Nov
03
2006Blenders, YouTube, and what “new media” really means
03
2006
Blendtec makes blenders - REALLY POWERFUL blenders. To give people the idea of just how powerful the blenders are, they created a series of clips entitled “Will it Blend?“, and have uploaded them to YouTube. Check out the one where they turn a bag of marbles into a cloud of glass dust.
Many companies like to create online advertising campaigns in virtual walled gardens - keeping all content within their own web site. The assumption being that, by having full control over the “experience”, the marketer can fully absorb you into the carefully crafted aesthetic world of their brand, thus building a stronger connection with you.
This is entirely wrongheaded. You need to bring your advertising to where the people are. Even as the web fragments into more and more millions of web sites, the vast majority of users spend the vast majority of their time on a handful of web sites. “The web” can no longer be treated as a single medium - individual web communities such as YouTube need to be treated as distinct media in and of themselves.
Your own web site is the virtual equivalent of a real-world boutique. Sometimes a boutique is exactly what you want. That’s where people go to buy your stuff. But if what you’re selling is a message, you don’t hang ads up all over the walls of your own little boutique - where people only come in randomly or via expensive promotional efforts - you plaster the walls of the subway, the billboards on the highway - where the people are. Subways are loaded with unpleasant imagery - yet Apple, one of the most image-conscious brands on the planet, has no problem slathering the walls of subway stations with iPod posters.
Refusing to advertise via sites like YouTube and MySpace because you don’t have full control over the experience is as ignorant as not advertising in subways because they are filled with vagrants and overflowing trash barrels, or not advertising on highway billboards because there are smelly smokestacks nearby. You need to advertise where people actually are, even if you don’t fully “own the experience”. People don’t hang out “on the web”, they hang out on specific sites. Be there.