I have a dozen things to share from this week’s adventure, but they will wait.
I do not get into hero worship.
I do not hold celebrities on the highest pedestal.
But I do adore artists whose work speaks to my soul.
There aren’t many of those, but Levon Helm, you were one. Godspeed.
Ogilvy’s Rob Davis: Standards Needed for Premium Video Content
By robertjohndavis On April 14, 2012 · Leave a Comment · In Conferences, Interactive Video, Ogilvy, RJD Interviews
The online video business is in need for standards to make buying ads easier and that includes standards around premium content, says Rob Davis, Executive Director Advanced Video Practice at Ogilvy…
Highlights of the debate I moderated at the IAB Digital Video 2012 conference in NYC with a great panel. In this clip “OgilvyOne’s Rob Davis, ESPN’s Lisa Valentino, AOL Video and 5min Media’s Ran Harnevo, Videology’s Mike Dean, BrightRoll’s Tod Sacerdoti, and YouTube’s Jamie Byrne debate the evolving definition of premium video.”
SXSW Viral is a Dirty Word Interview with Lynn Maggio
By robertjohndavis On March 21, 2012 · Leave a Comment · In Interactive Video, Ogilvy, RJD Interviews
Don’t do interviews after getting soaked in a thunderstorm… unless you get to dry-off first. Holding a Molson Canadian? Yeah, that’s OK.
Jeremy Sanchez, Robert John Davis, Ogilvy,Social Media Lodge from RealTVfilms on Vimeo.
Got plans for Wednesday April 4, 2012? Come on over to the Ogilvy NY offices at The Chocolate Factory for a 7pm session on YouTube & Video Strategy Basics. We’ll get as down and dirty as you want, while keeping things focused on what you need to know to get started on YouTube… whether you want to be the next OraBrush or the next Justin Bieber… or maybe just someone who has a better understanding of the most dynamic platform in today’s media landscape.
The one-hour session is $25 and all proceeds will be donated to PROJECT:2040, a nonprofit organization that matches high performing minority engineering students with Silicon Valley start-ups for summer internships.
Register here: http://www.skillshare.com/ogilvy
Rob
My latest contribution to Ogilvy’s Sell or Else blog…
Most March traditions involve basketball or bagpipes, but for me the third month of the year brings the promise of another pilgrimage to Austin, Texas for the SXSW conference; its unique blend of interactive, film and music content makes for what is arguably the premiere North American event for the creative soul. As a veteran of many SXSW shows over the years, I firmly believe that – like life itself - what you get out of “South By” depends upon what you put into it. There is no right or wrong way to consume the experience. I like to contribute full bore, with hopes that deep engagement will unlock key moments of inspiration… moments which seem as equally likely to catalyze during formal conference panels as they do at informal meet-ups and casual gatherings in beer halls across the city. When you have 30,000+ like-minded characters crammed into one geographic location, a lot of interesting things transpire.
One standout element of SXSW 2012 for both agencies and brands was the maturation of ideas surrounding existing (or near-existing) technology. There was a pervasive notion that, at least for now, we are better off making the most of the technologies at hand rather than chasing the next major tech breakthrough. What is driving this? Consumer behavior and the multiple-screen experience.
Read the rest at http://sellorelse.ogilvy.com/multiple-screen-experience
@janewapplegate has a nice piece on the AMEX OPEN forum extending the conversation on viral and discussing a personal favorite, the Orabrush case. Check it out:
http://www.openforum.com/articles/how-a-viral-video-helped-launch-an-offbeat-product
It is ironic that during the same week I discuss our industry’s obsession with what I call The Viral Myth at a SXSW panel entitled “Viral is a Dirty Word” the media lights up about Kony 2012; a film that Mediapost’s VideoDaily calls the “fastest-growing viral video in history.”
The delicious irony is that Kony 2012 is not a “viral video” in the sense that it came out of nowhere to wide acclaim. As VideoDaily rightly points out, “The exposure came through a methodical social media strategy” and years of fund raising. The effort was neither free nor based upon luck. It had a strategy that worked.
Guided by an agency partner with a plan (Digitaria) and a well connected non-profit with a cause (Invisible Children), an influencer campaign focusing on widely popular stars in the entertainment world propelled the meteoric growth in views. As PopConveration notes, the first few weeks the video was live on Vimeo there were days it got 8 or fewer views (even one day with a whopping 0 views). Once the influencer campaign kicked in, the traffic skyrocketed. The video’s debut on YouTube was a little different, in that it was released on a channel that already had 170,000 subscribers and was an immediate beneficiary of the celebrity tweeting, according to Skeleton Productions.
So, we have to ask… is that viral?
It depends upon how you want to look at it. The influencer support clearly drove the views. Prior to that support, the video languished. Is that viral or just good strategy? I lean towards strategy. There is no evidence the video views would have taken off without a professional social media strategy in place.
