Category: YouTube
Shop a song with eBay
youtube.com
eBay just unveiled a delightfully creative online ad campaign to showcase its endless wares. In these “Shop a Song” spots, products playfully dip in and out of the screen as a tune plays, each item somehow matching the lyrics. In the “Only the Good Die Young Collection,” when Billy Joel croons, “You got a nice white dress and a party for your confirmation,” the video shows in quick succession a white formal dress, foil party poppers, and a rubber “Confirmation” stamp.
Five tracks comprise the campaign:
• “Riptide” by Vance Joy
• “My House,” by Warren G.
• “Only the Good Die Young” by Billy Joel
• “Shine On” by Florida Georgia Line
• “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha
The spots nicely highlight the site’s offerings in a manner that’s short, palatable, and, most importantly, fun.
Watch below:
Ricky Gervais urges Aussies to watch Netflix. Or not. He doesn’t care.
In an inspired ad campaign to herald Netflix’s arrival in Australia, broadband and cable company Optus recruited comedian Ricky Gervais to deadpan his way through a series of short ads to promote its partnership with the video streaming service.
Karen Phipson of Optus explained:
“Key to the strategy was to approach this through a lens of entertainment and let Ricky interpret the message in his own style. The result is content that will drive social media conversation whilst delivering our core message of Optus and Netflix, which has become part of Ricky Gervais unique comedy.”
This “truth in advertising” strategy seems to have worked. Notes one YouTube commenter, “The first time I saw this was on a YouTube commercial before a video. I was going to skip it, but then it had me hooked on how different the ad was and I watched it all. Possibly the first time I’ve watched a YouTube ad in its entirety without wanting to skip it.”
The tongue-in-cheek campaign was created by APN News & Media’s content marketing division Emotive in conjunction with Fuel Communications and M&C Saatchi.
Want more? Check out Ricky’s whole set of commercials (so far) below:
Sixty Things You Should Know About Social Media in Travel
Here’s a selection of mostly social media tips that I picked up from World Travel Market in London this week.
Social media’s “Dirty Little Secret” (Social data)
Sarah Kennedy Ellis – Sabre Labs
1) Instagram is the place to be for brands – people engage with brands 40 times more on that platform than they do on Twitter, and 20 times more than Facebook. Great for brand engagement.
2) Photos aid conversion – another good reason for making use of Instagram.
3) According to Sabre Labs research, more men submitted photos with their check-ins on FourSquare than women.
4) 60% of smiley faces and exclamation marks were used by women on check ins.
5) Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is a great research tool, eg for analysing the subject matter of a large number of photographs.
6) Small companies with small budgets can access 10% of Twitter’s feed for research purposes.
7) A good way of searching Instagram is by hashtag #.
Facebook – Future of travel marketing
Lee McCabe – Facebook
8) Facebook marketing is all about:
- Efficiency
- Multi-channel (across devices)
- Identity
9) Facebook tools include Facebook Exchange – re-targeting within one hour of leaving the website.
10) Facebook Connect – for increased conversion rate with easy one-click logging in, plus lots of profile information.
11) The travel journey includes and is helped by Facebook:
- Dreaming – is kicked off by viewing friends’ photos
- Planning
- Booking
- The experience – is shared with updates and photo sharing
- Reflecting – the photos kick off friends’ dreaming
12) Mobile’s is clearly where it’s at – an increasingly so in the future
13) 45% of the world’s population are forecast to have a smartphone by 2015.
14) For the first time, digital media consumption has overtaken TV in the US – driven by mobile.
15) There are 874 million mobile daily active users of Facebook.
16) Match the people on your CRM database with their Facebook profiles to find out more about them and connect with them.
17) Graph search is getting better at targeting hotels and restaurants that you really might like (with the help of friend recommendations).
How travel bloggers impact the booking funnel
Debbie Hindle – Four bgb
18) The traditional marketing funnel is: Awareness – Interest – Desire – Action
19) The new marketing funnel (c/o Xavier Blanc) is:
- Reach
- Engage
- Activate
- Nurture
20) Your customers don’t care about you as a brand. They care about themselves.
21) Content marketing = creating the information your customers are passionate about.
