Branding in your tube
25th April 2006 by Anders Gronstedt
Here’s an idea for a low-budget branding program. Take a digital video camera to a soccer field and let it roll as an athlete plays around with a soccer ball. Upload the assiduously amateurish clip free on YouTube. Watch consumers by the millions view it and share it with friends. Of course, it helps if you’re Nike and have a ten-year endorsement contract with the best soccer player in the galaxy to feature in your videos. Nike’s spot of Ronaldinho repeatedly kicking a soccer ball with breathtaking precision at the crossbar so that it comes right back to him has been downloaded more than 3.5 million times. Video-sharing sites such as YouTube are taking off with an amazing 40 million watched videos daily. Most of the video clips are consumer generated. But, smart marketers like Nike are tapping into the craze with videos that have a raw unpolished feel. While Adidas is shelling out $200 million as the official sponsor of The Soccer World Cup in Germany, Nike is taking a viral approach that is destined to pay off.
May 12th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
You nailed it. Raw and unpoilshed seems to always win over the overly-branded and nicely-storyboarded. It’s the style that a lot of advertising has begun to emulate as content moves from the old ‘tubes’ to the new.