"Hi Joseph,
"I was reading your article today about branding of online video, which is extremely relevant to what our company is doing. As a slight background, I'm working at a company called MovieSet (www.movieset.com) that's in beta testing. Our primary goal is host and showcase websites for films that are in production, and one of our primary features is video (including live streaming) from behind the scenes of films.
"You mentioned in your article about placement of a brand logo on the video and I was wondering what you thought about watermarks. Currently, we're placing the URL of a film's website in the bottom right corner of every video we post (e.g. those at battleinseattle.movieset.com). Some of these videos are going on to YouTube and other locations, so we want to be able to drive people back to our website.
"I was wondering if you would be willing to share with me what you thought of this idea?
"Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you."
Fair enough, here's what I think...
This question comes at a good time because I'm publishing several articles at IMedia about online branding ("e-branding") and how to embed branding in material so that it is internalized without being distracting. I'm also in the process of finishing a long awaited whitepaper, Impact: The Use of Colors and Color Imagery in Direct Response Marketing and e-Branding, on how to use color in online marketing. A good part of that paper deals with online branding and generating direct response so the subject has not only been on my mind for a long time, it's also still quite fresh in my mind.
The question of using a watermark is a "How long is a piece of string?" question. The watermark is going to be an e-brand, I'm guessing. Is it going to be applied to a single movie gendre or across several? Will the watermark be "always on" in the video or shown at the beginning? The end? Both? Neither?
Assuming a product consumers are willing to go after, how are you defining reasonable response? Does a 1% response translate to profit or do you need 50% response in order to be profitable? And remember, response doesn't equate to purchase, only that they're in the funnel.
Placing a link to a film's website in the video is a good idea. Selecting the position is another matter completely, something I discussed the Gender Specific Marketing Discoveries podcast.
One thing I've learned is that simple "this will work, that won't" answers often come from knowing an incredible amount of information not contained in the original question. Feel free to contact me directly if you want to provide me some of that incredible amount of information. - Joseph
Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.
Links for this post:
- 2 Strategies for the Future of Online TV
- Branding in Online Video
- Branding and Online Ad Placement
- Gender Specific Marketing Discoveries podcast
- Impact: The Use of Colors and Color Imagery in Direct Response Marketing and e-Branding
» The Death of Online Video from BizMediaScience
Is Video Overload Possible? [Read More]
Tracked on: March 15, 2007 9:39 AM | Permalink to Trackback