team, was actually neither of these earth-shattering, paradigm redefining moments, but rather David Letterman’s remote contribution of a Top 10 list, dwarfing both with over a half million views during the same time period. No word on the blogosphere’s tone on Sanjaya’s mop, however.

Interesting how video-sharing has transformed the face of romance- we did a quick snapshot of Valentine’s on YouTube, and here’s what we found:

Highlights
We found that people were utilizing video sharing extensively:

– Over 1200 Valentine videos were added on the 14th, the vast majority of which were video ecards of widely varying quality. Some were the standard slow song + hearts + scripted “I love you”, while more original directors took advantage of the snow to scrawl out their messages.

– 5 Marriage proposals were contributed, bringing the total to 254 on the site, ranging from CG animated productions to balloon fly-bys, to more awkward productions.

– Interesting twists on the traditional for single users – one user fished for Valentine suitors with a rendition of “As Time Goes By” that garnered almost 60,000 views, over 450 comments and 20 video responses, while another user volunteered to be any single persons sweetheart via a personal email message, which generated a whopping 609,366 views as of this writing and over 2500 users took her up on her offer.

– Viral marketing pieces for Nokia and Siemens (set in the future) under the premise of being wedding proposals did not fare as well as their organic brethren, generating just under 3600 views for Nokia (in 11 months) while things look a bit better for Siemens which was viewed just over 6500 times since it launched Valentine’s Day.

There has obviously been a lot of discussion about the Google/You Tube buy - some good, some bad. One of the better looks at the situation, as it stands now, can be found over at AdAge - while I don’t agree with all the points (I think that the integration between the two might be more shakey at first), there are some interesting points, including the potential for better sorting of content over on YouTube (amen!), the potential for better ad serving on YouTube (yup!) and the potential to take video to the “next level” using Google’s massive infrastructure. One thing I’m actually interested in is whether or not the merger opens up the possibility for longer videos on YouTube available to all (not just to those with Director accounts) - their self imposed time limit hopefully will change with the participation of Google. This could be something that would really open up the distribution of longer form UGV.

According to the AP, Youtube and Warner Music have struck a profit sharing deal in which Warner will upload its music videos, while YouTube tracks user generated video with copyrighted material.  When they finid videos using Warner copyrighted material, Warner opts to “accept” or “reject” it. No word on what happens to the “rejected videos,” but pity the poor person whose job it is to watch the thousands and thousands of bad basement lip synching to flag them for their supervisors.

YouTube users have watched over 9,000 *years* of video (Marketing Vox)

Move around, couch potatos - ESPN to broadcast full college football games via it’s mobile phones (Washington Post)

The Stickest Brands on the web (Clickz)

According to the Wired Blog, there’s a new app on the scene that lets you rip YouTube videos to play on your iPod, iTunes or PSP. The program, called TubeSock, is sadly, only available for Macs right now, but the possibilities of turning YouTube videos (including live music performances, portions of documentaries available on YouTube, and video series) are endless. Wonder when the copyright stuff will kick in on this one?

AOL has annouced that they are starting a movie-download service, with a bunch of the major studios. While they aren’t the first ones out of the gate, they definately do (as GigaOM points out) have more deals with more studios than other services.

Yet another network gets into the game of streaming their content - with a local twist. Marketing Vox is reporting that 9 local Fox stations will be streaming primetime content on their sites via a proprietary media player. This is a different kind of move - but also one that might sidestep the issue local network affiliates have regarding their viewers watching streaming shows on main network sites. This will be an interesting case study to watch.