Hasta La Creative!

This morning, on the heels of a monumental ruling by the Supreme Court in favor of marriage equality (no thanks to a bizarre, nonsensical dissent from Clarence Thomas), YouTube released a video celebrating the decision, and Pride Month, entitled “#ProudToLove.”

The video, directed by Scott Chan, opens with footage of individuals who used videos posted to YouTube as a way to come out. This highlights YouTube as not only a longtime supporter of LGBT rights, but also its role in acting as a supportive community for those who need it. As the spot continues, it mixes in footage both personal and political. One of these clips includes the line, “I hope you will stand on the right side of history,” an appropriate choice since the Supreme Court decision now makes it abundantly clear which side that is. It’s a fitting tribute to both the Supreme Court’s historical decision in favor of equality and to Pride Month. We expect to see a lot of brands follow in YouTube’s footsteps with their own celebratory messages, but this will likely stand as not only one of the first such efforts but also one of the best.

Learning a new language is never easy, and for many Peruvians, it’s a lot easier to just read the Spanish subtitles on their favorite U.S. movie trailers.

Armed with that insight, language school Euroidiomas has been trolling these viewers with clever YouTube banner ads that covered subtitles on movie promos and urged them to sign up for English classes.

“The action’s up there, not down here,” notes one ad.

“Go to watch movies, not to read them,” says another.  

Clever as they may be, it’s unlikely they worked very well if (as in the case study below) the ads were written in English. We’re going to guess the real ads were in Spanish and that this version was just created for us English speakers to appreciate the campaign. 

Now, if we’re done, I’d like to get back to this Tortugas Ninjas trailer. 

Via Creative Criminals.

Does OK Go release albums? Like, full-blown records with multiple songs on them? I don’t know. I don’t care. Their videos are enough for all of us.

Japanese creative agency Mori Inc. is behind this one. (You may remember creative director Morihiro Harano, who created that giant xylophone in the woods in that 2011 smartphone ad.) Like all of OK Go’s videos, it’s amazing. I would put it up there with the great Rube Goldberg device video for “This Too Shall Pass,” but maybe not quite as high as the truly awesome collaboration with dance troupe Pilobolus on “All Is Not Lost.”

Anyway, here it is:

Those amazing little motorcycles are the Honda U3-X, a very strange device with some kind of robotic gyroscope inside that keeps it from falling over, even when the guys are leaning back and forth on them. (To be fair, OK Go are samurai warriors when it comes to the art of not falling over.) I don’t want to give away the ending, but it gets nuts from there.

At any rate, the rock world’s answer to Cirque du Soleil is back. Hooray for them, and for us. And also for the drone or helicopter or whatever is filming this thing, because wow.

For six years, Gregory Ng has held the uncontested title of Frozen Food Master, a grocery guru who has eaten his way through 1,000 microwaved meals and recorded the results for a loyal audience. 

But a few days ago, in mid-review, he abruptly quit. The breaking point? A $2 children’s meal that Ng felt was “breading with a hint of chicken on the inside.”

“You know what? I can’t do this anymore,” he said into the camera after a pause. “This is horrible. We should not be feeding our kids this. We should not be eating this frozen food anymore. I’m done with this.”

Obviously, it’s not the frozen food industry that’s changed since Ng’s video review series, Freezerburns, began in 2008. What’s changed is Ng himself.

In recent years, while working his day job as CMO for optimization firm Brooks Bell, Ng has become an advocate for healthy, active living. He even quit Freezerburns briefly in 2012, noting, “I was feeling great every day, and shooting more episodes of Freezerburns was my daily downer.”

He soon returned to the show, reinvigorated with ideas for how to make it better. Today, he estimates the Freezerburns audience across multiple video platforms totals 75,000-100,000 viewers per episode.

This time, though, he says the end is truly the end. In a blog post, he explains how he’s become increasingly uncomfortable with the influence the show has had on his life, such as motivating him to feature the unhealthiest items because he knew they’d be the most popular.

We wanted to know more about his decision to close down a niche he’s spent so much time carving out. Check out our Q&A with Ng below:

AdFreak: So, what are the final stats for your time creating Freezerburns? How much frozen food did you eat? How much video did you create?
Gregory Ng: I published my first episode on Oct. 4, 2008, and in the nearly six years since then I reviewed over 1,000 frozen food items in nearly 700 episodes. One fan calculated that it would take four days to watch every video back to back. Not quite the longevity of The Simpsons marathon, but still a lot of time to watch me eat.

You’re an all-around healthy guy and committed father. Do you feel Freezerburns did more harm than good by promoting the frozen food category?
Absolutely not! While the issue of healthy eating eventually ended the show for me, the frozen food category as a whole did not and does not contradict my health and my parenting.

