From time-to-time, I like to look at what the folks at TheBigMoney.com are spotlighting with “YouTubeBrandWatch.” The latest to catch their eye, along with 500,000 others, is the the viral video embedded above.
While the video is short – running 17 seconds - Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans note that its aggressive nature (shooting right at Apple – literally), has created a buzz:
“It’s techie, and, more importantly, it takes a jab at Apple. It emerged on YouTube at the end of February and already has attracted almost 500,000 viewings and mentions in more than 180 blogs in its first week.”
Making it all the more interesting is that RIM – the maker of BlackBerry – had nothing to do with the making of the video. It was created by Guava, a New York creative shop, as a spec to attract new clients (i.e. RIM). RIM turned it down, but is riding its influence nonetheless.
As I’ve mentioned to clients and colleagues before, participation within social media is the future of marketing. If you’re not going to take part, someone else will participate for you. The latter isn’t usually a good thing, although it may be for RIM and BlackBerry in this case. As a BlackBerry Storm user, it fires me up. But what about prospective buyers?
Speaking a few week’s ago at Morgan Stanley’s technology conference, Google’s Eric Schmidt, somewhat famously, described Twitter as the “Poor Man’s email system.” However, according to a new report from Nielsen, traditional email systems – which Mr. Schmidt inferred Twitter was a knockoff of- are falling out of favor with consumers across the globe.
According to Nielsen’s “Global Faces and Networked Places” report, social networks (including Facebook) and blogs have moved ahead of e-mail as the fourth most popular online activities. Of course the findings weren’t all bad for Mr. Schmidt and Google, as search (i.e. Googling) remained the most popular online activity.
Two-thirds of the world’s Internet population visit social networks or blogging sites, and the sector (defined by Nielsen as “Member Communities) now accounts for almost 10% of all Internet time. (BTW - interesting that they combine blogging and social networks into one sector, especially if you read this TechCrunch post from today).
In addition, the report notes that Facebook is the driving factor in this shift towards Membership Communities, stating:
“The total amount spent online globally increased by 18% between December 2007 and December 2008. In the same period, however, the amount of time spent on ‘Member Community’ sites rose by 63% to 45 billion minutes; and on Facebook by a massive 566% – from 3.1 billion minutes to 20.5 billion.”
In driving this growth, Facebook has overtaken MySpace with the largest global reach.
However, despite the massive growth, Nielsen’s report echoes other recent reports, which have chronicled advertiser’s failures in attempting to reach audiences (especially the younger demographic) through Facebook and other Member Communities. In order to reach these growing audiences, within this new channel, Nielsen encourages advertisers and brands to do the following:
Work with the social networks more closely
Create new approaches to the ad model
Focus on conversing, not pushing sales (Easier for someone to say than do in a recession)
