3M is running a User Generated Video Contest via YouTube this month.  By submitting a video showing interesting places to stick a Post-It contestants can win $10,000.

This is the second year 3M has put on a Video Contest.  Last year, according to this post on ClickZ (Link), the contest received 600 submissions.  The article also quotes 3M’s communications manager putting the cost of the campaign around that of a small TV buy — which I’m guessing is in the $1MM range.

Forrester’s Nate Elliot published two new studies that digs into these UCG video contests (link).  Nate’s research shows that over 20% of marketers have run contests that solicit user generated content.

Thoughts:

• User Generated Content Contests are not cheap.  To be successful they require significant promotion.  3M’s $1MM budget generated 600 videos.  If the average views per video was 100 that would result in 60,000 views for $1MM.
• You have to get creative with the content.  User Generated Content is not for every product.  That said, the 3M contest is a great example of a product that at first glance might not seem to be that fun for users to film — but turns out it is.
• As more and more consumers have a video camera with them at all times in the form of a Cell Phone expect more video contests.  The biggest hurtle is for the user to go through the hassle of creating, editing, and uploading the video.  Expect to see simple tools added to cell phones over the next few years that removes most of these hassles. (That’s a business idea that should be developed — easy video editing tools via smart phones).
• I recommend thinking about these types of consumer engagement activities as a part of a larger marketing campaign.  These contests carry a lot more weight in moving viewers into buyers when thay are a part of a comprehensive marketing program that touches consumers at various points along the purchase funnel.

Hulu.com is a fairly simple concept.  In 2007 NBC and FOX created Hulu.com to broadcast television content over the internet.   In April of 2009 Disney’s ABC unit bought into the joint venture with a 27% stake.  The concept is pretty simple – push TV shows over the Internet.  But the reason why these historic competitors would work together and the ramifications it will have on both the television industry and the Internet are profound.  Let’s dig in a bit.

The first thing we have to understand is who the players are and how they make money.  I’ve created this over simplified chart to help illustrate:

Major Players

Cable Companies, Internet Service Providers, and Cell Phone companies make their money by selling subscriptions to consumers to gain access to content.  These companies have saturated the US market — essentially everyone has cable, cell phones, and internet access.  The market is not going to grow.  So the only way they can grow is to add new services to their offering.  But there is only so much the consumer is willing to pay.

Content Producers like Disney and Fox make their money by selling advertising placement on their content.  (This is oversimplified but provides the picture we need to understand what’s going on).  The more content they get in front of the consumer the more money they make.  The bigger the audience the more they can charge for the advertising spots.

Hulu brings that content directly to the consumer through the internet.  Allowing NBC, FOX, and Disney to create a bigger audeince for their content.  But since the Internet providers charge a flat rate for internet they don’t make any more money.  In fact, since the Cable companies are also the Internet providers they are concerned that consumers could cancel their Cable subscriptions and just watch TV over their internet connection — reducing the consumers monthly subscription fee.  AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN AND WHY HULU IS A HUGE PARADIGM SHIFT!

Once you can watch TV over the internet and once your TV is connected to the internet you don’t need cable anymore.  How does this effect the players…

Content Providers love this!  In the short run they are now growing their audience by providing content on the Internet and Cable TV.  Which increases their revenues.  Plus they can launch new shows on the internet to test them before going to big budget main stream distribution.  In the long run they get to add functionality to their content that only the internet brings — like instant product purchase, sampling, coupons, and promotions.

Cable Companies are scared to death.  How do they justify selling two services to consumers when the consumer only needs Internet in the future.

Internet Service Providers need to figure this out.  For the most part they are also the Cable Company.  But more importantly, they need to figure out a model that charges consumers for usage — not just flat rates.  The news is full of stories right now about ISPs capping the amount of data you can download.  There is a future where the more Internet you use the more your bill will be — and TV over the internet uses a lot of bandwidth.

So, why is Hulu important?  According to Neilson:

“Hulu ranks #2 (online video outlet behind YouTube) as it continues on a steep growth trajectory, increasing 490% in total streams year-over-year (YoY), from 63.2 million in April 2008 to 373.3 million in April 2009,” (Link here to full article).