There are a ton of items in the freezer aisle that are extremely nasty, unhealthy, sodium-laden and fattening. They truly fit the stereotype of frozen food. But there are also a ton of options that cater to organic, healthy eating as well as special dietary needs like gluten-free or vegetarian.

As the Frozen Food Master, I was able to uncover those gems in the freezer aisle that were great tasting and good for you with the added convenience that frozen meals provide. And when I reviewed things that were great tasting but not great for you, I feel like I represented the tradeoffs in eating them. Because of this, I feel like I promoted the frozen food industry in a positive but realistic way.

How did your “mic drop” moment of walking off set come about? A lot of people would probably assume a scene like that was staged.
In the last couple of months I had a few “moments of clarity” that caused me to question my motivations in keeping my show going. Some of it was simply the time aspect of producing online video in addition to my day job as well as my family commitments and whether the financial benefits outweighed the effort.

I’m typically an impulsive person but I didn’t want to make an impulsive decision to end something I spent a lot of time building. My brand was strong, my relationships with frozen food companies were strong, and my revenue coming in was strong. I had told myself that I would finish out the calendar year. I felt that would be a great time to end things.

Then I reviewed this particular Kid Cuisine meal and I just got very angry during the review. It is geared at kids, and it just isn’t anything I would serve to them. It was also a meal that has a commercial tie-in with the How to Train Your Dragon 2 movie, and the commercialization of the meal made me upset. I record every episode in one take and it just happened. So it wasn’t staged, but there was certainly a buildup to this moment.

You mentioned when you quit that you were starting to be bothered by the fact your audience was closer in age to your kids than yourself. Why was that uncomfortable for you?
I knew that college-aged kids is a great segment to be marketing to, and I exploited that in the beginning years of my show. It fueled a lot of the decisions I made regarding content, publishing times, sponsors I pitched, and merch I designed.

As the years progressed, I tried to evolve the age of my audience into grocery shopping moms. I was successful doing that on my website and on Facebook but not so much on YouTube. My average audience is 19. My oldest child is nearly12. I’m nearly 40.

Good YouTube community management involves conversation and engagement. It was getting to the point where I was no longer aware of what my audience was talking about. And when I dropped a pop culture reference in my dialogue from a movie like Back to the Future, most of them didn’t get it.

You also noted that you felt a bit corrupted by the allure of traffic. Did you feel you were starting to lose control of your content and your own choices?
Absolutely. Over the years, I optimized everything about my show: which items I reviewed to gain the most views and comments, the time to publish, the best way to title my videos for SEO benefits, and the best video length for my audience.

There are a lot of best practices around YouTube optimization but those should just be viewed as guidelines. Every channel is afferent because every show is different. I figured out mine and I didn’t like the decisions I was making to drive more subscribers and revenue.

For example, I would review a Hot Pocket over a vegan Indian meal because I knew the views would be 10 times larger. I could have reviewed what I wanted, but that wasn’t my goal. I was in it to build audience, prove that you could monetize by owning a niche and fine tune my camera presence.

Eventually I realized I accomplished those things and it wasn’t good for me to continue down this path just for a little more revenue.

Like most YouTube personalities, you get a lot of nasty comments. While you seem to have fun mocking them, did they factor into your decision to quit?
Oh no. I know for people not used to publishing a lot on YouTube the troll comments are very scary, emotionally damaging, and offensive. I have always said that a sign that you are popular on YouTube is that the trolls come out. They did not factor into me ending the show.

Do you see yourself starting another ongoing video series with revenue potential? Will you be conquering another niche?
Yes! I am already in the ideation phase of my next project. Freezerburns was the result of careful planning and identifying of a profitable, untapped niche. My next project will be online video-based but not necessarily capitalizing on an exploitable niche. I will not be eating on camera nor will I be reviewing things. This one is coming more from my soul as I will be focusing on crafting behind the camera instead of in front of it. If revenue comes, great. My goal on this one is to create something where the reward is in the emotion it creates.

Jason Collins. Michael Sam. Robbie Rogers. It’s been an eventful couple of years for athletes coming out publicly in professional sports. And now, YouTube, a longtime supporter of gay rights, is celebrating diversity in sports with a campaign themed #ProudToPlay, set to run all through June, which is LGBT Pride Month and also will include the first two weeks of the World Cup in Brazil.

A star-studded anthem spot from 72andSunny features clips of everyone from Nelson Mandela to President Obama to Kobe Bryant talking about both the transcendent power of sports and the courage of gay athletes to be open in a sometimes hostile environment.

