Internet Marketing and Digital Media Strategy Sydney Australia

A Star is Born!

UK TV's - UK's Britans Got Talent, Susan Boyles Youtube video singing "I had a Dream" from the 1985 stage show Les Miserables now over 13.6 million (Friday) 20.6 million (Saturday) plays and over 100,000 people compelled to comment in less then a week - fantastic, this clip a great study in digital media convergence, online customer engagement and a reminder that although first impressions are important, you can never judge a book by its cover - ie a Universal Truth .

So what are people saying right now?

A quick check and real time graph of what's happening

Why so popular?

Apart from the fact the girl can sing! It's also about how the clip was edited and put together, it has all the elements of great story telling and movie making.  Set the scene, introduce the characters and problem, create the conflict points and character arcs, deliver the twist and finally the resolution.  From a technical point of view - professionally produced, great music, professional editing and very clear messaging.

But not every Hollywood picture wins an Oscar - so what makes a good story?

Universal Truths

A good story has to touch our hearts, to create an emotional response, something we can relate to and can embrace.  If we are moved enough we are compelled to comment, blog, share the experience (or buy/ complain).  In advertising and marketing there is nothing more powerful then trusted referral and word of mouth to drive your brand influence.

A happy customer tells three and an unhappy one x10!

Interestingly, Les Mis was first panned by the critics back in '85 but acheived success through a groundswell of word of mouth support and went on to international acclaim, countless awards and still runs today in Londons East End.

In todays online media world, referral is as simple as a click but the key here is that the content has to be worth watching and of value to the reader (we've all known those web newbies that feel compelled to mass send those chain letters, virus alerts and cute cat photos).

With all online, email, search and social networks like Twitter and Facebook, your readers decide if they want to know more and click in contrast to the old shotgun interupt and repeat rules of conventional advertising - but don't get me wrong, television is still the 800 pound guerilla of video  where most people spend their leisure time.  For finding information, sharing and creating for media the web rules.

The quality of your blog, your tweets, your photos, your videos all count.  What you say matters to building your brand, your subscribers and influence.  In the online world we are not all professional writers, journalists, musicans and film makers.  We don't have to look pretty nor have the family connections to achieve success. Like singing in the village and being rediculed by the local kids - its your creativity and passion that matters.

It will be interesting to see the BGT's TV ratings this week, the advertising rate card and to personally watch the rise and rise of Susan Boyle (rock on chick!)

Cheers

Maxy

Perform, Inform and Sell

Hi,

I forgot to mention in my last email our Presenter search, please find details below and feel to forward if you know someone who may be interested.

The Market

With high production cost pressure and increasingly fragmented audience attention there are limited growth opportunities in movies, TV and advertising roles for professional talent to help build their media profile.

Access to viewers has changed with the YouTube revolution BUT where's the money is often asked.

As you know with CLIVE every website can now easily add a professional presenter or spokes person which significantly increases website visitor engagement.  It provides a new revenue opportunity for talent.

Talent/ Presenter Search

As part of our ongoing expansion program we are always looking for new talent.

For example last month we began our multilingual presenters search -

• Australian exporters targeting International markets
• Australian tourism targeting International visitors
• Government and corporates communicating online to English as second language Residents
• International clients (we did a job for an Israel company last month)

Over the next few months we will begin to include all kinds of talent - dancers, musicians, anyone/ thing we can put on screen who can perform, inform and sell.

If you know of any potential presenter/ talent then please feel free to forward this message on.

FYI - Audition Process

We've slightly changed the CLIVE Audition process - instead of going through the whole expensive audition and transaprent video encoding process each time we've broken it down into steps.   

1. We do a call out,  (through our network including you, Star Now and our subscribers)
2. Hold pre auditions (shoot to green screen) once a month OR they can submit the own audition anytime via Youtube (more).
3. If they are OK we post to our Pre Auditions page (potential clients can then see)
4. If there is client demand for a Presenter and they pass our selection criteria we then bring them on board as one of our Certified Professional Presenters

No cost to the Presenter.

Any questions please send me a note

Cheers and all the best

Scott Maxworthy
CEO
Max Media and Entertainment Pty Ltd
http://www.maxys.com.au

mailto: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Chief Experience Officer
The CLIVE Video Project
http://www.clivevideo.com

Ph: +61 2 8005 8072
Mb: +61 0 414 792 072

Blog:     http://www.maxys.com.au/blog.html
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Scott-Maxworthy/567936101
Twitter:  http://www.twitter.com/maxymedia/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/maxys
Flickr:   http://www.flickr.com/photos/sgmdigital/
Skype:    scott.maxworthy

Studio Address
RidgeFilms
Level 1, 13 Cawarra Rd
Taren Point
NSW Australia 2229

The week that was!

An "interesting" week in the wide world of the web -

• Sensis (Yellow Pages/ Telstra) concedes defeat dumping it's search engine for Google search results; 
• we sat in on the Australian Broadband Conference and learnt more about the Australian National Broadband Network NBN shamozzle;
• there was a US Presidential Election (smiles) - the first tech savvy President!
• we had our first CLIVE Sales Partner conference and
• we tapped into the Web 2.0 Conference in San Fransisco.

How are the events related?

During the week Internet marketing guru Seth Godin, wrote a piece on "marketing lessons form the 2008 Presidential election."

One of his points "Influencing the Influencers"  

Seth writes,

Motivating the committed outperforms persuading the uncommitted. The unheralded success factor of Obama's campaign is the get out the vote effort. Every marketer can learn from this. It's easier (far easier) to motivate the slightly motivated than it is to argue with those that either ignore you or are predisposed to not like you.

To get a deeper understanding of this we need to take a few steps back and understand

1. The evolution of society and economy from nomadic to agricultural, industrial, informational towards the Creative Economy (see HP's Phil McKinney's presentation)
2. We are currently transforming from an industrial based economy to informational (see Morgan Stanleys Mary Meeker Web 2.0). Key points are
   
   1. An 81% correlation between GDP and advertising growth.
   2. Undermonitezed social networks/ VoIP and Video which is driving powerful usage growth
   3. Facebook and Youtube gained 500 basis points of relative share while Yahoo and MSN lost share over the last two years
   4. Focus on BRICS (Brasil, Russia,India, China and South Africa)
   5. Companies with cogent business models that provide consumer value should survive/ thrive.  consumers need more value than they have needed it in a long time and the Internet should be the best place to find it
3. An understanding of Groundswell - Internet user technographics - from "inactives" to "creators"

 So what does that mean for Australia?

Australia is currently looking to implement a National Broadband Network (NBN).  One needs to understand that the Creative Economy of the future is based on the broadband infrastructure of today.  The challenges of an aging population (e-health); skills shortage (e-education); green (carbon reduction); economic (global service export) are underpinned by a world best practice broadband infrastructure.

With the basic world class broadband infrastructure in place, innovation will prosper.  Australia has the opportunity to take a global leadership position in the development of the Creative Economy.

As Internet bandwidth improves more and more we will search, consume, share and produce video content.  The natural follow on from that will be greater internet video advertising.

The fact is, most of us are visual in the way we get our day to day information.

I know myself that when I'm trying to work out how to do something in Photoshop, say I'm looking to create a blurred background effect, then the first place I go and search now is Youtube, looking for a demo by some whizz who knows how to really drive the program.

You can then start to apply that to a whole range of "How to" type videos.

Not being the handyman type, I've used it to find out how to change a washer on a tap or a very quick class on how to cook a perfect garlic chook .

Combine this with mobility - and then you have rich instructional video anywhere - add haptic devices and then things start to get really interesting!

If a picture is worth a thousand words then what is a video worth?