A pair of interesting things came from Volkswagen yesterday - they purposefully leaked their two Super Bowl commercials on
YouTube
.
As with about every Super Bowl commercial, the writing, filmography, and editing was top notch. The commercials are funny, and speak to their core brand image. By releasing the videos a 5 days early, they got to capture an audience that wasn’t already overcharged with the latest Budweiser, Coors, and Lexus commercials.
Its only been one day since the videos were uploaded to YouTube, and they’ve already surpassed 1 million views. If you haven’t caught the videos yet, here you go:
“The Force”
“Black Beetle”
So How Does This Help You?
While it would be great for every business to put together a Super Bowl commercial, its just not going to happen. Instead, you should be a little bit of a guerrilla marketer. Go for the quick hits that take your competition when they’ve dropped their guard. If you’ve got the next killer thing ready to launch, and you’re only holding back because of “timing” - just let it go, get it out the door. The quicker that its out there in the wild, the quicker you can start getting feedback and it can do its job. Make your competition react to you, not the other way around.Photo Credit: danorth1
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Spencer 9:25 AM on February 04, 2011
I really like "the force". That's awesome!
Also, I totally agree with your "guerrilla marketer" comment. I've recently been using LinkedIn to generate leads for a webinar. We saved a ton of money by not doing a live seminar and I actually have more qualified leads lined up for the webinar than we would get with a seminar.
Also, why do you think all the big players that do super bowl commercials aren't focusing on YouTube?
Christopher Haddad 9:53 AM on February 04, 2011
@Spencer,
Just about all the ads from the past few years have made their way to YouTube, but only in a few select cases have been uploaded by an official account (what I can find is Doritos, Bridgestone, and Monster).
I have a feeling that for some of these companies, they just care that the message is out there. I bet the marketing team at Budweiser care more about the "impact" and "impressions" of their latest Clydesdale commercial than posting it to YouTube through their own account. Granted, if they used their own account to post these, it'd be much easier for them to report on these numbers...
With that being said, there's probably other marketers who are just completely consumed with getting the commercial together and getting it on TV that they aren't thinking about digital distribution channels.
Emily from Video Avatar 9:02 PM on February 06, 2011
We don't need to spend much for advertising because with a little creativity we can make a video go viral. Look at what others do, they get discovered through YouTube.
Sterling McKinley 2:50 PM on February 15, 2011
I agree with Emily. The money some people spend on super bowl ads are high and you can simply go viral for the cost of about a bathroom repair with the right camera crew.