| EVENT REPORT 04.20.09 10:00 AM |
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YouTube Brings Videos—and 200 Performers Found Online—to Carnegie Hall
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 | The inaugural YouTube Symphony
Photo: Obscura Digital |
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A viral call to arms posted by composer Tan Dun just five months ago yielded more than 15 million hits and 3,000 auditions from YouTube musicians hoping to be a part of the Web site's first ever live symphony. The 93 winners took the stage at Carnegie Hall Wednesday night for a program that included familiar classical pieces and premiere compositions set to a backdrop of massive video that filled much of the theater.
When Google-owned YouTube set out to bring together its most talented users for a one-off concert, the performance itself would be the prize, so producers settled on Carnegie Hall as an enticing venue. More than 3,000 users submitted videos of themselves playing, and once the panel of judges had selected the 93 performers from more than 30 countries, the reality of planning the actual event became a priority.
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RELATED TOPICS
YouTube, YouTube Symphony, Google |
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| EVENT INTELLIGENCE 04.11.08 10:30 AM |
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Building Buzz With Videos: IMG's Fashion Week Series
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 | A model getting primped in one of IMG's behind-the-scenes Fashion Week videos.
Photo: Courtesy of IMG Fashion |
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This story is part of our series on building event buzz with online videos.
Not every successful online video is made by event attendees with handheld cameras. Marketers who realize the potential of Web video for enhancing an event experience are also producing professional, high-quality videos to complement their events.
In 2007, IMG Fashion launched a YouTube channel to display videos from Fashion Week events throughout the world. Each video is a one- to four-minute clip focused on a specific runway show, collection, or after-party, featuring interviews with designers and celebrity attendees. Produced and edited by IMG and Smashbox Studios, the videos capture both the glamour of the runway shows and the frenetic energy behind the scenes.
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RELATED TOPICS
Building Buzz With Online Videos, YouTube, IMG, IMG Fashion, Fashion Week, Imitation of Christ, American Express |
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| EVENT INTELLIGENCE 04.10.08 10:30 AM |
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Building Buzz With Videos: Charmin's Free Public Bathrooms
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 | A consumer video of Charmin's Times Square stunt
Photo: Courtesy of WTC3353 |
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This story is part of our series on building event buzz with online videos.
A marketing event that got significant buzz in both the real and virtual worlds was Charmin’s 2006 and 2007 holiday promotion, in which the company installed free public bathrooms in New York’s Times Square. Accompanied by singers, dancers, and fun facts about flushing, the quirky event, produced by Charmin along with experiential marketing firm Gigunda Group and public relations firm Manning, Selvage & Lee, brought in 400,000 visitors each year. In a pleasant surprise for Charmin, several dozen of those people were so tickled with the happening that they recorded it with handheld cameras and posted the videos to YouTube—sharing Charmin’s event with thousands more viewers.
“The event was all about providing an opportunity for the consumer to engage in the brand in a different and more unusual, innovative way,” says Dewayne Guy, external relations manager at Charmin. “We put a lot of effort into making sure it was interactive, and that lends itself to the visual media. Online video is not something we actively pushed—it happened organically based on the consumer reactions.”
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RELATED TOPICS
Building Buzz With Online Videos, YouTube, Charmin |
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| NEWS 04.09.08 1:19 PM |
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Of Course, Not All YouTube Exposure Is Good Exposure
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 | The moment before the fall
Photo: Courtesy of beck64 |
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Speaking of YouTube videos of events (as we have been this week), today Gawker posted a clip from a fashion show in Charleston, South Carolina, showing a woman falling on a runway, and then falling through the runway. According to a Web site called LiveLeak (what you'll find if you Google "Charleston Fashion Week falling"), the fallen woman is the owner of local boutique K. Morgan, who missed the runthrough of the show—when she would have learned the middle of the catwalk was sheer fabric intended to let light shine through the floor. There seem to be myriad lessons to be learned here. (Possibly among them: Go to the runthrough! Don't make a floor from fabric!) We'll let you take from this what you will.
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RELATED TOPICS
Building Buzz With Online Videos, YouTube, Gawker |
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| EVENT INTELLIGENCE 04.09.08 10:50 AM |
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Building Buzz With Videos: How to Go Viral
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This story is part of our series on building event buzz with online videos.
1. Make It Snappy
A video is not likely to get noticed if it’s more than a few minutes long. “It needs to grab you right away, because people are more likely to share it if they watch it all the way through to the end,” says author David Meerman Scott. If you have too much material, the best bet is a series. “Instead of posting a 10-minute video, post five two-minute videos,” Scott says.
