SocialNext

Geico, Mysto & Pizzi Score a Viral Hit with “Somebody’s Watching Me”

Hats off to Geico for their viral strategy surrounding the song featured in their new ad campaign about people being watched by “the money they could be saving with Geico”.

The song is a remix of Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” by Mysto & Pizzi and Geico has done a fantastic job putting the pieces in place to allow fans of the song to spread it virally.

First, it’s just a killer remix.

Secondly, the song is available for download for free at Geico.com along with a bio on Mysto & Pizzi. The song isn’t in a proprietary format either which means users can freely spread it around and it will work on all players. A good example of this is me. I sent it over to my friend who is a professional DJ and he’s played it at gigs. This is a fantastic example of subtle marketing. Imagine being on dance floor and hearing this cool song and thinking of Geico...and not minding that. The song is available at Mysto & Pizzi's website as well (along with other great remixes).

Their use of YouTube is impressive as well. They have a making of video on Mysto & Pizzi’s YouTube Channel...along with a big Geico ad next to it. There’s even a link to the download page in the description. (See below)

They also have a music video for the song itself and encourage others to make response videos to it.

All in all they've done a great job in anticipating consumers looking for more information about this song and giving them the tools to spread it around. Have you noticed any other ways Geico has used this song in their online marketing efforts? Could they have done something else too?

Pepsi Hosting Online Super Bowl Party; Will Anyone Show?

Pepsi is hosting a multi-platform, interactive online Super Bowl Party hosted by Will Arnett (Arrested Development, 30 Rock) and Andy Rickter (Late Night with Conan O’Brien) for people who “have nothing to do on the Super Bowl”.

It’s certainly an interesting concept. The site features an intro video from Will Arnett (Nicely embedded in HD by the way) inviting people to the event.  It also allows users to interact with each other by uploading their own videos to Pepsi’s YouTube Channel. There will be guest appearances by YouTube’s “most famous celebs” and there’s even a link to add people to the Pepsi’s event page on Facebook.

While this is a very cool idea it doesn’t seem to be gaining traction. As of this post Will’s intro video only has 44,181 views and the follow up video has only 216 views (yikes!). The Facebook Event page reinforces this perception with only 213 RSVPs. That’s not a lot for a party that goes from 7 AM to Midnight. (Really? That long?)

I believe this missed the mark because it focuses on people who don’t participate in Super Bowl Sunday. Will also brands these people “losers” which doesn’t help. Plus I think YouTube assumed their YouTube celebrities would promote their appearance. That doesn't appear to be the case. I searched around YouTube and couldn't find anything.

It seems this would be a bigger hit if Pepsi fused it into the Super Bowl as opposed to playing against it. Perhaps it could be part of an alternate Half Time event or part of the pre-game coverage. This would allow you to market to the vast majority of Americans who watch the Super Bowl and would allow Pepsi to showcase the best content they have as opposed to trying to fill 16 hours of time.

YouTube Testing Hulu Features

YouTube has copied one of my favorite features on Hulu.com – the site they so infamously referred to as Clown Co.

Above the video on YouTube there is a light bulb button which will “Turn Down the Lights” and darken the rest of the screen. [screen shot at left]

It doesn’t seem to be on all of YouTube’s videos yet so it must still be in testing.

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YouTube Now Recommending Subscriptions

 YouTube now has a new recommendation feature.  When users subscribe to a channel YouTube will recommend “related channels” for the user to check out. [picture at left]

In this example when I subscribed to DrunkHistory YouTube recommended two other channels: clarkduke and maplestreet.

It appears the recommendation engine is based around the video descriptions as opposed to the type of channel it is.

For example, clarkduke and maplestreet are Director Channels while DrunkHistory is a Comedian Channel. However, since all three channels feature Michael Cera YouTube considers them relevant to each other.

It’s a great way for users to find new content they might not have otherwise found and another way to increase page views for YouTube.

YouTube Ruining User Experience; Opens Door for Competition

YouTube as always had a tough time dealing with users uploading copyrighted material. They’ve tried deleting it, offering free music to replace the copyrighted audio with and other measures.

Now they’re just muting the videos. That’s right. NO SOUND.

I’ve read lots about it from multiple sources but no one has mentioned the fact that this will ruin the YouTube user experience!

The average user doesn’t know, or care, about copyright issues – they just want to see (and hear!) a video. Perhaps after finding a few of these they’ll wonder what the heck is wrong and check out another site like Veoh.

It may not be that dramatic but if you take away loads of content people want and add a creepy element to the user experience what else could you expect?

Can YouTube’s Favorite Content Creators Survive without Constant Promotion by YouTube?

Google-owned YouTube has been hitting the PR circuit proving to everyone that content creators can make a significant amount of money on YouTube and advertisers can be successful advertising on this platform.

But the dirty little secret I wonder about is how often does YouTube feature these “Top Earners” on their front page?

I don’t need to tell you that being featured on the front page of YouTube will bring massive amounts of views…to sell advertising off of. I wonder if YouTube is doing everything they can to promote these “Top Earners” to perpetuate their PR spin of people being able to make money off content creation.

It helps encourage people to start accounts and, most importantly, gives YouTube the advertising success stories they badly need.

YouTube Insight Trending in the Right Direction

Two of YouTube's biggest weaknesses are customer service and video tracking. It’s hasn’t been lost on me that FunnyorDie had superior video tracking than Google-owned YouTube.

Now YouTube has launched Insight which gives video producers data on views, referral information and more. As a data junkie I love it but where’s the combined results at the account level?

I’d love to see Insight for my entire account: ranking my videos by popularity, overall view stats and trends. What about the benchmark feature they just added to Google Analytics? It would be cool to see how my view counts compare to the average account in my category. Plus it would be great to be able to have the option to download it into Excel.

Regardless Insight is a great first step and I can’t wait for it to be expanded even more!

Can a YouTube Competitor Land Perez Hilton?

Last December YouTube suspended popular gossip blogger Perez Hilton’s account. Perez had one of the most popular YouTube channels and participated in their “Partner Program”.

YouTube was slow to get a straight answer to Perez as to why his account was suspended and, justifiably, he was pretty darn mad. The result was Perez ditching YouTube for his own streaming video setup, PerezTV.

YouTube's lack of customer service (even for Partner participants!) is their Achilles Heel and resulted in a big fish getting away. The bottom line is this is a huge missed opportunity for a second-tier video site like Veoh, LiveVideo or Metacafe. They could have gained massive publicity from a pop culture trend setter and seen a huge jump in usage and accounts.

The opportunity is still there. Perez doesn’t seem to be monetizing PerezTV yet and if offered a sweetheart revenue sharing deal could still change over to a hosted platform.