Extraordinary Pantene Commercial – a magical mini-movie

Every time somebody sends me a link to a cool commercial, I hesitate. Time is valuable and there are so many great videos to watch that I hate to waste my time on garbage. I also feel a little robbed when watching commercials because at the end of the day, the producers after my money. This makes it even more amazing when a commercial becomes a classic viral video. To do so, it has to be so funny or captivating that you are willing to risk good friendships and credibility by sharing it with your friends and family.

Simply put, this commercial is a gem. I’ve watched it numerous times already and will not hesitate to watch it again.

When you’ve finished watching this video you’ll feel like you’ve watched a short movie. It succeeds in drawing you in and leaving you feeling strangely satisfied at the end, even once you realize what the commercial is for and how it is not what you expected.

This Pantene commercial is yet another perfect example of how to produce an excellent commercial using viral video marketing. This video simply begs to be shared.

One final note – the video does not use sex to sell its message. Anybody can use a video of a gorgeous or half-naked girl and it WILL get views. Getting a lot of views successfully without resorting to sex appeal requires a lot more creativity, but when it’s done effectively the audience is left feeling strangely satisfied.

Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift at the MTV VMA Awards Show

If you haven’t seen this video, you’ve probably heard about it or read about it in the papers or on the web. Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift in her moment of glory on the MTV VMA awards show as she was giving her winning speech. He basically gave a shout out to Beyonce and said that her video was incredible and deserved to win. All was not lost for Taylor Swift as Beyonce called her up on stage later for her moment of glory, but Kanye ended up being the one who made the headlines at the end of the day.

There are people that believe Kanye did this to grab attention and put himself back in the limelight. Hey, it’s never hurt a rap star to be a bad-boy, but once again this proves the power of viral videos on the web. This video has spread like crazy and Kanye’s name has been plastered all over the web. For better or worse this was great marketing for him. His name was on every news/music website out there. Bad move or smart marketing on Kanye’s part. I’ll let you decide…

Fight for kisses – commercial with a baby reminds us of dancing baby viral video

Most of us hate commercials. If it aint funny, sexy or extremely catchy we tend to switch the channel or look elsewhere on the screen pretty darn quickly. Successful commercials need to grab your attention very quickly. A smart trend that has emerged over the years is to use aspects of viral videos that have been successful on the web. The Numa Numa dance song was used by Geico and other good examples have surfaced.

A recent example of this is the cool and catchy commercial put out by Wilkinson for their razors.

Remember that extremely viral video with a baby dancing. It was so stupid and mind-numbing, but everybody with a pulse tended to smile and want to keep watching when one of their friends e-mailed it to them. This commercial uses a combination of that video’s cuteness with some popular movie themes such as the Matrix to make us smile and keep watching. It’s one thing to grab the attention of your audience, but if you can get them to share the video or talk about it (as I’m doing right now) then you have truly succeeded in your Internet marketing.

Kudos to Wilkinson razors on a great campaign yet I noticed one other crazy thing about this commercial. The link at the end points to a site which isn’t even up and running yet. It’s supposed to be a game, but instead there’s a simple server message stating “IT WORKS”. The truth is, it really did work.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) trends

SEO has been a buzzword for many years now. At first people didn’t take it all that seriously because they felt like it was more smoke-and-mirrors than anything. It seemed like you’d have to pay somebody a lot of money (or get really good at it yourself) to work your site up the search engine rankings without the promise of actual returns. There was no direct way of proving that the SEO efforts were yielding the results as sites naturally work their way up the rankings anyway.

Over the past few years, the importance of SEO and the ROI of putting in the effort or spending the money on it has become more apparent. In light of this, we are highlighting some of the key trends in SEO for those that are interested in ramping up their efforts or becoming more knowledgeable in general.

The following are important SEO trends to look out for:

• Mobile search – the iPhone and other GPS enabled mobile devices have introduced the concept of location based mobile search
• Semantic SEO – This is the concept of being able to understand the underlying meaning of the words and links
• Organic SEO – real world organic SEO is ultimately just as valuable if not more so than PPC
• Social Media SEO – leveraging social media sites to establish visibility, credibility and backlinks

Watch for value SEO tactics and emerging trends in your bid to get ahead of the competition and get the most visibility on Google and other leading search engines and sites.

Do I need a good domain name

A common question I come across is “how important is a good domain name for my site/blog?”

My first reaction used to be that the domain name had very little significance in the big picture. I visited sites on a daily basis that had domains with dashes and were made up of all sorts of funky word combinations and sub-par extensions. I quickly started believing that the domain had very little to do with the success of the site. Over the years, however, I have started seeing trends in the relevance of domain names and I am going to start running a series of posts detailing the importance of domain names and how one should go about acquiring a good one without breaking the bank.