2. Quality Is Not Always King
Spend five minutes browsing YouTube and you’ll see that authenticity trumps professionalism, and unpolished, uncut videos are more popular than slick, corporate-produced advertisements. “We’re at an unusual time in history in that people trust the rough-around-the edges take more than the polished, professional effort,” says Roxanne Darling of BarefeetStudios.com. “Because we’ve all been sold, you trust someone who is on site, just went to the event, and has a fresh take.”
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Building Buzz With Online Videos, YouTube |
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| EVENT INTELLIGENCE 04.09.08 10:30 AM |
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Building Buzz With Videos: The Simpsons Kwik-E-Marts
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 | A shot of one of the Kwik-E-Marts.
Photo: Courtesy of JOSHLEWIS |
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This story is part of our series on building event buzz with online videos.
In a joint marketing promotion to publicize the 2007 release of The Simpsons Movie, 20th Century Fox transformed 12 North American 7-Eleven stores into Kwik-E-Marts, inspired by the parody convenience store frequented by Homer Simpson in the fictional town of Springfield.
Because of the tie-in to The Simpsons, a long-running show with a fervent fan base, the marketing event had particular resonance online. Fan forums and blogs were abuzz with news about where the makeshift Kwik-E-Marts would be. When the stores debuted in towns from Bladensburg, Maryland, to Burbank, California, excited fans at each location walked through with handheld cameras and posted their videos online. As a result, a marketing promotion that might have attracted only curious passersby instead reached a worldwide audience of tens of thousands.
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RELATED TOPICS
Building Buzz With Online Videos, YouTube, The Simpsons, 20th Century Fox, 7-Eleven |
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| EVENT INTELLIGENCE 04.08.08 10:30 AM |
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Building Buzz With Videos: Yamaha's Trade Show Demo
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 | Yamaha's keyboard unveiling (featuring Stevie Wonder), as recorded by a trade show attendee.
Photo: Courtesy of GLORIOUSL |
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This story is part of our series on building event buzz with online videos.
While industry-specific events often have a very focused target audience, there is always potential to expand that audience online, because any event that draws an in-person crowd likely has more interested parties who aren’t able to attend. For this reason, many trade shows are starting to embrace online video highlights—both professionally produced and user-generated. In this way, product buzz that would previously have been limited to word-of-mouth excitement among a relatively small group of event attendees can now spread far beyond the showroom floor.
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RELATED TOPICS
Building Buzz With Online Videos, YouTube, Yamaha, National Association of Music Merchants |
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| EVENT INTELLIGENCE 04.07.08 1:50 PM |
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Building Buzz With Videos: Richard Branson's Daredevil Stunt
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 | A shot from a YouTube video of Branson's jump
Photo: Courtesy of TODDEITM |
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This story is part of our series on building event buzz with online videos.
Virgin America, the Stateside branch of the British-owned airline, has made YouTube a central part of several marketing efforts. While the company was working to convince the U.S. Department of Transportation to approve its airline application, the brand launched a series of widely viewed Web videos showing off its new planes’ sleek design and high-tech entertainment features. When Virgin premiered an onboard safety video starring quirky cartoon characters, the company slapped it on YouTube, and the safety announcement—so often ignored by frequent travelers—has now been viewed by hundreds of thousands online. And when the airline held a “Victoria’s Secret in-flight supermodel pajama party,” there was, needless to say, significant online interest.
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RELATED TOPICS
Building Buzz With Online Videos, YouTube, Virgin America, Richard Branson |
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| EVENT INTELLIGENCE 04.07.08 1:41 PM |
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Video Makes the Marketing Star
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 | IMG's behind-the-scenes videos from Fashion Week.
Photo: Courtesy of IMG Fashion |
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This week we're posting a series on building event buzz with online videos. We'll post a success story each day. But first, here's an overview.
From text messaging to Facebook to blogs, new technologies offer a seemingly endless choice of platforms for connecting with an audience and spreading news about events. And of all these media, online video has perhaps the most potential to spread an idea or message around the world.
“Videos provide an opportunity to engage the user in a way that text and images don’t,” says David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR. “For events, that’s a fantastic opportunity.”
The ease, speed, and accessibility of YouTube and other video-sharing applications can help a video go viral in a matter of minutes, whether it’s broadcast from a bedroom in Wisconsin or an airplane over the Pacific.
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RELATED TOPICS
Building Buzz With Online Videos, YouTube, IMG |
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