Attended a panel discussion last night around the growth of online video in marketing. Units, metrics, measures delivered by people from Hulu, Tremor Media, WebMD, Point Roll and Digitas Health. Lots of talk around CPMs, CRTs and ROI.
I still have a headache this morning.
One encouraging note for me was that across the board, all the panelists reinforced a single idea: online media and the use of video are only as good as the content you create and the value that users attach to it. In other words, powerful brand stories, narratives and entertaining content drive the day. Another key point is that it's not easy to monetize the "next big thing" in video. Or as someone put it, "how do you monetize Susan Boyle or Paul Potts?" If you haven't seen these two from Britain's Got Talent fame, go check them out on YouTube. Their videos were viral blockbusters. Great stories of personal triumph, too.
Bingo. Relevance and value. "Uniqueness," alone, or the next big thing without more than its bigness, won't carry the Brand marketing day.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of value, and, incidtnally, I think we all should talk a lot more about value . . . I'm predominantly an industrial B2B guy. My Brand competitors have always talked about TCO -- total cost of ownership -- to keep from sliding inexorably to the commodity end of the value spectrum. Few of them, however, have been able to walk that talk.
That said, though, something about the "cost" anchor in TCO bothers me. Probably the same viscerally activated Brand muscle pain (or headache) that bothers many of us when we talk about -- or are confronted by our Brand-challenged colleagues concerning -- Brand metrics. Cost of acquisition. Cost of retention. ROI. Isn't it time for a new model? Something centered in what matter most to, for example, users of video content -- the folks we want not simly to adopt, but to OWN our Brands? Total Value of Ownership (TVO), perhaps.
Relevance and Value. For me, those rise quickly to the top of stuff that ought to be measured; the two Brand Weebles that don't fall down. And never will.