Brand Building

Big brands have a huge opportunity to have a little fun with their fans. and perhaps give your viral marketing team a breather. We’re all consumers, and some of your loyalists may be armed with an HD video camera, editing skills and the creativity to pull off something amazing. You may find it worth you companies while to dabble in the more socially interactive forms of video marketing. I’ve seen dozens of big brands do commercial contests, and from that I’ve seen videos that rivaled the big firms. Throw in a prize, let the winner receive their 15 minutes of fame and everybody wins.

Every moderate to popular product out there has some sort of consumer base, right? There’s always a good reason why your product has worked its way into the lives of all those people. Youtube is a great platform to let them showcase their own talents, for example let’s take a look at a current trend. Tea is undoubtedly making a come back, especially out here on the west coast. If we can dive deeper into the niche, outside the obvious health tea, let’s take a look at Blooming Tea (aka Flowering Tea). I saw this out there, and while it’s no big budget Hollywood showcase, it’s well done and makes me want the tea pretty bad.

This is a freshly done video so it will be interesting to see where it goes. I think this video is a great example of letting the fans do a little work. This isn’t done for BloomingTea.com by any means, but I certainly would have got in touch with the producer on this one. I would personally be thrilled if I saw something of this quality come from the social web. Hopefully these videos will spread the passion the producer has for you product, and the end goal is to make others feel and understand that same ka-pow!

Force The Creativity Out: Contests

Contests are always a great way to drive social media buzz, snag some links and spread brand awareness. This should almost surely bring out the talented video editors and bring forth a lot of great content. Large brands should have no problem getting a lot of interest and participation, which is why I’m surprised at the lack of social contests. A few good prizes and recognition will go a long way so talk to your marketing department to get the ball rolling!

I always recommend to clients thinking about it to head on over to Youtube, and just have a look at the other brands that have ran a video contest. From there, you can sniff out all sorts of interesting data such as how much social media interaction was achieved, how many links were acquired and other tid bits such as video views and perhaps even an impact of traffic (via Alexa or other sites).

Youtube offers a promoted video feature which should *never* be ignored by any big brand and their typical marketing budget. A good example of a current contest via Youtube is by L’Oreal Canada, and there opening video has nearly half a million views. Those views are nothing to shake a stick at, and you can get the ROI is going to be well worth the time and effort. For the sake if this post, here’s the video with the views;

The last tip we’ll give out here is make sure you identify influential Youtube “stars” within your vertical. L’Oreal has done this and we’ve always done the same for our clients. While your company may not need the help, it is such a fresh approach that won’t cost that much at all. You’d be surprised by how many of these “Youtube Stars” jumped at the chance for the exposure, and of course some free product! Regardless, it won’t cost much and it just builds deeper roots with your fans.

I’m sure most cosmetics companies by now have noticed the sheer amount of makeup tutorials on Youtube, so congrats to them for running yet another contest. I’d recommend to companies interested in all this to keep a close eye on how it all plays out for L’Oreal. If you happen to be a cosmetics company, check out all the things this company is doing online because it’s nothing short of awesome!

Let’s Hear From You

If you’re running a contest or have in the past of this nature, we want to hear from you and I can imagine so do our readers. I wish we here at Linkbuildr have actually done one for our own company, but you know how it is…too much work going on for other people to get anything done for ourselves.