A soap opera is (generally) not about household chores nor do they (usually) involve characters singing arias.
Instead, they were episodic radio shows in the early 1900's, primarily sponsored by soap giants like Proctor & Gamble and the Dial corporation. The audience was primarily women and homemakers listening during the day. Talk about a target customer!
Even before the radio waves were blessed with the torrid love affairs and evil twin sisters, serial writing was the place to place product names and companies. It is rumored that Jules Verne was courted and compensated while writing the story 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by a number of shipping companies desperate to get their names in front of the readers of Vernes' Voyages Extraordinaires series. The first few thousand words of the book name-drop a solid half-dozen popular and unknown shipping companies who were desperate to gain top of mind awareness as Europeans set sail to expatriate and travel to every corner of the Earth.
Product placement, sometimes referred to as subliminal advertising for its unconscious memory stimulation (we don't even realize it is happening), became a fixture in movies and television as those media distribution channels became the new normal for consumer interaction.
A New Medium For Entertainment
Sites like Hulu and YouTube have proven their advertising worth, and online viewing and videos seem to be the new frontier for media consumption. Each show on Hulu is sprinkled with "sponsored by" advertising messages and many paid YouTube videos (for example, those on the VEVO music video channel) are preceded by a commercial which you can pass over after watching for 5 seconds.
Looking at the firestorm potential of campaigns from Old Spice and Dollar Shave Club, video embedding on popular websites and social media networks, and the assumed minimal cost investment, companies are desperate to have their online videos become "the next big viral campaign."
This is often easier said than done. Virality online is a white unicorn that companies strive for but few achieve.
Matthew Stillman, CEO of Vooza, knows better than any the power of viral video done right. When their first video, What Does Vooza Do?, hit the internet waves last summer it was an instant hit. Within a few weeks the video had hundreds of thousands of views, and online big names like Tim Ferriss and The Next Web were praising their comedic genius. The rest of the internet was still scratching their heads wondering what exactly DOES Vooza do.
Their next few videos, including one on Radimparency, didn't provide any more answers.
Then they quietly launched a video for internet start-up Tapsteam.
Stillman (the comedic alter ego of stand-up comedian and former 37 Signals Employee #1, Matt Ruby) saw the potential immediately. "Online videos were on the rise and television advertising was crumbling. The start-up scene is a ripe area for comedy and mocking with their desire to create authority by using jargon only industry insiders are comfortable with. Our videos are like Dilbert comic strips for internet companies."
Since the Tapstream and Grasshopper videos, some of their videos have gotten more subtle, with specific product placement ads like Always Be Clicking (sponsored by email marketing company MailChimp) and Drunken Scrabble (sponsored by branding firm Eat My Words).
Companies like Vooza have taken the production and comedic burden off the company (though we all know you are a RIOT at dinner parties) but gets small businesses without a massive marketing budget on the online video craze. Even with a quality video, however, virality is not a given. "Anyone who guarantees a viral campaign is lying. Our biggest goal is to make good funny stuff that are worthwhile and companies can be proud of," Stillman explains. "How it spreads is something else entirely."
Whether it was Ed Sullivan schilling Lucky Strike cigarettes as an aside to the camera or Elliott befriending that funny looking Extra-Terrestrial alien with Reese's Pieces or 30 Rock's constant mention (allegedly tongue-in-cheek) of General Electric and GE products, companies have moved their advertising money to subtle product references in an otherwise unassociated plot-line or scene.
Online video is the newest medium and viral videos are not an impossibility with agencies like Vooza stepping up to the plate.
Is your company on the viral video train? Or is it just a passing media trend?
Article Updated to remove Grasshopper, an internet company that has sponsored Vooza's creative projects in the past. They have not, as previously reported, commissioned Vooza for any of their own video productions.
