5,4,3,2,1 Skip... Oh, and Viral my a**! (Part I)

...and skip

I think we can all relate to this and we would agree that YouTube has reached that annoying stage and is moving in steady steps  - backwards - to revive the forced TV commercial breaks that originally was one of the reasons people opted for it. You might be less irritated if you don't use YouTube frequently or even use it to view long videos where those 5 seconds aren't significant, but for those of us who use YouTube as their magical Jukebox, and end up sometimes watching the same ad 5 times in a session, those breaks are rather pesky.

Brands+Agencies+YouTube and The Audience

(The following part is just based on general observation with no ill/bad intentions towards any brand, agency or industry, No Beef!)
Well it all starts with brands' (especially their MENA presence) obsession with the godforsaken V word "Viral", the smart YouTube marketing team on the ground and of course the geniuses in different agencies. Let me take you through the first scenario:

The result? Often (In our region), just shoving a brand's TVC down the throats of the real critics that brands haven't been used to get feedback from - their target audience and... well this image explains it better!

Follow up scenario:

Well, the reality is despite the fact that YouTube is an amazing tool to communicate your message, brands, their partners and agencies should first keep those common sense rules in mind: 

• ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL! What works for TV doesn't necessarily work for YouTube. If you as a marketer don't use YouTube to view the same stuff you watch on TV, why do you expect others to! Ask yourself first "why should this be on YouTube? If this was targeting me, would I want to watch it?"
• Treat your YouTube communication strategy with the same level of sophistication and attention other channels (ATL, BTL, PR..etc) get. Saving up time and money on the strategic approach towards such a dynamic platform doesn't only result in issues that go neutrally unnoticed, it actually might harm the brand and sometimes push people from positive association to indifference and unfortunately in some cases to negative association. 
• Do your homework and gain the proper insights. With all the information on trends, most searched for terms, most discussed topics, best practice case studies, online/social listening analysis and intelligence...etc that are available to brands and their partners today, you have to be really lazy not to be able to find the right insights and build your strategy on their basis.
• Review, Review and Review. If YouTube gives you immediate insights on how your channel/video is performing to a level of details that even gives you second by second retention analysis, why not use this to your advantage?! A video is getting negative feedback or huge bounce rate, stop, analyze the issue and make a quick decision, be it better optimized targeting, less rotation, maybe a pause on media plan or even removing it completely!
• Finally and most importantly... VIRAL MY A**! Any campaign that went viral started as a well thought through strategy (based on unique insights) that was executed with excellence and had the right circumstances (including luck) to reach that level with no intention but to deliver quality! So if anyone working in this industry say that they can come up with a guaranteed viral campaign idea or concept be it on YouTube or anywhere, ask them a simple question. Why on earth are you working for someone? Why don't you just wake up everyday and come up with a viral campaign idea and make millions? To be honest the only other word aside from "entrepreneur" that pisses me off is this V word when used in a plan or a brief, but will leave that to another detailed blog post ;)

Will follow this up with part II... thoughts?

Oh PR, it's time to shine... even more!

Well yeah, it is my first blog post, and I thought to dedicate it to the industry I'm (paid to be) passionate about, Public Relations!


"This is PR's time to shine," "PR is the key for all marketers looking to build meaningful relationships with consumers. When integrated effectively those relationships turn consumers into customers and customers into brand ambassadors."


I chose to start with this quote that came from Marc Pritchard, the global marketing and brand building officer of the world's biggest advertiser, Procter & Gamble, to state this as a close as possible for being a fact and not just wishful thinking.


For many years...
... public relations' role has been underestimated and misunderstood in the region by a considerable number of marketers, brands, companies, organizations and even PR professionals themselves (I may also add journalists but that needs another blog post). 


But now...
... thanks to the unfortunate financial crisis and the age of social media, PR role has been redefined to the actual purpose behind it. The end of 2008 was when PR agencies started to learn, educate and practice public relations with all its different capabilities across a variety of disciplines. The financial downturn was one of the main reasons behind remeasuring marketing objectives against budgets' allocations for brands and organizations, and a satisfactory ROI varied from being able to survive as a name to the usual sales figures. 


Then & there came...
... the delayed boost of social media in the region which helped public relations reshape itself as an integral and crucial part of marketing communications. We saw PR agencies being consulted in monitoring the different social media platforms to listen to the target audience and identify trends and focus areas, and this lead to the perception of PR as tool that amplifies big ideas and transforms them into enablers to communicate with target audience and invite them to become citizens of a brand or an organization.


Then how to shine even more?!
Well, the PR industry now has the chance to take the lead and speak up to generate the big ideas rather than waiting for the cue to magnify them. With digital giving room for more creativity in concepts and execution, and traditional (which will NEVER fade) helping to multiply reach figures and providing different angles to tweak those "Big Ideas", making them more relevant to people and utilizing them to interpret their success into a solid basis for all other brand building efforts and creating authentic relationships with people. 


An example...
... from the P&G portfolio that clearly shows that traditional media is still a powerful tool in integrated marketing communications is the phenomenal Smell Like a Man, Man campaign, where news played a big role in driving people to look at the Old Spice Guy  videos, and at the same time people who viewed the YouTube videos also were interested to follow news discussing it. PR integrated efforts in this campaign generated 1.4 billion impressions!


So What to do?
In Pritchard's words "You (PR professionals) have never had more potential to be fully baked in to the marketing mix or to lead brand-building efforts... You have to step up and make clear what your capabilities are."