corporate sponsorships have been seeping into new, user-generated turf lately. Last year, Dr Pepper sponsored production of a music video by YouTube star Tay Zonday, who is Web famous for his song “Chocolate Rain.” This year, Sprint Nextel is offering a few bucks to people who incorporate a new Samsung phone into a home video and post the results to YouTube. The first 1,000 videos to incorporate the Instinct phone get $20 apiece, and one grand prize-winning entry will win $10,000.
“There are lots of people making a pretty good living off of being Internet famous,” said Tim Hwang, organizer of a recent conference in Cambridge, Mass., dedicated to semi-serious discussions about Web culture. “Matt’s a notable example because he’s been able to do it for so long.”
Internet culture, Hwang said, has spent most of its existence in its own in-jokey world, but that’s changing quickly. And as deep-pocketed corporate entities turn to user-generated channels looking for attention, there’s no telling how things will play out.
“It’s still an open question whether big business is going to play Internet culture’s game, or if Internet culture is going to play the big business game,” Hwang said.
It’s easy to understand why sites like YouTube are attractive to advertisers and corporate sponsors. Getting a 30-second commercial on the air in front of a prime-time audience costs hundreds of thousands of dollars; uploading a video to YouTube costs nothing. Big-name entities from Revlon to Coldplay have recently sponsored contests on the video site.
Greg Sterling, analyst at marketing research firm Sterling Market Intelligence, said that it’s sometimes tough to determine whether popular phenomena like Harding’s dancing videos result in actual sales. The California Raisins commercials were a hit in the ’80s, for example, but the Claymation marketing campaign did little for the sale of actual California raisins.
In terms of brand recognition, though, Stride’s sponsorship would have to be considered a success, he said. After all, we’re talking about it. “I’d never heard of Stride gum before; had you?” he asks. (I had not.)
Among the thousands of comments posted on the sites discussing Harding’s video, a few say they’re now going to buy Stride gum because of the company’s support for the project. But most log on to declare their affection for the video. “I’m pretty sure that is the best thing I’ve ever seen on the internet,” writes one anonymous viewer, in one of thousands of similar reactions posted to the Web. “How can something that goofy be that moving?”
So much buzz for a video? What about the product? Maximizing exposure, minimizing costs and having a satisfied and happy audience. Maybe this is the new ad trend for Youtube.com especially now that ad revenue has been decreased. Tags: advertisements, brand recognition, business game, cambridge mass, campaign, chocolate rain, corporate entities, corporate sponsorships, culture, greg sterling, internet, market intelligence, marketer, marketing, product placement, serious discussions, tay zonday, tim hwang, video site, web culture, youtube
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