From Boring to Inspired

If you missed the Emmy’s the other night, no problem. There’s very little “appointment” or event TV you need to watch in real-time these days. The highlights are bound to find their way to your DVR or fav video sharing site, which for the enormous majority is YouTube (50% larger than the rest of the market combined according to HitWise). My favorite segment was the “Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program” which has benefited from a comedic one-upmanship year over year. It seems to bring out the best in the writers and transforms an expected boring roll-call into a piece of pop culutre. Would that we take all our mundane content and tasks and treat them so lovingly. Our audiences would reward us with top ratings, viewership and sharing as evidenced here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfLmyQTowBA

Loved the Alberto Gonzales parody.

Prison Thriller

Filipino prisoners perform their version of Michael Jackson’s Thriller:

Description: “1,500 plus CPDRC inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines at practice…” Over 1/2 a million views since posting 5 days ago. Nearly 1000 comments as of my visit with a wide range of reactions from “good on them” to “this is what taxes fund/this is rehabilitation?” to “should do more time for this.” My reaction: creepy on different levels mostly due to the context. Not just the orange suit-zombie conformance, but the suggested gang rape-event that must have been present in the Jackson video but I missed it outside of this context. Also, in a way, uplifting to see the political message expressed through a collaborative piece.

Credit Peter Kim from twitter stream.

Entertainment Hit Record

Chris Anderson points to a Bear Sterns study of “The Long Tail” of Entertainment. Head to The Long Tail blog to see his take on it. Some summary points: 1) slowing growth for incumbant content creators and shift in value from creators to aggregators/packagers; 2) UGC here to stay–see note below; 3) more choice for consumers creates confusion, noise and selection challenges; 4) Content isn’t king; great content is.

The Break-up: Trad Advertising and The Consumer

This video from http://bringtheloveback.com dramatizes the interaction between Advertiser and Consumer as a personal relationship. It should be, right? It’s funny and insightful. And, it’s a theme we’re articulating here at Real Branding through our talent, work and approach: “how do brands engage in a meaningful, mutually beneficial relationship with their consumerin an age of consumer control, expanded choices and new, customized and interactive media?” Enjoy the clip and expand on the debate.

TrailerMash Trend

Our friends at BuzzFeed are on the trail of trailermashing or, as they call it, trailer remixing. Fans and pros are taking available trailers, gaming and even graphic novel content, altering the soundtrack and creating different meaning. Lots of examples, and most tend to take the spin towards humor. Here are a few of my favs:

YouTube’s Content Contention

 Henry Blodget takes a different look at the meritsof Viacom’s Billion-dollar lawsuit against YouTube, using Vidmeter for his lenses. Referencing the Vidmeter report onCopyright matertial on YouTube, he points out thatmaterial removed by request from YouTube constitutes just under 9.25% of all videos, and only 6% of total viewed content. Viacom’s share of copyright material removed by request was the largest at 2%; Time Warner was the other leader. I encourage you to read the Vidmeter report linked above. You’ll see more music video than Daily Show and Cobert Report. Blodget’s takeaways: Advantage Google/YouTube in their big-media negotiations; NBCU/Fox won’t dent YouTube’s growth and dominance; online viewers want short clips not full-length shows. Good follow-on comments and debate in the Blodget post.

Spiderman 3 spins some best practices

Here’s a quick best practice piece on character and personality-driven brands via Spiderman 3 and Target. Full disclosure: I’m a comicphile. It’s one of the reasons I got into the creative field. I learned to draw with Batman, Hulk, Spiderman, Superman, Thor and more. All that’s to explain I watch this space closely–and am very proud of our work with Warner in marketing these titles.

Brief History of Video link

Powerpoint eye-candy alert. Here’s a good post on Reel Pop about history of online video. Goes from May 2005-August 2006, at which point the pace of news tipped and couldn’t be contained or maintained in a partial effort. Pay them a visit–good visual as well.