22) Example of an effective campaign is the #Feelmorealive campaign by adventure travel company Exodus – blog posts, photos, videos – lots of content by bloggers and lots of shares.
23) Another is the Liming Appreciation Society for St Vincent and the Grenadines – a group of bloggers invited to provide posts, imagery and video. 60% of searchers have viewed one of the videos before booking. The most popular post was shared 2,000 times.
24) Traditional marketing is about telling the world what a rockstar you are. Content marketing is showing the world what a rockstar you are.
Travel blogging
Keith Jenkins – Velvet Escape
25) The value of bloggers? Niche experts, personal experience, immediacy and an audience.
26) The booking funnel is:
- Inspiration
- Influence
- The Final Nudge
27) As a blogger, one photo Jenkins posted (of ice floating) was viewed 2,000 times and resulted in four bookings for a travel company overnight.
28) Bloggers are good for giving tips and sharing ideas on where to go/what to do.
29) The feedback from people who have taken their advice is invaluable for the company concerned.
30) When engaging a blogger, have specific objectives in mind. What do you want out of the relationship?:
- Brand exposure?
- Online content?
- To drive engagement?
- To grow your social media followers?
- To make sales?
31) Monitor the results of your blogging campaign by
- Using tracking codes
- Using vouchers or downloads
- Using tracking systems
- Keeping track of blogger posts
32) Agree the number of posts, tweets etc with the blogger before you start.
Nicholas Montemaggi – Emilia Romagna Tourism Board
33) Needed a way to make people more aware of Emilia Romagna, so came up with the idea of Blogville – providing an apartment for the use of bloggers from all over the world. The tag line was “Eat, feel and live like a local in Italy”.
34) Only cost to the tourist board was for the apartment – bloggers paid their way.
35) Master of the house present at all times to help and advise the bloggers.
36) Campaign carried out over 2 years – 120 bloggers and 500 blog posts, 3.8 million Twitter users reached and 700,000 visitors later…
37) Example direct benefit – a Chinese blogger went on a cooking course and wrote a post with lots of photos. The organisation who ran the course reported 2 bookings from China overnight!
38) Important: Spaghetti bolognese isn’t a real dish – it’s tagliatelle ragu! 
Lee Stuart – Caliber
39) Bloggers bring authenticity and honesty.
40) Brands and PR companies should look for focused blogs – not necessarily big blogs.
41) Look at the kind of keywords the bloggers rank for – there’ll be a ready-made audience for your product if it fits that keyword.
42) Bloggers are hyper-local.
43) They can act as guides to your destination.
Are you mobile?
44) The cost of marketing an app is going to be much more (and much more important) than building the app.
45) Tip for the future – we’re going to be seeing mobile-only companies in future.
Social media masterclass 2013
Alan Young – TrustYou
46) 81% of online reviews are positive (according to TrustYou stats).
47) In the UK, 49% of online travel reviews are on Booking.com, 37% on TripAdvisor.
48) The more reviews you have the more likely you are to benefit from them.
Debbie Hindle – Four BGB
49) Kuoni has wifi in its shops so people can check TripAdvisor when they’re discussing booking a holiday.
50) When coming up with your new holiday campaign, think about you want your customers to feel. Eg, how did you feel on your first holiday?
51) Viator have pages worth of information on each of the locations they feature. They have lots of useful stuff to keep visitors on your site and make it more likely you’ll book with them. They also reward customers with treats and rewards and have conversations with them.
Google and travel: Sharing best practice
Sarah McDonald – Google head of travel
52) Airbnb has a great guide to Brixton that gives lots of authentic, interesting information about the area.
53) The questions everyone asks themselves when choosing something.
- Is this product what it says it is?
- Is it right for me?
- Is it at the right price?
54) Video can address some of these questions. For example it can give a street view from inside the hotel and a better feel for what your hotel is and where it is.
55) YouTube isn’t as good as Twitter and Facebook at helping consumers find relevant material. Brands should take not and learn to optimise videos.
56) An excellent site is Visit Brasil – consumers can make their own wishlists on what they want to hear about and the site will give hand back relevant information.
57) Have a common experience across all channels.
58) Use relevancy and urgency like the big hotel booking sites do.
59) The journey isn’t just online or offline – there are touch-points on both for a lot of people.
