No, I am not part of Aamir Khan's team. In fact, I have only met the man once . And no, I am not using Aamir to draw search engine traffic to my blog.
The reason this post is dedicated to Aamir Khan is because the man is a marketing genius, and knows a thing or two about creating compelling marketing videos...in his case movie trailers. Without further ado, lets get into what he has to teach us.
The joke is on Aamir: For one of India's biggest movie stars, and owner of a very successful production house, Aamir is not afraid to make fun of himself or his films. He had done it earlier in a Peepli (Live) trailer and does it again with his latest offering...Delhi Belly.
Lesson: Humor works big time, especially if the joke is on you. If a superstar like Aamir Khan can do it, so can you. It's a great way to differentiate your product/service from the multitudes of tall-claim promotional videos.
Focus on the script: The trailers tell a story, they are complete in themselves. It is almost as if as much attention has gone into crafting and storyboarding the trailer as has gone into making of the film. Check out how different the Dabbang clip is from the rest of the videos featured here. Tell me if you think the Dabbang trailer is anything more than a mishmash of some randomly put together scenes. Whereas there is a distinct storyline in the other trailers.
Lesson: Telling a story in 60-90 seconds can be tough. So you have to get the script right. Shooting a viral video is easier today than ever before, but it is the script that will eventually decide its fate. So put your money there and try and show it as big a focus group as you can before you shoot it.
Innovate: It's amazing how every single campaign of Aamir's is a success. Yet, he never repeats himself. Every campaign is carefully crafted to suite the mood, style and audience of the film. So with Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na the mood is young, uplifting and humorous...while with Peepli (Live) it is realistic with a huge dollop of fun. The Dhobhi Ghat trailers have a sense of mystery and intrigue in them. They are somber, almost black.
Lesson: Novelty is the spice of life. If you want to get those eyeballs, change is the only formula that will work.
Attention to Detail: I have heard that Aamir is closely involved in every aspect of his films--from scripting, directing, editing, post-production and marketing. This gives him an intimate feel of the product and what makes it tick. So when he designs a marketing strategy or a trailer for the movie, he is sure of what he wants. While, he must have a great team putting it all together, the vision is one man's and that comes through clearly.
Lesson: Outsource whatever you want to. But it's your company and your vision so if you feel the video is not working for your product...you are right. Go with your gut, no one knows your product like you do.
Viral videos are flavor of the season...if 2010 had companies exploring the concept, this year will see an explosion of videos. However, only the really good ones stand a chance of going viral. Sure you can do the groundwork to ensure a few thousand hits, but that is not nearly enough to create a viral. With billions of videos to choose from, your odds of making it are fairly tough...but with the right script you just might be the case study of the year. So go for it.
Showing posts with label viral marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label viral marketing. Show all posts
Monday, January 24, 2011
Friday, December 17, 2010
Formula for Creating a Viral Video
Creating a great video is only half the task, ensuring it goes viral is equally important
Creating an interesting video, that you hope will go viral, is probably as difficult as trying to predict a Bollywood hit. However, like the producers who have a de-risking formula, these are a few things you can do to ensure your video gets some visibility. Of course, if it is picked up by the community...you too can rake in the big bucks.
Pre-launch: It would be good to being pre-launch activities as early as possible. Three months is the minimum time you need to build up your audience. Pre-launch activities include setting up a:
Finally it is the choice of the audience that enables a video to go viral. So spend as much time storyboarding as you can. It will help you more than anything else mentioned here.
PS: For those who need statistics to understand why video virals are such a big deal, read this
Creating an interesting video, that you hope will go viral, is probably as difficult as trying to predict a Bollywood hit. However, like the producers who have a de-risking formula, these are a few things you can do to ensure your video gets some visibility. Of course, if it is picked up by the community...you too can rake in the big bucks.
Pre-launch: It would be good to being pre-launch activities as early as possible. Three months is the minimum time you need to build up your audience. Pre-launch activities include setting up a:
- Facebook Fan Page: This should ideally be around a theme. For example, if you plan to a product related to food, the fan page should be on an aspect of food that closely matches with your product...healthy living and eating etc. Initially you could use this page to link back to other posts or relevant third-party information.
- Twitter ID: As with the Fan Page use the twitter id to build up a following. You could also use the followers you build up as sounding boards for your campaign. In case of a product you have a ready-made audience for product trials.
- Blog: Relevant only if you have a lot of information to convey. Otherwise keep it short and simple with the Fanpage and the ID. If however, you feel the need for a blog, you need to post links back to the Facebook Fanpage and the twitter ID. It would also help to syndicate your posts in relevant forums. This will ensure traffic builds up for the blog. Be warned, however, this is time consuming and unless you are willing to splurge on marketing dollars it takes time to build decent traffic to a blog.
- Product Ads seldom go viral: Simplistic ads extolling the virtues of your product are almost never going to make it to the viral list.
- Humor and feel-good: Two great emotions for a viral video. If you can associate your product with a cause and build humor into it as well, you're almost there.
- Short is good: While you can technically do a video up to 10 mins or more (youtube has a limit of 2GB for video files), it is best to stick your video in the 60-90 sec time slot. That is the optimum viewing time for online videos. Also given our slow bandwidths this length is ideal.
- HD only if you have to: HD is a bandwidth hog. So make an HD video only if there is a real benefit from the better video definition.
- Post only on youtube: Youtube gives you all sorts of options to embed or share the video. Best is to post it once on youtube and embed and share it across your network. This ensures that every view on any platform counts as view on youtube, thereby building it up as a most popular video.
- Post Video Link: On your Facebook fanpage, twitter ID and all other social media sources you might have developed during the pre-launch stage.
