 |
 |  |  |  |  |  |
|
BIG IDEAS for the SMALL
SCREEN
Entrepreneurs are starting to cash in on the online video obsession. Consider Valentina Trevino. The Chicago artist and filmmaker regularly posts videos on YouTube, showing how she created a painting and what it means to her-and musing on a host of matters. In one clip, she ruminates about the strange connection between the ballerinas in Edgar Degas's art and Britney Spears's custody battles.
The unorthodox formula has brought her a total of 8.2 million views on YouTube-and, just as important, a host of buyers. At the end of her clips, Ms. Trevino includes a link to eBay, where viewers can buy the featured piece. So far, she has sold every painting she has offered this way-49 at last count-at prices ranging lately from $500 to $1,000 each. Before she started the YouTube diary, she says, she had to give up painting to pay the bills. Now it brings her a regular income.
"It's so different from the message-driven approach to marketing that most kinds of advertising is," says David Meerman Scott, author of "The New Rules of Marketing and PR." "You don't have to talk about your product per se. You can just have fun with it." How does a small business thrive in a YouTube world? What makes some videos skyrocket in viewership and others bomb? Are there guiding principles that will produce a successful ad? Many entrepreneurs say luck or timing had at least something to do with their success. But a closer look at their stories reveals valuable lessons that any small business can apply: BLENDTEC: Be Funny By far, the most common element among successful videos is comedy. These videos deliver laughs as well as pitching a product.
Case in point: Blendtec, which makes high-end blenders. In the past year, Blendtec has drawn more than 60 million views for its "Will It Blend?" video series. The premise is simple. A host, Blendtec CEO Tom Dickson, uses Blendtecblenders to grind up everything from credit cards to an iPhone. Jokes fly freely. Retail sales of the blenders have shot up 500% since the company started the series last year. This year, total sales are projected to top $40 million. And the series has brought Blendtec tremendous name recognition. When employees demonstrate the products at big-box retailers, people come out and say, "'That's the blender that can blend marbles!'" says George Wright, Blendtec's director of marketing. The videos have also brought some new opportunities. Earlier this year, the software company Novell paid Blendtec about $5,000 to do a "Will It Blend?" video for a company event. In the movie, a number of items got blended: a Microsoft Vista disc, razor blades, a stuffed animal, a flash drive and a Red Bull beverage. "We thought this would be something fun for our customer base," says Russ Dastrup, Novell's videographer. The message? "Novell Technology allows you to blend a variety of operating systems and applications into a seamless network," he says. MJ SAFETY SOLUTIONS: Tap Into Current Events At first glance, "My Child's Pack" breaks all the rules of online video. It isn't funny or entertaining-in fact, it's downright somber. But it has gotten some 25,000 hits on YouTube since early August because of its timely message. The video begins with a startling statistic: "328 school shooting incidents with injury or death in North America since Columbine." It segues into photographs and news clips of the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings. Then comes the pitch: a bullet-resistant backpack from MJ Safety Solutions. Co-founder Joe Curran, a carpenter, says the company has sold 1,000 backpacks, at $175 each, since the video was released. He says the company has also received hundreds of thank-you letters from concerned parents, and a local police officer has started buying the backpacks for his grandchildren. The seed for MJ Safety was planted in 1999, in the wake of the Columbine shootings. When the backpack was finally ready for release last summer, the Boston Herald planned to publish an article about it. The co-founders knew that a visual demonstration would help, so they cribbed together a short video with the help of family and employees. Toward the end of the clip, Mr. Curran's 13-year-old daughter, Amanda, smiles as she holds up the backpack to shield her head and chest. The Boston Herald provided a link to the YouTube video, and the groundswell started. "In reality, we're just concerned dads," Mr. Curran says. "We're not business marketing geniuses." ALL NATURAL MAINE ROOT: Find a Partner Most small businesses don't have the resources for an in-house video-production staff. So, finding a partner such as an advertising agency can help get a video campaign off the ground or spiff up a lackluster idea. But there are a couple of caveats. This option may end up costing thousands of dollars-a significant amount for most entrepreneurs. It's also crucial for companies to shop around for the right partner. The videos will turn out better if the ad agency understands the small business and its strengths. Back in 2005 All Natural Maine Root, an organic-soda maker, was looking