60) 89% of social media users share holidays photos while away – even if they don’t share the rest of the year. Connect with them when they do it and continue to talk to them when they come back. Reach out at every stage.
NB: This is a contributed article by Julie McNamee from Webnwords. Follow McNamee on Twitter.
Rad ad to travelers: Drop everything and go
Whoever crafted this compelling campaign for the adventurous at heart deserves a gold medal (or at least a few frequent flier miles).
Behold: Departure Roulette / Heineken Dropped.
The company plucks airport travelers en route to their flights and asks if they’d like to tempt fate and push a button, activating a departure board that spits out a random destination. Seems like fun, until you take into account the rule that defines the game: you must commit to leave for that destination at that very moment. Hey, you’re already packed. That bachelor party can wait, right?
Several hardy travelers took the plunge and scattered across the globe to far-flung locales like Morocco, Cambodia, and Alaska, documenting their journeys for Heineken.
Bon voyage!
Socially Smart: Turkish Airlines
Though companies engage in social media marketing every day, it’s rare to reach that pinnacle achievement. Yes, folks, we are talking about going VIRAL! (In a good way, not a sickbed sort of way.) How have hospitality and tourism companies been managing their social media campaigns? We’ll examine several businesses over the coming months and see how they’ve done.
First up: Turkish Airlines. At Strauss Media, we’ve had a soft spot for Turkey thanks to an extended visit to Istanbul, Izmir, Antalya, and Ephesus. If you ever make it to Turkey, the enormous, awe-inspiring Hagia Sophia in Istanbul should be at the top of your to-see list. A close second is the ancient city of Ephesus, remarkably preserved down to a backgammon table etched in marble.
So of course we were Turkish Delighted (sorry) when Turkish Airlines unveiled a TV ad that went viral last year. In it, basketball phenom Kobe Bryant and soccer star Lionel Messi battle to win a young fan’s heart, but ice cream triumphs at the end. Check it out:
At last count, the ad had nearly 105 million views – definitely an effective use in the digital marketing sphere. What digital campaigns has your company successfully executed?
Social media tips & tricks, part I
image via thoughtpick.com
The world of social media can be overwhelming in its vastness. There are millions of people online right now, and they all have the attention span of a kid fueled by Pixy Stix. How, you may ask yourself, can you possibly get your ideas/products/brand noticed in all that noise?
Check out some of the following social media basic tips and tricks and keep an eye on this site – this post will be a two-parter!
- Use hash tags to keep your topic searchable on Twitter (i.e. #socialmedia or #publicity), allowing potential audience members to find you
- Provide a service for your audience, free of charge – an instructional video on YouTube, a PDF of practical industry info, etc., all relating to your profession
- Use a social media management dashboard like Hootsuite; you can preset your posts and tweets to send at certain times and access your audience numbers for each post, helping to determine the most popular topics
- Tweet and post on Facebook several times a day to reach all time zones
- Link together all your social media accounts (blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) so that when you post to one, you post to all, saving you time and increasing audience eyeballs.
- Add a Facebook or Twitter feature to your blog
- Link to each of your social media sites so your fans can follow you on multiple platforms
- Host a competition on your social media platforms (i.e. telling your audience to retweet a message and picking one of them as a winner)
- Respond to social media messages in a friendly, conversational tone
- Craft compelling headlines AND compelling content – keep ’em coming back for more!
Now I’m about to keep you coming back for more and tell you to STAY TUNED… part II is coming your way soon.
Cat videos or U.S. election coverage? You choose on YouTube.
YouTube proved it is good for more than just cat videos (though we do love a good cat video here at Strauss Media). The company recently announced the presence of its new political hub for the 2012 U.S. election. It will live stream speeches at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, host Google+ hangouts with political power players, and broadcast the presidential and vice presidential debates.
In addition to YouTube’s coverage, the hub will also feature reporting and commentary from ABC News, Al Jazeera English, BuzzFeed, Larry King, The New York Times, Phil DeFranco, Univision and the Wall Street Journal.
We can only hope there will be some juicy gossip or scandal lodged somewhere in this political playground to liven things up as the election kicks into high gear.
Oh, and what the heck — here’s one of our favorite cat videos. This is what YouTube was MADE FOR.