People are ready for TV content over the internet.  The Content Creators will be the winners.  The Content distributors need to figure this new model out.  Marketers will have innovative new ways to communication their message to consumers.  And consumers will end up paying more — but will be getting a lot more content and functionality for their money.

When developing campaigns that solicit user generated content it’s always difficult to determine a measure of success.  How many submitted videos and video views make a campaign successful?  When answering this questions I take two approaches:

1)  Cost of impression.  A successful campaign will meet a Cost of Impression measure.  For instance, if the campaign costs $1MM and generates 10MM impressions the cost per impression is ($1MM / 10MM) = $0.10 per impression.  You can then benchmark that against other media options to determine a successful campaign.

2) Benchmark against historics.  One reason I keep this blog is so that I can record data points for campaigns.  This article from ClickZ has some great data points on a viral Pepsi campaign (article here).  The main take away is:

• “There were 400 video submissions posted on YouTube, surpassing YouTube’s benchmark of 200 videos.”

• “The videos received over four million page views.”

• “Over 700 blog postings mentioned the ad campaign.”

We don’t know how much Pepsi paid to promote this campaign — probably a lot.

This campaign from Sprite is a great example of pulling together a couple of tactics to make a very compelling and engaging brand experience.  I find that too often agencies don’t stretch themselves to expand a core idea beyond the initial focus.  This example, developed by the FullSIX Group, goes above and beyond to integrate celebrity, viral video, user generated content, and SocNet leveraging the following:

Celebrity: The campaign’s core revolves around the up and coming English artist Katie Vogel as she tries to build a successful music career.  You get to follow her through her journey by watching YouTube videos and her Facebook updates.

YouTube: Katie’s music videos are posted for fans to rate and review.  The YouTube Channel links directly to Facebook!  Remember that at this time Facebook is not owned by Google — this is the first I’ve seen a YouTube channel integrating with Facebook.

Facebook: You can be-friend Katie on Facebook and follow her on her journey to be a star!  You can post to your Facebook feeds directly from YouTube!

For more details check out this article on Clickz (article here).

My Two Cents:

• This is the first time we’ve seen YouTube integrated with Facebook.  Keep an eye on this — it may open up some really engaging opportunities.
• The first video includes Katie breaking up with her boyfriend — it’s a bit too convenient to be true.  I’d be careful to mix reality with fictional elements.  You will quickly alienate your fan base if they don’t trust you.
• Katie doesn’t post enough.  She needs to be very active to keep the fan base engaged.  It appears she is only posting updates every couple of days.  I’d highly suggest the she updates every couple hours.

Jack in the Box Viral Campaign

This example from the QSR Jack-in-the-Box gives us some very valuable insights into a very robust Social Networking / Viral campaign.  Check out this articles from Clickz (link here).  The details are:

• Campaign gets kicked off with a TV spot aired during the Super Bowl that shows the Jack-in-the-Box mascot “Jack” getting run over by a bus.
• Fan’s of the brand are then encouraged to follow Jack’s condition on the web site HanginthereJack.com,  28 viral videos updating Jacks condition on YouTube, photo’s from the accident scene on Flickr, updates on Facebook,  MySpace and Twitter.
• User Generated Content is solicited in the form of “get well notes” for Jack.

Some results:

• Over 12,000 fans on the Facebook page
• Over 7000 followers in Twitter
• 600 followers to the YouTube channel
• Each of the 28 videos were viewed between 50,000 and 200,000 times

Clickz lists Apollo Interactive as the agency behind this very robust effort.

Thoughts:

• Wow, this was a very robust campaign around a great theme.
• The response was impressive.  Especially the YouTube video views.  It’s difficult to get these kinds of numbers.
• I assume a lot went into the campaign AND a lot went into promoting this campaign.  The Super Bowl spot alone was several million $$.
• The big take away for me is that in order for a Viral / SocNet campaign to be successful it needs to tap into a message that will resonate with the audience.  In this case — hoping Jack comes out of his coma — hit that nerve.