to boost sales but had few resources for marketing. It found a good partner in ad agency Door Number 3. The agency liked the product and clicked with the company's founders, Mark and Matt Seiler. And the agency saw the chance to do a campaign that would showcase its own creative abilities. That led Door Number 3 to give the soda makers a big break on price. Maine Root paid about $20,000 for the campaign, but the campaign could have easily cost between $75,000 and $150,000, says Mary Pat Mueller, president of Door Number 3. The two companies decided the best approach to the videos was comedy. "The key to a successful viral video campaign is to make people laugh," Ms. Mueller says. "That way, they'll want to pass it on-and, that way, they'll look like the hero and the deliverer of the entertainment." The concept also fit the Seiler brothers' personalities. "Their sense of humor is their brand," Ms. Mueller says. "If you meet them at tastings, they're outgoing, they're always joking." Together, the two firms came up with a premise for the campaign: mock exposes about soda. In one, root-beer activists pull off a break-in at a corporate root-beer facility to free Maine Root soda bottles from the Director of Fructose Injection. Door Number 3 sent the videos to several sites, including YouTube, stupidvideos.com, ifilm.com, purevideo.com and tvlinks.com; it also created a dedicated site for the clips. To spread the word, the agency contacted popular root-beer and soda blogs. Major media outlets, such as CNBC and CBS's "Early Show," also picked up on the story. The results have been dramatic. Before the campaign began last fall, Maine Root averaged about $500,000 a year in retail sales. So far this year, they are above $3 million. MAKE MAGAZINE: Be Useful Entertainment value helps a video succeed. But that isn't the only approach that works. Some small businesses have carved out a lucrative niche by giving viewers information they can use. Consider Make magazine, a guide for do-it-yourselfers. Published by O'Reilly Media, the magazine produces weekly how-to videos for a host of projects-everything from making your own catapult to creating a cigar-box banjo. The clips average about a million views a month on iTunes, Blip.tv and YouTube. (The most popular: a guide to screen-printing T-shirts.) The videos have also brought in lots of business. For instance, attendance has ballooned at an annual convention sponsored by Make, and the magazine sees dozens of new subscriptions every month. "How-to videos are one of those things that last, that have a shelf life," says Phillip Torrone, senior editor at Make. "It might be something that they can watch over and over again." Of course, entertainment value is still important, even if it isn't the main focus of the videos. For instance, Make realized it would need a charismatic host to make the clips lively. Mr. Torrone discovered Bre Pettis, a Seattle art teacher who had been videoblogging about his students' projects. Mr. Pettis, Mr. Torrone says, was like Mister Rogers, Mr. Wizard and Bill Nye "The Science Guy" rolled into one. Mr. Pettis, who now lives in New York, posts a video each Friday. In general, he spends one or two days on research and two days filming. He then takes a day or two to edit the video and write up detailed instructions for viewers. "It's what I love to do," says Mr. Pettis. "It's my passion, making things and being creative and supporting others' creativity." MOE'S SOUTHWEST GRILL: Get Your Customers Involved There's one simple way to sidestep the work of creating a video: get customers to do it. Some big companies have solicited user-made ads, including McDonald's and Domino's Pizza. Now small firms are doing it, too.. Last year, Moe's Southwest Grill started a "Burrito in Every Hand" campaign, encouraging customers to send in 30-second videos about the food. The clips were posted on a Web site, where visitors could vote on them; the company reviewed the 20 highest-rated clips and picked a winner. The grand prize: free Moe's burritos for life. Moe's received about 40 qualifying submissions, and the Web site got 211,000 visitors. "We knew that our customers would really enjoy getting involved," says Sara Riggsby, director of marketing for Moe's. She says the company has seen increased sales since the program ran. And Moe's achieved its goal of building brand awareness among younger customers: The majority of the participants were ages 18 to 25. The winners: four amateur rappers. Michael Squitieri, an acting major, wrote the script, and his friend Kevin Schwoer edited and put original music into the video. The group is now working on a radio commercial for Moe's. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
A
host of small businesses are trying this new twist on Web promotion, sending short
films to Google's YouTube and other popular video sites, advertising everything
from root beer to bullet-resistant backpacks. It's hard to beat the price: It
costs nothing to put something on a video-sharing site. And the videos let companies
use a creative and personal touch that wouldn't work in traditional ads.