- Circulate: To bloggers, press release forums and publications that are relevant to the video and the product. The key to a successful viral is the views it gets. If it makes it to the Most Popular category on youtube, your job is done.
- Participate: In relevant forums, Facebook pages and communities. You will find it easier to push your video through them.
Finally it is the choice of the audience that enables a video to go viral. So spend as much time storyboarding as you can. It will help you more than anything else mentioned here.
PS: For those who need statistics to understand why video virals are such a big deal, read this
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Catch that Viral
Viral marketing has been around since, well Eve convinced Adam to take a bite of the forbidden Apple way back when. Since it’s rather diabolical introduction viral marketing has become an integral part of any marketing activity. While the offline version of viral has traditionally been through word-of-mouth, online the credit for inventing viral marketing, though not the term itself, goes to hotmail.com
When Hotmail launched every outgoing message contained an advertisement for Hotmail and a link to its website at the bottom of the e-mail. As more people used the service, they were also advertising it and helping it reach out to a wider audience. This enabled hotmail to quickly scale up its membership. Of course the more people that joined and sent out emails only helped increase its reach.
The early hotmail example led to a virtual explosion of viral campaigns online. Companies have taken the link example to the extreme embedding even heavy video files onto emails…hoping for the viral effect. Websites set up elaborate viral emailing schemes based around free content for example: joke-a-day, story-a-day, newsletters etc. But as with everything else online what this did in fact do was create the overkill effect. Too much of anything is poisonous and viral marketing too seemed destined for a quick eclipse.
If it is back today, it is thanks to two developments. The first was YouTube’s explosive arrival as the video content provider to the world and social networking platforms. The YouTube phenomenon has been extensively chronicled and so does not need repeating here. Suffice to say that most companies now view a viral video campaign as an essential part of their marketing plans. YouTube also helped smaller companies, cash-strapped groups put out great videos and increasing their reach. For long YouTube remained on the periphery of the Indian web experience due to low availability of bandwidth. However, things are changing fast. While bandwidth is still an issue Indians, like the rest of the world, are increasingly going online to watch videos.
Add social networking on YouTube and you have the foundation for making your viral happen. I have noticed an interesting change take place on my network. Where previously my group of friends would post status reports, links to articles and some videos, sharing of videos is increasingly becoming the most popular activity by my group of online buddies. We share everything from funny “slice of life” videos, to TV clips from reality shows, movie trailers and yes the really really good viral campaigns. One campaign that has caught the fancy of most of us is the Virgin telecom series of ads that were supposedly banned during IPL. It’s a simple ad where a bunch of fans call up and tease each other about their teams. Simple, funny and absolutely contagious, it has far outlived the tournament itself.
This is where you come in. Making a viral video is not expensive. All you need is a good story that you know gets your message across but is good enough for people to enjoy and pass on. Videos that display empathy, passion, patriotism and above all humor are prime candidates to get on the viral bandwagon. These are not expensive to produce.
We costed a video at under Rs. 10,000 that we are in the process of developing for a viral campaign. You can use this route too and reach out to an audience that would normally cost you millions of marketing bucks.
This column appears in the December 2010 issue of Enterpreneur India. It has also been published in biztech2.com. The link is here: http://biztech2.in.com/blogs/editorial-blogs/catch-that-viral/96012/0
When Hotmail launched every outgoing message contained an advertisement for Hotmail and a link to its website at the bottom of the e-mail. As more people used the service, they were also advertising it and helping it reach out to a wider audience. This enabled hotmail to quickly scale up its membership. Of course the more people that joined and sent out emails only helped increase its reach.
The early hotmail example led to a virtual explosion of viral campaigns online. Companies have taken the link example to the extreme embedding even heavy video files onto emails…hoping for the viral effect. Websites set up elaborate viral emailing schemes based around free content for example: joke-a-day, story-a-day, newsletters etc. But as with everything else online what this did in fact do was create the overkill effect. Too much of anything is poisonous and viral marketing too seemed destined for a quick eclipse.
If it is back today, it is thanks to two developments. The first was YouTube’s explosive arrival as the video content provider to the world and social networking platforms. The YouTube phenomenon has been extensively chronicled and so does not need repeating here. Suffice to say that most companies now view a viral video campaign as an essential part of their marketing plans. YouTube also helped smaller companies, cash-strapped groups put out great videos and increasing their reach. For long YouTube remained on the periphery of the Indian web experience due to low availability of bandwidth. However, things are changing fast. While bandwidth is still an issue Indians, like the rest of the world, are increasingly going online to watch videos.
Add social networking on YouTube and you have the foundation for making your viral happen. I have noticed an interesting change take place on my network. Where previously my group of friends would post status reports, links to articles and some videos, sharing of videos is increasingly becoming the most popular activity by my group of online buddies. We share everything from funny “slice of life” videos, to TV clips from reality shows, movie trailers and yes the really really good viral campaigns. One campaign that has caught the fancy of most of us is the Virgin telecom series of ads that were supposedly banned during IPL. It’s a simple ad where a bunch of fans call up and tease each other about their teams. Simple, funny and absolutely contagious, it has far outlived the tournament itself.
This is where you come in. Making a viral video is not expensive. All you need is a good story that you know gets your message across but is good enough for people to enjoy and pass on. Videos that display empathy, passion, patriotism and above all humor are prime candidates to get on the viral bandwagon. These are not expensive to produce.
We costed a video at under Rs. 10,000 that we are in the process of developing for a viral campaign. You can use this route too and reach out to an audience that would normally cost you millions of marketing bucks.
This column appears in the December 2010 issue of Enterpreneur India. It has also been published in biztech2.com. The link is here: http://biztech2.in.com/blogs/editorial-blogs/catch-that-viral/96012/0
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