YouTube for Moms

Until I started studying marketing I have never been one to watch ads. I used AdBlock Plus in Firefox, watched TV shows on Tivo so I could fast forward through commercials, and generally tried to tune out advertising. Now I read websites and magazines about ads. I have also realized that there are a few people like the old me (they really hate ads) but the rest of society either lacks the technical know-how to stop the ads or is too busy to figure out how. This is good for marketers.

Marketers do face an interesting challenge today though. Consumers are spending more time online at places YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. They are also in Second Life and playing World of Warcraft or X-box Live. Days didn’t get any longer and more people are taking work home with them via their Blackberry’s and laptops (affiliate links) so where are they getting this time? They are watching less TV. This isn’t exactly earth shattering news to anyone that just takes the time to notice and to marketers especially.  This has caused marketers to get creative on those platforms.

Kodak recently launched a YouTube channel for moms, called the For Mom channel. It has tons of content drawn from various mommy vloggers on YouTube. I have noticed some high profile ones like Brooke Burke and her Modern Mom channel and some stuff from eHow and Lifetime.com. There are also some that I didn’t recognize but their page views are pretty high on many of their videos.

Kodak has some pretty good advertising built into the YouTube channel for their new Kodak Zi8 video camera(affiliate link). I guess the hope is that moms will see this channel and decide that maybe they can produce some content of their own. They may also get warm and fuzzy feelings for Kodak because they are providing them with good content.

I think it is a very good marketing campaign but I would love to see what it does for Kodak’s actual bottom line.

 

Marketing Agencies versus In-House Talent

I was listening to a recent episode of Jaffe Juice and Joseph Jaffe and Mitch Joel were having a discussion about social media and how powerful it can be for a brand. They were also talking about how many companies want to just use the old advertising model and hire a firm to do it for them. Later in the same conversation that talked about the tremendous amount of time it takes to “do social media”(my emphasis) correctly.

To build that community and interact with them in a meaningful way is a process that takes a tremendous amount of time. You can’t just hire a firm and throw a big budget at them and have them do it for you. This got me thinking about the current model of social media and marketing agencies. The hired consultants who come in and map out a company or brand’s social media and/or marketing strategy. What will their future be as social media grows and progresses?

If this big time commitment is necessary wouldn’t it be better to hire a person or team that would be permanently on staff to do this for you. They would be immersed in the company culture. They would be there every day. The cost to the company would most likely be lower than on-going consulting fees.

Now, I realize that the company culture has to accept the value of social media or this department or division will be doomed to failure. I think that over the next 5-10 years as the Gen-Y and Millenials enter the workforce they will have a trans-formative force on the adoption of these tools inside the companies they work for.

I’m currently a student getting a bachelor’s degree online in Internet Marketing at Full Sail University. I was considering starting a company do social media marketing or “internet” marketing after graduation. I now think that a better strategy might be to look to join some of the companies that get it like Ernst & Young, Ford, Dell, Google, or Whole Foods.

Don’t get me wrong I would love to work for crayon, Twist Image, or New Marketing Labs. The knowledge and experience in this companies in incredible and they are truly visionaries in this space but by their own admission can it last? Do the economics make sense if it is, as they admit, a very long and labor intensive task for a company to engage in social media.

Please, if you agree with me leave a comment telling me why. If you don’t agree, I’m especially interested in hearing from you. Tell me why I’m wrong and tell mw why you think this model will continue to work going forward.

Christopher Johnston