Another interesting tidbit comes via the VideoDaily quote of Unruly Media’s COO Sarah Wood who says, “With 13% of people who watched the video going on to share it, we’ve never seen a video generate so many shares in such a short space of time. This is truly unprecedented.”
That number may send shockwaves through the very core of conventional wisdom. After all, The Viral Myth says brands and causes win from mass sharing, yet this truly break-through case of sharing still only represents the behavior of 13% of the viewers? Conversely, 87% of the viewers don’t share it, which means those scores of millions of views are coming from somewhere else… perhaps via those influencers in the social strategy?
There is no doubt Kony 2012 is an inspired project. I would argue that writing it off as a viral success short-changes the well-honed skills that crafted the film and the carefully constructed campaign behind it. Hopefully, no brand or cause will misinterpret this as a free solution to content development and distribution, as it seems to be anything but.
SXSW Blog 2012
Come March each year I load my iDevice (Pod, Phone and now Pad) with new (to me) music for the trip to Austin, TX for SXSWi. Without fail, one song will jump out above the others as a personal theme for the week. Quite memorably The Hackensaw Boys’ epic “Alabama Shamrock” was the soundtrack of my first SouthBy many Texas moons ago. I blogged about it for the Independent Film Channel (I was VP of Digital for IFC and its sister networks back then) and I still mentally connect that song with that trip, especially the lines that begin “this film was shot on memory slides in the Western Hemisphere…”
Over the years Slaid Cleaves, Lyle Lovett, Gillian Welch, Dave Rawlings, Nanci Griffith and Tom Waits have been composers of my SXSW score… and no matter what Johnny Cash was a constant presence (as has been pretty much true for me 24/7×365 for 44 years). This year Bruce Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball has been on repeat play for the better part of the last three days, so it would make sense that one of those tunes would take their place as my SXSWi 2012 earworm. Given that Bruce is one of three Monmouth County, NJ boys participating in Austin this year (Kevin Smith and yours truly are the others), I figure he’s got a hometown advantage. Come on, when do I get to put those two in the same sentence as me? Let me have my fun…
There are contenders on the new disc. “American Land” boasts that “beer flows from the faucets all night long” which could certainly describe festival-ravaged Austin. “We Take Care of Our Own” might fit the need too, given that you only get into the right events if you know the right peeps. My soundtrack tunes are usually more serious reflections of how I view myself and the interactive industry at this annual turn, and to that end the song “Jack of All Trades” seems well positioned to be my slow waltz through Austin.
Springsteen sings of a man lamenting hard times, trying to console his wife (and perhaps reassure himself) that no matter what an economic downfall may bring he has the tools to survive. As I take my place gradually and begrudgingly as an elder in the interactive world (I am coming up on 20 years in the business) I watch how the ranks of my digital brothers and sisters have grown; and how specialized they have become.
Those early web days forced us to be jacks of all trades. I challenge you to find anyone with more than 15 years of digital experience who – despite (lack of) training or expertise – did not serve as writer, coder and designer for project after project. We can measure the years by our first Photoshop versions (mine was 1.0) and by the gravestones of dominant names that came and went faster than a Luna moth to a fire pit flame. Come on, you used Prodigy and GeoCities, too.
We had to be jacks of all trades, as there was no other way to do what we were doing. We couldn’t have mentors, because we were the front line… no one had any experience doing what we claimed to be “pro’s” at.
Now don’t worry, this is not going to turn into a screed on how great everything was in the old days and how if you weren’t there you missed it all and it will never be that good again and your experiences can’t compare to ours… That’s the same kind of bullshit that fills the adult diapers of Baby Boomers who never got over themselves. I’d rather not trade in that.
What it does mean is that we were better prepared – by circumstance rather than design – for a changing economy… stability was never a commodity we banked on. It has served my peers and I well. I am working 20 years employed in jobs that were created new for a digital need. Part of the resilience is that my cohort (for the most part) has kept the “do it first” attitude, which requires agitating the next waves of our industry rather than merely riding or fruitlessly fighting them.
Things we fumbled, stumbled and bumbled through (and that a select few cashed-in on) are now the subject of college degree programs. I am sure the feeling is similar to how pioneers in radio and TV felt when they realized the unintended fruits of their willingness to labor into the unknown paved the way for the next generation to make legit career paths out of trails blazed and roads hitherto less travelled.
I am reminded of this every day by the young talent that surrounds me at Ogilvy, but it is a realization that hits home harder with each year’s SXSW. The 24 year old “social media specialist” studied recent history in college and came out into a much more mature marketplace… yet they have the excitement of change and growth to contend with everyday. It is easy to say they have it made, but their reality today is likely to be as anachronistic in 10 years as ours was a decade ago. Will they wind up jacks of all trades for trades we haven’t imagined yet? They most likely will.
Sing it, Bruce…
We’ll be tweeting at #antiviral ahead of and during the panel. See you there.
SXSWi 2012 Viral is a Dirty Word. Saturday, March 10 12:30PM – 1:30PM InterContinental Stephen F. Austin Hotel, Capital Ballroom A.