“We applaud the courage and openness of athletes at all levels who have come out and admire their teammates, friends, families, and supporters who are all proving that it doesn’t matter who you are or who you love—what matters is that you put forward your best effort,” YouTube says in a blog post.

“We stand with our community in the belief that youth everywhere should all have the same opportunities to grow up and pursue their dreams and passions, on or off the field.”

Activities in recent years certainly shows a trend toward the benefits of focusing on social networking and marketing. The numbers of both offline and online businesses getting involved with Facebook only continues to grow each day. But the great news is you can do this, as well, and work to create your own place there. If you really want to take advantage of this, then there is really no justification to wait any longer. Social marketing, at other sites apart from Facebook, contains a number of diverse methods which is fantastic for business. You should try to find the ways that can be used the best for your company.

If you want to do something that can certainly help your business, then just think along the lines of increasing your brand. Depending on your distinct business, you can brand yourself or your business. As you can easily envision, how each business is branded will vary depending on where your income takes place. You probably already know that Twitter, Youtube and Facebook are actually the three heavyweights in social media and marketing. Of course, each one must be approached differently and with different media, such as video at Youtube. You can capitalize on allowing your market have some fun and that can work wonderfully with all of them. Entertainment and the principle of fun at these sites can be tremendously effective, plus there is an higher chance of something becoming viral.

When you think about speaking to your customers, then that means social marketing and networking. Making the most through your marketing with that method is one of the most effective things you can do. Take the time to be there among those in your market, and you can acquire all kinds of useful information. One thing that ought to come to mind is market research and a new way of doing it. Then there are customer service potentials which can change into good things for your business. While you’re there you can let them know you are generally there, and then simply make yourself accessible if there are any problems. That is a level of customer support and assistance that does not exist very much, anymore.

Market research is vital for any business, and you can tap into a new way of doing that. The main way this happens is because people chat at these sites. The persons in your market will be interested in real discussions about what is important. So then just think about if they are talking about their various experiences with buying something. You will have the ability to eavesdrop about challenges in your market, or solutions that you may want to find out about. All you really want to do is show-up, and next be in a great position to pick up what is going on. It can make a tremendous difference when you are able to understand their language and the words they use. Your marketing and advertising messages and copy will convert much better when it speaks the same language as your market.

There definitely is no secret about Facebook’s renowned traffic numbers, and all online marketers certainly know this very well. Of course, all businesses from small to large have a tendency to view that in terms of profits which is clear. But it is important to realize that you will have to work before you are able to reap the rewards just like you need to anywhere else. Avoid thinking that you just need to make a couple of comments every now and then, and then you make loads of money. If you are asking yourself what can be done, if you are obscure you can change that around and become well-known. Your small company can achieve excellent publicity, and you can generate leads, sales and far more. But know your Facebook fame will not occur by itself, and you can definitely derail your efforts by making the wrong marketing moves.

One of the greatest wrong turns to take at Facebook, and other sites, is failing to be consistent in what you do. The difficulty with this idea of being even and routine in your marketing is about simply being there for your market. What can quickly happen is you begin with a bang and then matters fall by the wayside in time. To make up for that, you suddenly appear out of nowhere and post half a dozen status updates. While you’re at it, you contain a couple of links for some offers you feel are great and might help them. That is certainly not how you utilize social marketing or have success at Facebook. The mixture of your absence and the links you gave them will leave a bad impression about you. So merely spread out your marketing and ensure you talk to people on a recurrent basis.

You can trigger other unpleasant consequences by failing to keep in regular touch with your market. First, as you realize all of your efforts will work to brand you whether in a positive or negative fashion. So what that means is you must be consistent in your messages all the time. Also, remember you stand for your business, so while you have to be fairly informal it is still important that you carry out yourself properly, as well. Getting that done is not as hard as you may feel, but you must keep it uppermost in your mind. So stay away from going way off topic at your fan pages by talking about things people will not be there to hear. Obviously it is fine to have light occasions, but keep the conversation on course and in the right direction. But keep things going in the right track which is the theme of your page as well as your business branding.

A lot has been occurring at Facebook in the past couple of years including upgrades of many kinds. One specific change that has taken place concerns transmitting friend requests to people who don’t know who you are. You have to be very watchful with that practice because they will know that you’re doing it and may eliminate your account. But one way around that is to search on the phrases that are appropriate to your market. The effect of doing so will lead you to chats based on your searches. At that time it is simply a matter of pleasantly adding to the discussions.

Que atire a primeira pedra quem nunca gastou alguns preciosos minutos de seu dia assistindo a algum vídeo no YouTube protagonizado por bichinhos fofos. A boa notícia é que, graças aos criativos da MARS, Colenso BBDO e Finch, agora é possível assistir e compartilhar uma sequência inteira de filhotinhos adoráveis e, de quebra, ainda poder usar a desculpa que é por uma boa causa: ajudar o Pedigree Adoption Centre.