Let’s start with 2 important aspects that will get you thinking:

1. Brandability
2. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Brandability:
Let’s face it – a name like Weather.com is far more memorable than a name like myscorchmeter.com and will yield a brand that can easily become popular and successful.

SEO:
Search engines such as Google.com love relevance. They will always give an edge to sites that appear more legitimate and credible. Compare the names numanuma.com and mynumasongdance.com and you will definitely agree that numa numa is the exact term and therefore has the greater relevance.

In future posts I will discuss how the search engines factor this in and how to go about grabbing the best name possible. In the meantime keep this important message in mind:

“never underestimate the power of a good domain name”.

Dane Cook comedy – breaking and entering

If you’re having a bad day or you just need a really good laugh, stop what you’re doing and watch this video. Then carry on reading this post when you’re done (I don’t want to run anything):

Now I dare you to tell me that wasn’t one of the funniest things you’ve ever seen in your life? Dane Cook is a genius.

** spoiler alert **

The part where he describes how the family sits around and asks “what did he take”. The way Dane Cook tells his jokes is like a great author writing a novel. You can actually visualize the entire scenario.

Now that we’re on the subject of Dane Cook. Here’s a guy who made his entire career off the web. He started off by promoting himself to anybody and everybody that was online and took notice and man did it pay off. Just another great example of how Internet Marketing is absolutely MASSIVE.

Social media marketing in a recession

Lets face it – times are tough at the moment. Jobs are being cut, businesses are losing money, spending is down and the general attitude towards just about everything is negative.

There is, however, one area where things are looking good. Not only are they looking good, but they’re actually looking better than ever. I’m referring to what’s known as social media marketing. Wikipedia describes social marketing as “an engagement with online communities to generate exposure, opportunity and sales. The number-one advantage is generating exposure for the business, followed by increasing traffic and building new business partnerships.”

Social media marketing is smoking hot at the moment and it’s only going to grow. I just read a great article on ReadWriteWeb.com about how more than 50% of marketers are increasing their spending on social media marketing despite reduced budgets due to the current recession. That’s incredible news for people that believe in the future of social media marketing.

The recession has made us all more aware of our spending habits and how we need to watch every dollar, but there are certain areas that merit more attention than ever and Social Media Marketing is definitely one of them.

It’s not just a buzz word; it’s a legitimate business strategy for driving more targeted traffic to one’s site and/or business.

Keep marketing my friends…

New Numa Numa video somebody’s watching me

There’s a new NumaNuma video in town. Gary Brolsma is doing his thing in a parody commercial for Geico. The video’s music is “Somebody’s watching me” by Rockwell. The cool Geico gecko dances in the background.

You’ll notice that there is no call to action (CTA) in the video. In other words, you don’t have a link to click on or a number to call. The video plays on the fame of Brolsma, the genius of Numa Numa and the cool factor of the Geico gecko to do the selling for them.

I think it’s cool.

Subliminal advertising in viral videos

I recently came across an interesting subliminal advertising related video on Youtube that got me thinking.

Watch this video and then continue reading this post as I give one possible explanation of what I think happened.

Now, most of you will be thinking that this was either a true technical error or that they had intentionally thrown it in there hoping to gain from the subliminal message in the video. I personally think that Macdonalds may have actually wanted somebody to discover this and then to spread this discussion across the web. The very act of posting this video and having this discussion is beneficial to them.

At the end of the day you have to keep in mind that all publicity is good publicity. Well, this may not necessarily be true, but any time the word gets spread around, the advertising company has gained more visibility. This is the essence of viral videos and more importantly, viral advertising.

Whether you agree or not, their mission was accomplished one way or another. The brand gained insane visibility across the web and once again, viral video advertising was a huge hit.

David Beckham vs Kevin Garnett Adidas video

One of the best “home-made” commercial videos I have ever seen is the one in which David Beckham and Kevin Garnett are having a little one-on-one competition to see who can kick a soccer ball through a basketball hoop from a free throw style distance.

In case you aren’t into sports, David Beckham is one of the most famous soccer (AKA football in Europe) players in the world and Garnett is a basketball star.

It’s a fun video that looks like it was shot by one of us and as a result makes the whole experience seem more authentic. Beckham just happens to be wearing an Adidas shirt. The genius is the authenticity of the whole thing which makes us forget that it’s actually promoting a world famous brand for a commercial purpose.

Full marks to Adidas for creating this and putting it out there.

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