I loved the blog post by Chris Brogan why simple still wins. It shows a video published by the UK’s Sun Newspaper group on the UK’s best handheld for 40 years. It’s advertising at it’s best and today’s featured video. Watch it and you’ll see what I mean. It’s a spoof on our obsession for ipods, TVs and the latest must-have gadgets. And while it makes you smile, it’s subtly promoting the Sun newspaper. Brilliantly simple.
Apart from the simplicity of the advert and it’s humour, there is a promotional strategy there. And it’s one you could use to promote your website. What’s popular right now is powerful. Clever marketers have often taken a big story in the news, created an angle on the story around their product or service and watched as their promotion went viral. If you watch carefully, you can see it happening next time there is a major story in the media or news.
But even more subtle than this, and I think more effective, is observing what we take for granted and using it in a novel way to promote your web business. In my recent post on make your web video go viral, I looked at some of the top video campaigns and examined why they were so popular. The T-mobile advert is a good example. It’s entertaining, original and fun. How does the Sun advert compare? It’s entertaining, original and funny.
So, if you want to publish a promotional video, try spoofing something popular and make it entertaining or fun. Then watch it become very popular. The Sun Newspaper advert has only been on youtube for 2 weeks yet it’s had 182,000 viewings. That’s 182,000 people who might just pop to the newsagent and buy one. I wonder what their circulation has been like these last two weeks.
If you’re going to make a video, make it entertaining, original, fun and a spoof of something we all know. Get brainstorming.
