With online video consumption continuing to grow, HotHouse Account Director, Anthony Slater, talks to HotHouse’s online video specialist, Kate Ayrton, about the power of online video and how it presents marketers with a huge opportunity to engage consumers. The discussion looks at what marketers need to do to get active in this space and how to make the most of the demand for richer, smarter and more interactive content.
Xander Black, Creative Director at HotHouse, discusses why great work online is so much more than specific technologies or beautiful visual design
The internet is a breeding ground for ideas. New ones emerge every day. ‘Memes’ come and go on a daily basis and the good ones linger on… go viral and become part of the language of the internet itself.
Whether it’s Lolcats, the Star Wars Kid, or the history of dance, we’ve all seen them, laughed at them, and passed them on to others to enjoy. The internet has become the best vehicle the world has seen for the genesis of ideas and their proliferation. A single idea can spread across the world in a matter of hours.
These days, when you want your new campaign to be seen, you’re not just trying to stand out from a page of news content. You’re not even just competing against your competitors. Online, you’re competing against the very best that the internet has to offer.
By Simon van Wyk
In this month’s HotHouse podcast, Econsultancy vice president Rebecca Lieb talks about how web content strategies are going to take over from traditional advertising strategies. Here are links to a few case studies about companies that have already taken the plunge.
Joe Pulizzi, mentioned in Simon’s previous post on online content, has an excellent blog on online content marketing. Here are some of his examples of corporates who are getting it right when it comes to online content:
MasterCard Small Business: Billed as “Solutions for companies with revenue less than$10 million”, this site is very heavily branded and oriented toward doing business with MasterCard, although it also contains a number of useful articles about running a small business. M/C reports that 50% of new small business signups come directly from those informational articles.
Lego Brickmaster Club: Joe Pulizzi has produced a very detailed analysis of this customer loyalty program on his blog, speaking with first-hand experience as the father of a six-year-old Lego fan! Regarding Lego’s online content marketing, Joe says that a site for ‘power builders’, plenty of user-generated content, user case studies and user discussion forums integrate well with offline collateral such as Brickmaster magazine to keep customers excited about Lego.
Proctor & Gamble’s Beinggirl.com: Produced by P&G’s Tampax tampon brand, this site mixes product information with, well, girl stuff. Joe Pulizzi writes: “P&G is very transparent on the site. Any person can tell that the site sponsor is Tampax. They also have a few product sections, one of which is free samples. But the majority of the site focuses on content for girls - music, discussion, video…it’s all here. And frankly, some of the discussion makes me thankful that I have two boys and no girls.” Research conducted by Forrester for P&G found that Beinggirl.com is four times as effective as a similarly-priced program using traditional media. That makes it worth closer study.
