Contributed Videos

Relevance: Online banner and display ads are a great way to drive prospects to a website. This short video tutorial outlines the best practices for banner ads.

Relevance: This is a follow up to a segment in your 2-12-08 video posted on YouTube. In that segment, you mentioned the Princess Cruises contest "Search for the Greatest Romantic". This video, submitted by Phil Roberts of Lexington KY, was the winner with over 8,000 votes. Please email me with any questions: boffa@redpointpr.com

Relevance: This one shows some amazing technology called OptiMusic. OptiMusic can create any sound or image just by putting your hand into a beam of light and they are the only people in the world who do this!! Can you imagine sending an interactive video to someone that allows them to interactive with the beams via an embedded link? The future of interactiveology?

Relevance:

This particular video was actually filmed by a news station, but a viewer did the upload. It features an infestation of rats taking over a New York fast food restaurant. Extremely unsettling, and indeed, it made the viral rounds awhile back.

These days, it's not just the news that carry cameras with them everywhere. All kinds of people can capture anything they happen to witness with their cell phone cameras. If they get something good -- or bad, better yet -- they'll post it.

Moral of the story? Store operations can undo any level of marketing genius. User experience has to actually be what the advertising implies it to be.

Relevance: Okay, so this one is just a little too cute -- the blank guy is you, get it? -- but at least it's a video with scenery. It never ceases to amaze me how many tourism websites are free of video. Vacation destinations are defined by their beauty, or the jaw-dropping disbelief that mere observation invites (think Wall Drug). Providing potential vacationers with a taste of the splendor seems the most obvious sales ploy imaginable. But if you randomly pick websites for known attractions, I bet half are still heavy on words and descriptions. Yes, they have photos, but none of video's immediacy that conveys authenticity.

Relevance:

This third of The Firm infomercial appears to be a simple upload of the TV creative. Nothing special done for the web, just slicing up the show and uploading to YouTube. There have been only 318 views so far, but hey, that's 318 more than the show would have received without the YouTube presence. Of course, some of the views probably come from people who saw the show and came online for additional info. That's okay--it's another opportunity to inspire a sale.

About the only real negative is that YouTube allows comments, and some could be negative. As it happens, this video has only one comment, and it's pretty innocuous. On the whole, "why not?" seems a pretty good strategy.

And in this case, of course, it appears that the video was uploaded by a user, not the advertising agency.

Relevance:

This one almost looks to be a contest for the sake of having a contest. Dippin' Dots is trying to control the ability of users to post horribly off-message videos by providing a box full of elements for contestants to use. But even the announcement video is pretty ho-hum, so how are the contestants going to do a lot better?

If you want to see what people are doing, check out the contest page here.

Relevance:

This commercial about the old guy coming animatedly to life is really quite easy to decode. Spend time at Six Flags and you'll feel like a kid again. Where something like this could work even better in my view is if it were the start of a full-fledged videoactive campaign.

The same day you shot the commercial footage, you could take the actor around the park, filming him illustrating all the park's features. You could have separate videos on high-speed thrill rides, on midway games, on eating opportunities, on stage shows ... whatever the park has to offer. Water rides? What fun to put that guy in one of those old-fashioned black and white striped swimsuits! A fewgood giggles, but you'd still have him illustrate the attractions in detail.

What you might end up with is the original commercial tagged with a URL. Those who visit it will have the opportunity to see the ongoing adventures of the filled-with-life senior. Each thematically contained video would be rich with information and would also entertain. That's not repurposing ... it's planning ahead.

Relevance:

This ad comes from Thailand, and provides an amusing reminder of how technology has changed our daily lives. What we take for granted today would have been done considerably differently just a few years ago. Instant communication sure makes life simpler.

And of course, we'll soon be able to pump out video ads just as quickly as phone calls or text messages. Though certainly not so often!