September 19, 2007
Rules of the Tube
That’s the main lesson for corporate types who want to use video sites like YouTube to promote their message, according to researchers at the Cass Business School. Viewers apparently don’t like to be taken in.
This is based on preliminary research into the viewing statistics for a sample of YouTube videos. Caroline Wiertz, a senior lecturer in marketing at Cass, says they show that authenticity is a big issue. Viewers react badly if they think professional content is being passed off as something amateur. "It is a dangerous game to try to dupe them," she says.
The other early finding from this analysis of viewing habits: embarrassment works. Viewers like to squirm, and they go back more often to videos that offer this vicarious thrill.
It would be hard to argue with the findings of this research and there are a number of examples of companies trying and failing to use a variety of social media to gain credibility in the marketplace. I suspect, however, that many companies and their marketing advisors will become more skilled at manipulating blogs, YouTube, Facebook etc to get across commercial messages in a surreptitious manner. The trick will be for consumers to stay one step ahead. As we move away from the old advertising model where most advertising messages were restricted to traditional print and broadcast media this new blurring of content, communication and advertising will raise difficulties for advertisers and consumers alike.
Posted by: Martin De Saulles | September 20th, 2007 at 11:41 am | Report this commentCompanies trying to manipulate consumers via social media sites is inevitable, but I think people will quickly become savvy to this. People are increasingly becoming immune to some types of online advertising, learning to ignore them completely, and it will become obvious what content on social media sites is genuinely user-generated, posing a massive challenge for companies wishing to manipulate them. It will be interesting to see how this one pans out!
Posted by: askthecrowd | September 25th, 2007 at 10:17 am | Report this commentCompanies trying to manipulate consumers via social media sites is inevitable, but I think people will quickly become savvy to this. People are increasingly becoming immune to some types of online advertising, learning to ignore them completely, and it will become obvious what content on social media sites is genuinely user-generated, posing a massive challenge for companies wishing to manipulate them. It will be interesting to see how this one pans out!
Posted by: askthecrowd | September 25th, 2007 at 10:18 am | Report this comment