Videos 30 June

Highest rated product video is this DIY one from Honda to promote their new Honda Pilot. This first in the series works through making a smoker for your barbeque. You can tell it’s a US video, as few UK people take the bbq that seriously.

Attached the video is the expected contest, where you load up your own video to YouTube, get it voted on and the winner gets $15k. A pretty standard contest, except the videos are all hints and tips for fellow Honda loves not just something about the brand, which makes it more value-add for customers. (It’s also the first time I’ve seen Rules set up on Google pages!)

If I hadn’t seen the Ball Girl catches Ball video discussed endlessly this week, then I would not have spotted it as product related video. This copy is a repost from Break, but it’s still getting the hits. The video is from Gatorade; the tactic here, also followed in the past by Rayban and Levis, is to create something that is on the verge of possibility, seed it strongly, get people talking about it and then launch the PR blitz to garner publicity. Is this a replacement strategy to making a product that people want to talk about? As an aside, the repost is from Vasco Games, who seem to have spent the last few weeks re-publishing a lot of popular videos as a way of promoting their own product.

I never knew Google had an official channel (don’t know why not, it seems the owner should have) . A fun video about all the various things you can do with your mobile is pulling in the views. They’re also calling for you to upload your mobile phone tips but for no prize except traffic.

That’s all for this week.