I love virals like this Samsung advert, which is cool, fun, exciting and therefore incredibly shareable.
The lack of branding (What range is the printer in? What is the printer model number? When is it available to buy?) does cause confusion, but it’s what makes the advert look and feel more authentic and perhaps even fan-made, hence why it gets so easily spread on different channels and viral sites.
Will it make me visit the Samsung website? No.
But will it make me think of Samsung next time I need a printer? Maybe.
It may not be as interactive as the Samsung 3D project YouTube ad, but its still fun and shows how smart and effective digital advertising can be if done well.
With internet advertising being so easy just to glance over and not really take much notice of, some companies are going above and beyond to make their products stand out.
You may have already seen the now famous Wario Land – Shake it YouTube advert, if not click here.
The advert got a lot of online publicity but the jury’s still out on how much these adverts can increase sales.
Now Samsung has created a new advert for YouTube which is not only ground-breaking as it is the first YouTube advert to be truly interactive. The advert is in fact a game where the aim is to try and ‘catch’ as many butterflies as possible, a shout out to Samsung’s 3D projection in the Netherlands.
The real genius though is not that game, which isn’t particularly fun and a little bit ‘laggy’. It’s the social element to it. Samsung seem to have realised that just making a butterfly catching game may get a few articles online, but won’t really get the true sharing factor that makes videos go viral. So they have included a social element to the game.
By appealing to our competitive nature, they have added social buttons to the game, giving players the option share our scores by email or post to Twitter or Facebook to show friends who is winning. The view count isn’t anything special yet, but I’m interested to see how it will develop over time and how many other companies will follow suit in getting more creative with their YouTube advertisement and ways to pull in other social media networks from YouTube.
To see the Samsung advert yourself, click here as it doesn’t work when embedded.
On similar note but on another platform, video website Vimeo (which seems to have fewer but better quality videos) had what i think is the best use of ‘jumping out the video box’ with Frito Lay Dips ‘And then there was salsa…’ advert.
Again can’t be embedded if you want the full effect (also it’s more dependant on your graphic card not being too ancient), so click here.
It’s well worth a look because this advert is really incredible. If more adverts looked like this, I would close my YouTube tab every time they tried to advertise before content….
This video popped up on YouTube on May 5th, and if you haven’t given it a watch yet click above and give it a run through.
Working for Wolfstar I already knew many of the social media statistics in the video, but seeing them all together and learning new ones really hit home just how influential (and huge) social media is, and particularly how important it is for brands. Below are some of the most important messages for brands thinking social media is just a ‘fad’:
25% of search results for the World’s top 20 brands are links to user generated content
So for every four potential customers searching for your brand online, one of them will reach someone’s blog or social media page – meaning that what they say about you will have a huge impact on how they view your brand. Which is pretty influential when you see that…
78% of customers trust peer recommendations
So what bloggers, reviewers and other online resources say about your product really does matter. I don’t know many people now who don’t check online reviews before they buy and the more expensive the products, the more we research it. Big supermarket chains like Tesco have even teamed up with Reevo for impartial reviews on their products – a brave decision but most likely useful in the long term.
But what does the video say about the 200,000,000 bloggers?
34% of bloggers post opinion about products and brands
This harks back to the point above about peer recommendation and user generated content. What bloggers say is hugely important to your brand and companies that ignore bloggers or choose not to get involved in or respond to what they say risk starting a new ‘Dell Hell‘. This is why blogger outreach is so important – befriending and making the most of bloggers can really help give your brand a positive reputation online, so why would any brand not do this?
Word of Mouth = World of Mouth
Word of mouth is already known as the best way to influence customers as we are more likely to trust and believe what a friend of family member says than what a company is trying to tell us. Bloggers are now seen as a trustworthy online source, so customers not only believe what the blog says but will active search for reviews and opinion from bloggers. When you put this together with just how many bloggers are out there, word of mouth really does become world of mouth.
So what does this mean for advertisers?
Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
I found this statistic most staggering, that less then 20% of the TV ad campaigns we see every day will ever generate a positive return on investment. The message has never been clearer that social media and PR are not only better value for money but also get better results. PR budgets may have be the first to get cut during the recession, but as the economic climate begins to improve companies should be looking towards using PR as money well spent to generate coverage and improve reputation where advertising fails, especially when you consider…
90% of people skip TV ads via TiVo/DVR
Now in the UK it might not be TiVo, but anyone that has Sky or Virgin Media and has access to ‘TV on Demand’ or records their programs for later knows how easy it is to just flick through ads and get straight to their show. For advertisers the bad news does stop there either, as…
24 of the largest 25 news papers in the world are experiencing record declines in circulation
Many UK newspapers have disappeared completely in the last few years and they won’t be the last. The fall in advertising and increase in readers going online for their news fix means traditional newspapers have taken a real hit. Advertisers have stopped using newspapers to target consumers because we just ignore the adverts unless they really jump out as us. It’s the editorial we concentrate on, the area PR targets. Which means PR also won’t be the one losing out on the increase in online news, as editorial is just as important here too.
But how does social media affect students?
80% of companies use social media for recruitment
This is something I point out time and time again in day to day life with my peers – companies ARE watching what you do online and it WILL affect your future employment. This means don’t ever post offensive status updates, don’t swear non-stop in your tweets and look at what pictures are being posted of your on Facebook. Pretend you are a future employer, would you hire you after looking at your Facebook page with the profile picture of you passed out on a pavement in Leeds? The answer is no, no you wouldn’t. Your social media pages have become an extra arm of your CV, if you put that much effort into ensuring you have the perfect CV, vet your profile page just as aggressively.
Percentage of companies using LinkedIn for recruitment = 95%
LinkedIn may not be as flash or fun to use as Facebook, but the statistics couldn’t be clear enough – almost 100% of your future employers are using it and if your not on their your only putting yourself at a disadvantage from the start. LinkedIn shows your employers where you have worked before, what skills you have and how many people you are connected too – something which is very important in PR. Further to this, past employers and business colleagues can post recommendations for you online, so instead of a future employers phoning for one or two references, they can read ten or twenty online. Reaching out to a company on LinkedIn could give you an advantage over the competition before you even step through the interview room door.
Things to remember:
We no longer find the news, the news finds us…
We will no longer search for products or services,
they will find us via social media.
We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it…