Em meio às imagens de cãezinhos de diferentes raças e tamanhos, o narrador avisa que só de assistir ao vídeo, o público já está ajudando a levantar fundos para cães necessitados. A explicação vem a seguir: se um vídeo torna-se viral, seus criadores recebem do YouTube parte dos lucros dos anúncios.

De certa maneira, os criativos souberam aproveitar bem o sofativismo, aproveitando o desejo que algumas pessoas têm de ajudar, mas que nem sempre chega às vias de fato. Pelo menos um clique no botão “compartilhar” está ao alcance dos dedos.

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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The interesting aspect regarding Twitter is that countless small businesses are less than sure how to properly use it. But considering that, each business and individual online marketer approaches their marketing from distinct perspectives. You can usually trace results back to certain activities irrespective of what you are doing. There’s a lot of bad information about using Twitter, but that surely does not imply you are unable to locate accurate information and use it successfully. If you realize what is going on and how to be effective, then you can be in a wonderful position for terrific visibility for your business. There are two options for the online marketer at Twitter, and so this means you need to understand how to conduct your self there. It is quite easy to produce business mistakes that can really tarnish your status with the Twitter group, or your followers.

If you want to have any kind of chance for accomplishment, then you must agree to the necessity of doing actual relationship marketing. Obviously not every person you interact with there will be in your precise market which is fine. Just keep in mind that you need to have relationships with most people who are from your unique market. If you can to chat with people without pretenses, then you’re halfway there with any group at Twitter. Most of the time your chat needs to center around what is happening in your life. However, be careful to prevent alienating people with off-color remarks or topics. One guideline is never expose too much about your own life because a lot of people do not actually want to know.

You have to be very careful that you do not cross the line by talking too much about what you’ve got to offer from your business. One of the worst things you can do is advertise excessively, and you will have to get a feel for what is too much. However, you can refer to something that will basically be a promotion, just be tactful concerning how you do it. You really ought to be fine with the people if your offers are kept below about 20%, and that is just a general guideline. The other times should be spent just conversing with people about life and anything else besides your business. Building and nurturing beneficial market relations is what Twitter is exactly about.

You can often see good replies when you share latest goings-on with your own business. You can consider this as spreading information about either an item about your life or even your business. We all realize that people, usually, can be too curious in news concerning other people. If your news is business oriented, then it is suitable to feature a link to your site. One word of warning is to be straightforward about why you are sharing this news. All you are carrying out there is conversing with people and reciprocating with what they share with you.
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The Facebook users is expanding at a steady rate and represents an incredibly large number of people. The numbers of real markets present at Facebook is also similarly staggering and is very thrilling for web businesses. Facebook is basically open for business all around the clock and each single day of the year. Now that promotion has been there for a while, people have grown comfortable to seeing them. All you need to do is put all that together, and you will see the reason it is so great for internet marketers. So that is some things about the ads, but needless to say that is not all that is offered at Facebook for marketing. There are truly huge opportunities concerning simple business networking that you can be engaged with.

Fan pages have been raging for well over a year, but we have the impression that not every marketer is choosing to make use of it. We’re contemplating about what may be done with business fan pages. If you have multiple sites in different markets, then naturally the smart thing is to build a fan page on its own account. You really do not want to expose all your businesses on one account. Fan pages are instruments for relationship marketing along with business marketing. In a very real manner you are branding your self with your fan page. That is exactly why relationship marketing really has to be provided its due when you are making use of fan pages.

As you work with your fan page, then skip right over the hoopla and other points that turn people off. It does appear to us that very many are no longer interested to see hype, and you can most likely do better without it. When you look at it, hype is not a required part of marketing. Unless of course you are an established name, then you could have a hard time building friendships based on hypey techniques. You will get much farther with people if you are just normal and not some super marketing man or woman with a lot of hypey material. Offer solid and useful information on your fan page and actively engage the people who take the time to visit. You can build something truly solid with that method. After that, hopefully they will tell others about you, and that is when things can get really very exciting.

Do something special for your fans as often as doable. Keep in mind this is all about them, and that is what excellent relationship marketing is all about from the standpoint of a marketer. It really is not very hard at all to locate discount sites with coupons you can inform your fans about. How about producing things like a faithful customer, or fan, card; even though it is digital it doesn’t matter. How about locating great Facebook apps you can tell them about. You could do fun things like run contests and have cool awards such as a special discount for something really nice. You want to develop a neighborhood feeling and get people to end up engaged. Be lively on your fan page and inspire people to return by merely giving them a good reason to do so.