I attended the August event hosted by MIMA, the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association, this morning at the J.J. Hill Library in St. Paul. It was a rather informative event based on how today’s marketers need to adapt to this new medium because the age-old rules for traditional media are non-existent on this new frontier. As quoted from the event page on MIMA’s website:
“As technology and tools grow more and more sophisticated, video is gaining major ground online. Video marketing is no longer just about being “viral.” Like print and radio advertisers of the 1950’s, today’s online marketers must adapt strategies, budgets and client expectations to suit a whole new medium.”
The event was moderated by Andrew Ecklund, Founder and CEO of Ciceron, An internet marketing and consulting agency in Minneapolis offering full service solutions from professional search engine optimization and email marketing programs to in-depth metrics and performance tracking.
While in attendance, I learned about how to incorporate video into one’s overall marketing mix, and how video can be incorporated into an organization’s content strategy. Being “viral” doesn’t mandate that a video has to be funny. In fact, “viral” content becomes “viral” because it caused the consumer to have an innate, emotional reaction to what they just viewed which causes them to have the initial reaction to share it.
One example a panel member shared was with a viral campaign for a client. The client mandated that the viral video campaign be funny. After the project was finished, one video that was presented to the client was actually more of an emotional trip than a comedic one. It was unique, it hit at the heartstrings of the client when they viewed it, and they all had a prompt reaction to it. It would probably have made a pretty good viral campaign, but instead the client opted to skip it because it wasn’t funny.
I feel that this was a mistake on the client’s part in not recognizing an opportunity when it was there. Oh well, such is life in the world of marketing.
