FreshNetworks Blog

You’ve probably seen the press this week generated by Giovanny Gutierrez and his girlfriend, Lauren Bernat. A video on YouTube shows Lauren being filmed, apparently secretly, by Giovanny as she dances on her Wii Fit in only her underwear. This was picked up by the press in the UK and USA claiming that this wasn’t a spoof video at all but, because Giovanny works for a Miami-based ad agency, it was a viral video created for Nintendo.

There has been discussion all week in the press and online about this video – was it commissioned by Nintendo or is it genuinly just a spoof created by somebody in their spare time. The original version on YouTube has have over 3 million views and has sporned a range of parodies. And endless blogs and forums have been debating the origin of the video.

But does it matter? Whether this is a commisioned piece of viral marketing or a fan video the impact for Nintendo has been the same. If you just measured the value of this piece of social media in column inches alone it must be huge. In terms of equivalent media spend, this video has been an advertising hit for Nintendo. And that’s why I really hope it isn’t a viral.

The power of UGC can be huge. If this video is just a fan creation, then Nintendo, by the power of their brand and the engagement between with their consumers alone, has made somebody want to create huge advertising value for them. It’s the kind of situation all brands would like to get to – create a situation where your consumers do your marketing for you. Using social media allows them to do this more easily but also with greater, global effect than ever before.

The key is to create sustained engagement between the brand (or product) and consumer. Make them feel part of the brand, like real insiders. Reward them for being engaged and being loyal and make it easy for them to create and share their own content. Engage them both where they hang out (on Facebook or YouTube), but critically also in a space that you control. This builds trust and creates the feeling of an ‘insider’ that is critical in creating engagement.

The value of the discussion created this week by the Wii Fit video is without doubt; creating an environment where your consumers could create this kind of value for your brand is something every organisation should be dealing with.

If you’ve not seen the video that everybody’s been talking about yet, see it below.

The RSA has just launched a new website and one of the new features are videos online of the great lectures they run in London. Earlier this year I went to see Clay Shirky talking about his book Here Comes Everybody, that was launched a few months ago. It’s great to see a video of this talk online here.

If you haven’t read Shirky’s new book I really recommend reading it. It takes a look at how groups are using the internet, from students and graduates in the UK forcing HSBC to reinstate their interest-free overdraft, to flash-mobs combating the secret police in Belarus, or businesses in Pisa taking on the Mafia together.

If you’d ever thought that twitter or flash mobs or Facebook groups had now purpose and no power then Shirky shows you how they do. How groups can organise each other online in a way that they couldn’t previously and how this can be used by them to further their aims.

In all of his examples, he shows how the Internet has meant that the imbalance of power between a small, well-organised core and a large dispersed society has been changed. A group of students could take on HSBC, businesses and customers in Pisa could take on the Mafia.

The book’s a good read, and thanks the the RSA’s new site you can see Shirky’s lecture earlier this year in London.

With a little extra time on my hands this bank-holiday weekend, I thought I’d check out what’s new on YouTube. Wading past a fantastic dance-off video’s by ACDC and the Levi backflip guys I stumbled upon one of Radiohead‘s many digital marketing activities.

In case you don’t know them, Radiohead are one of the best bands to come out of the UK in the last 20 years. And they have embraced the internet with real vigour. Their last album, In Rainbows, was released online on a “pay-what-you-like” basis and in addition to selling 1.2 million copies this way, the album recently won a prestigious Best Album award in the UK.

To go with the album, they created a video-making competition. They asked for people to pick a track from the album and then create their own video to go with it. There are some cash rewards, but given the quality of the videos produced (and the time it must have taken to produce them) it’s clear that people are entering for the prestige and the desire to create and show their skills. To share their creations with other fans, or merely to show their support for their favourite band.

This is a fantastic way to increase engagement with and loyalty to the band. If you create a film, you know it’s going to be seen and voted on by other fans, but more importantly by the band. It’s also a way of allowing the fans to put their own stamp on a song (Radiohead’s music is particularly suited to this as each song can be interpreted in thousands of ways).

But what I really love about this marketing activity is that by generating loads of UGC videos it’s getting the songs out there and listened to by more and more people. I have just listened to one song three times – with a different video interpretation each time.

Measuring the ROI and value of social media activities is difficult and still in its infancy, but just the saving of the advertising costs needed to create this kind of exposure is huge.

Some examples

To see the quality and value of the amateur videos produced just look at the three below, all made by amateur fans as part of the online video-making competition.

Michael Wesch is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University and leads the Digital Ethnography Working Group. He was trying to find a way to describe Web 2.0 for a paper that he was writing and found that words were not quite enough – instead he created this video. Showing us rather than telling us what Web 2.0 is.

I love this video, as much for the content as for the example it sets. It’s true that some things aren’t easily explained with words, or indeed that some people find it easier to convey things in pictures or actions than words. Being creative and open in the way you describe things or allowing people to be creative and open in the way they respond to your questions can yield quite insightful results.

I know from my experience working with consumer good companies that customers often can’t describe what they think. If you want to understand what they think about your new smoothie brand, for example, some might be able to describe it whilst others might want to choose pictures that appropriate, make a short film or even draw a picture. Allowing a research process that lets people respond in these different ways is important, or indeed having an iterative process. Get some people to make films, others to put up pictures and others to describe in words. Then see how the group responds to this stimulus.

As Professor Wesch showed, social media tools and sites like YouTube allow for this kind of more creative description and development of ideas to flourish.

Oh, and here’s the video itself: