360DigitalInfluence

A prominent trend over the past few years has been the massive growth of the online video sharing platform YouTube. Consumers have been turning to YouTube more and more, which is demonstrated by its becoming the second most popular search engine in April, behind its parent, Google.[i] What I find most interesting is how consumers are using YouTube.

YouTube has shed its reputation of being strictly an entertainment site. Sure, people still tune in  to see popular videos such as David after the dentist, the wedding entrance dance to Chris Brown’s Forever, and the most recent Lady Gaga video (who still has the most viewed videos on YouTube as of this posting), but recent data shows consumers are also turning to YouTube for health information, providing new opportunities for healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies to engage patients, caregivers and even prescribers.

I had a chance to sit down with the healthcare team at YouTube and learn more about the trends in video watching.

• Of YouTube’s 180 million viewers, 32% watch health videos - more than food or celebrity (take that, Lady Gaga!)[ii]
• Of those viewers 79% of health consumers have watched videos about their specific health conditionⁱⁱ
• 93% take action after viewing health information[iii]
• 69% conduct further online research as a result of the video they watchedⁱⁱⁱ
• And 60% interact with their doctorⁱⁱⁱ

So what does this mean for healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies?

It means YouTube, and online video sources provide an avenue to reach patients with condition specific information, which could include treatment options, and drive them to speak with their healthcare provider. And, opportunities exist on YouTube to provide patients with branded messages in advance of the patient-doctor conversation. Providers and pharmaceutical companies have another opportunity to reach consumers who are actively interested in receiving information on their conditions and actively searching for information.

Several companies have already ventured into this space with corporate and condition specific information.  Johnson & Johnson was the first to take a step into the YouTube world, developing a corporate site and channels for their major brands. Recently Novartis followed suit, and Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals launched a condition-specific page around ADHD.[iv] Based on the YouTube health data, I expect to see more healthcare companies joining YouTube’s roster soon, looking to capitalize on the opportunity.

[i] Comscore, May 2010

[ii] Google & OTX, December 2009

[iii] Google & OTX, March 2008

[iv] Disclaimer: Ogilvy works with Ortho-McNeil-Jassen to support their ADHD franchise

The Ad Council and Google DC recently held its latest Seminar Series briefing, Online Contests: A New Way to Raise Awareness and Engage Audiences! The content was pretty 101 for anyone who’s been a Facebook Page administrator but several panelists and attendees offered great tips for video contests; I’ve compiled them below with attribution.

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For PR Week Labs a few weeks ago I recorded a 15 minute presentation on 5 Steps to Conversation Management. Conversation Management is an 360 Digital Influence program for helping our clients establish or manage social network presence with the dual goals of grassroots engagement and business impact. Based on a dual theory of influence, our team uses Conversation Management to promote advocacy on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The steps are included below and you can watch the video here (for more videos check out our YouTube channel- this one was too long to be included).

360 Digital Influence- PR Week Labs- Conversation Management from Ogilvy 360DI on Vimeo.

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The World Cup, the biggest sporting event in the world, is quickly approaching. Starting June 11^th, 32 teams representing different countries from around the world will compete for the soccer title that has been given every four years since 1930 (with an exception of 1942 and 1946 due to WWII). But 2010 is a particularly special and relevant year. Why, you ask? Because of social media!

Social Media as we know it did not exist during the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Twitter did not launch until July 2006. Facebook didn’t become public until September 2006. YouTube existed but videos looked like this #6 most popular YouTube video of 2006. Now, only 4 years later, Facebook has over 400 million members and more than 50 million tweets are sent each day. These platforms, which were infants during the last World Cup, are now globally available and hugely popular.

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Want to earn a three month fellowship at Ogilvy and go to the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in France? Well, then, simply sell us a brick.

That’s the pitch from our colleagues over at OglivyOne. They’ve recently launched a search for the World Greatest Salesperson. The call for entries is simple: send in a video selling a brick and you’re entered to win. Head over to Ogilvy’s Youtube Channel to submit. “If you can sell a red brick, maybe you can sell anything,” said Mat Zucker, of OgilvyOne in a recent interview about the contest with the New York Times.

The contest is in response to what many perceive as the industry’s wandering away from the discipline of sales. Sure, social media has brought about major changes in the way that businesses communicate with consumers. But, for many of our clients, the way they make money has not. Selling is still critical to success. Our founder and former door to door salesman, David Ogilvy, is often quoted as saying “we sell, or else.”

The spirit of this contest is akin to renewing your wedding vows; many years have passed and the environment is radically different, but the commitment remains the same: we sell, or else. So check out the video, and sell us your brick. You could find yourself working at Ogilvy.

Check out our Facebook page or head over to the Ogilvy Youtube Channel to enter.

I was fortunate enough to spend the last few days at WPP’s annual Stream Conference - which brings together some of the brightest minds from around the network in an unconference format to discuss the what’s next in digital and technology communications.

Some of the best sessions I attended were the ones organized around lists - be it potential “truths” presented for discussion, or co-created outputs.  One such session was The Myth of the Viral presented by YouTube.

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By now it is certainly not news to note that YouTube is already the largest on-demand broadcast medium for anyone with an internet connection, boasting over 71 million unique users each month and the 6th largest audience on the Internet. 75% of all Americans have watched at least one video clip online in the last month. These staggering numbers coupled with the rise of broadband adoption in the US (over 80% of Internet users in the US have broadband as of March 2009) mean that online video is no longer a niche activity and has squarely hit the mainstream.

When you consider the opportunities from a Pharma marketing point of view, YouTube is certainly tempting. The FDA has yet to create significant regulations governing YouTube and there have been many marketing efforts in the Pharma space over the past several years which have seen fairly good results. Novartis’ FluFlix video contest from 2007, for example, had nearly 800,000 views of the intro video. In 2008, Sanofi-Aventis launched their GoInsulin campaign video channel which now has more than 300,000 views. More recently, earlier this year AstraZeneca saw success with their branded MyAsthmaStory video campaign sharing real stories of Symbicort patients and how the product had transformed their lives.

Concurrently, many pharma brands including Johnson & Johnson, Boehringer Ingelheim and Novartis (to name a few) have launched their own branded official YouTube channels to share a compilation of videos about various products, patient testimonials, research and development highlights and other corporate produced information. These channels represent an ongoing commitment to the YouTube channel and signal an intention to make this a longer term part of their overall corporate communications.
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I’ve just completed a successful day at Search Engine Strategies in NY, with tons of great panels, Guy Kawasaki keynote admitting how good he is at spamming twitter, and plenty of iPhone giveaway business card drops.  The last panel of the day “Video Search Engine Optimization: 2009 and Beyond” featured some good presentations, saving the best for last; Matthew Lui, YouTube Project Manager, Sponsored Videos.  I was able to flipcam is speach.  

If you can get past the video quality, my shaky arm, and the jerry curl in front of me, there is actually some excellent information in here about video search engine optimization, and the YouTube advertising platform  Enjoy!

Being a newbie to the sphere of employee communications, I knew I was in good company at a session OPR hosted last night about the importance of clear messaging within organizations when I saw the following note on each table: “Employees are on the front line of brand and reputation creation. What they tell their friends and families and post on YouTube and Facebook can define a company more quickly and more surely than anything the CEO tells The Wall Street Journal.”

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This week’s social media controversy is brought to you by: Youtube. 

Mashable broke the story earlier in the week, noting that thousands of videos that feature copyrighted Warner music have been silenced on the video sharing site, literally, by muting the audio tracks.  A message below the videos reads : “This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled.”

This is move is being positioned a compromise, the other solution being the full removal of the video itself.  It’s there’s anything we’ve learned in witnessing the growing pains of Youtube it’s that music licensing is a pretty complex swamp.  This post is in no way an attempt to untangle the legal implications.  However, one thing is clear, music is a big part of Youtube, bigger than you may think on a video sharing site. continue reading