Chad Stoller, Executive Director, Emerging Platforms, Organic, presented the Jeep.com site. An ad campaign where the final product, an interactive branching video, initially interfaces with a popular television show. The video, which is produced in such a way as to be able to post to YouTube as an engaging videoclip, has Jeep product placement as an underlying element. I’m wondering whether you have to be completely entrenced in the the vehicle and the tv show to get it. Hmmm?

Ian Schafer, CEO, Deep Focus, explained some of his company’s findings… “keep things on the short side: preroll/post roll ads should be kept to about 8 seconds.”

Claiming to be the YouTube-homepage-embed-video-button originator, he introduced the concept of viral video, and talked about marketing “the Hoax” (the new movie with Richard Gere), and welovewhitelies.com.

“Don’t be intrusive” he said, “be short, relevant, portable, and always make sure you work with the creator of the concept.”

Steve, Dennis Publishing, comes more from a publishing background, and relayed his experience with marketing to men, at maximonline.com.

“Think about the viewer’s expectations. We like to do work which is edgy and irreverent. .. but always making sure that the content is original, and there is product placement.”

Take aways from the talk:

A strategy common among those who use video on the web, is peppering the story with product placement rather than making a commercial about the product. Give the viewer choices, to keep them engaged. This usually requires a non-linear storyline, which is extremely expensive to produce. But I guess that’s what clients’ with big marketing budgets are all about.

Another commonality is that they all considered their work as more that video marketing online, or more than print artwork or tv commercials. Online video was always a just one component of a larger ad campaign.

Tags: Advertising, online-advertising, SES-NY, Video
Categories: Advertising, Video