Arnold on ethical marketing

CHRIS ARNOLD

YouTube has just hit £1bn viewers a day, with Susan Boyle being one of the top hits, how sad is that?

But YouTube just keeps growing, despite many rival sites, many with better features. Founded by Steve Chen & Chad Hurley in 2005, just a year later Google paid a massive £883million for it.

In the world of the web success can come very fast. It can also vanish just as quickly when the next big thing arrives. But for time being YouTube is it with over 20 hours of video being uploaded every minute.

The most popular videos include a kid having his finger bitten by a baby, a man dancing badly, a man in Star Wars gear, a sneezing panda and numerous Britain’s Got Talent clips. What does that say about the taste of the general public?

As advertisers we can learn a lot from what is popular and what’s not. Serious rational stuff – no one’s interested. Stuff selling stuff, no interest. TV ads, not interested. People making fools of themselves, animals and pop videos, yep that’s what they want.

Overall what people want is something to make them laugh, smile, be surprised, shocked or fascinated – all raised human reactions.

So this begs the question, why are most TV ads so dull? Well because too many brands think rationally about them.

Yep there’s been a few minor hits from TV advertising, Gorilla being one but as numbers go it’s small stuff and in fact far less than the audience you can get just by running the ad on any evening on ITV.

Clients think that making a viral will get them lots of free air time, millions will pass around their video and buy their product. Dream on. One in a million does it.

It’s the same as thinking you can write a hit single. Sure a really good viral can spread but spreading isn’t the same as selling.

As David Ogilvy once said, it’s one thing that people talk about your ad, it’s another if they buy it. The most famous case being a time when it was reported that Guinness ads were so good people talked about them in pubs whilst drinking their gin & tonics.

As a society we are just sheep and like to follow the pack. As consumers we are becoming less loyal, shorter attention spans and always looking for the next thing.

So what about Facebook? Its recent revamps was unpopular with many. It somehow already feels old and tired. It’s just become a massive address book (of friends who aren’t friends) that seems to steal away our day.

I know lots of people who have just stopped using it, that’s a worrying trend. Sure it’s convenient but you can’t help feeling their’s a better, more exciting new site waiting to happen.

An interesting observation, ask people if there are ads on Facebook.

Surprisingly a large number of people say no. Why? Because they are in the visual dead zone where they are easy to ignore.

I certainly wouldn’t advertise on it. Of course the big challenge to all these sites is how to make money before they peak and burn. Having just got addicted to the new US series Flash Forward, I’d love to see into the future and see how many are still about in 5 years. I think it’ll be all change.