In this day an age it’s not surprising that people are catching on to the stickiness factor of online video marketing. Traditional newspapers and news websites are turning to YouTube to market their stories, so viewers will be more prompted to visit their website. Not only are journalists filming videos of investigative stories, which is not a new concept, some are filming trailers for their stories as thrilling visualeye candy provking emotional response by viewers. Even more creative was the St. Petersburg Times, who made a music video with staffers portrayed as musicians! At first thought, this innovation seems to discredit the profesionalism of journalists, but at the same time – people do like to be entertained… So I credit The Dallas Morning News and the St. Petersburg Times as marketing geniuses.
The article I read was Jean Yung’s recap of Online Journalism Review’s interview with three innovators from the two news organizations: Anthony Moor, Dallas Morning News’ Deputy Managing Editor/Interactive, Leslie White, Dallas Morning News’ Director of Photography, and Christine Montgomery, Managing Editor of TampaBay.com .The interview revealed that TampaBay.com’s YouTube videos produced YouTube trailers, which was the lead up to the full story in the next day’s paper. They also put the video up on the staffer’s Facebook pages.
Moor suggested putting up the video on YouTube to attract a different target audience, not to mention the convenience of it being free on the web. Traditional newspapers have already hooked a certain demographic, and he noted that it’s about time that we start using various mediums to target every audience. And what better way then YouTube?
OJR: How did YouTube’s style affect the tone of the trailer?
Moor: Our people in the photography department really wanted to produce the video in a very captivating, dynamic, edgy format. We wanted to make you feel not only like you want to look at this, but that you want to put nine dollars down and watch a movie about it. So quick cuts, pounding music, and trailer-like tease in the storyline.
The interviewees noted how important it is to get your trailer on as many websites as possible. They put the “unequal justice” video, which is on the emotional issue of murderers receiving only probation as punishment, on the news website and on YouTube as an experiment to see how many hits it would get. It only reached a few hundred, but of those who knows how many may link back to the new site, or even subscribe to the newspaper.
According to Montgomery, “We learned that YouTube is indeed an effective way to reach people in a way that traditional marketing can’t. We learned that we can do “serious journalism” and poke a little fun at ourselves at the same time… What would I tell other papers thinking about doing this? Go for it. It was a lot of fun and it gave many of our staffers a fresh outlet for their work. Also, all in all, it was a fairly inexpensive endeavor.”
So YouTube as marketing? It is the perfect outlet for people to get their name out there. Newspapers are a business and need to make money too. I am surprised that journalists didn’t market in this way earlier. As for the future, it’s a little scary to see what sites like YouTube will look like. Will we be able to find the content we are looking for, while digging through all the junk ads and promotions?
~ How will using YouTube as a marketing tool for various businesses take away from the authenticity the site was designed for?
12 Comments
May 20, 2008 at 11:56 am
[...] (Sara) Yung, J. (2008, Jan 24). Newspapers Use YouTube Video Previews To Attract Readers. Online Journalism Review. Respondents: Jason, Jessica, Khair, Lorin, NicoleC, WhitneyT [...]
May 20, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Your topic brings up an interesting point. I talked to Marian Liu, a Seattle Times reporter, and she said that upcoming journalists should have working knowledge of how to shoot and edit video and music. A news story with a clip that can be put online brings more to the story and allows the readers/viewers to gain a better understanding of the story. The Seattle Times’ classified ads have also found a place in video. Now, people can make a video about their product and place it on The Seattle Times’ website. This allows could-be buyers to physically view the product and the seller, which could negatively or positively affect their choice to buy the product. That example was also reflected in your example on a larger-business scale.
To address your question I believe that using YouTube as a marking tool expands what the site was designed for. Videos are still being shared but now it has some commercial advertising, publicity purpose. Everything is still authentic, but one is just utilizing the service for more than sharing funny videos.
May 20, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Sara, Great post!
With the upcoming technologies unfolding right in front of our eyes, using online sites for marketing purposes seems like a great move for companies. Moving back to what Sara mentioned above, with newspapers using online sites to endorse advertisements, such as the New York times creating an online classified section to view products in real time it seems like it would attract more viewership and make it more accessible for people to find what they are looking for quicker.
Although Youtube current generates more videos for entertainment purposes, with such a well known name and a huge following, why not use it for commercial and marketing purposes as well? Authenticity will not be compromised and we will have a site that enables us to receive entertainment as well as information!
May 21, 2008 at 7:50 am
You wondered why journalists didn’t market their stories on youtube before. I think one reason for this could be that print journalists don’t see themselves as needing to transition their text to video, even though most people pick up newspapers because of the photos. The problem is that the older the journalist, typically the more out-of-touch with today’s technology they will be, and they’ll admit that. Newspapers are really lucky that the baby-boomer generation from the ’50s are keeping them alive, because something like less than 20 percent of Americans under 30 subscribe to or buy a daily newspaper. So this is definitely a trend that newspapers need to jump on or else the print business model is going to suffer more than it is now.
May 21, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Wow, that’s a scary thought, Lorin: that there is a strong posibility the newspaper industry will die because the boomers will (not to sound too sedistic… ) As our generation grows up, online technologies for journalism will too. What do you think the newspaper industry will look like 20 years from now, based on journalisms current technological trends?
I agree with what Jessica and Nicole said too – that YouTube will benefit everyone, business and citizens alike. At first I felt like the authenticity of YouTube was being ruined by plastering it with publicity for businesses, but if you don’t want to watch it – you can use it for whatever your searching fr. Do you think in the future one of these genres (journalism or home videos) will dominate the other?
May 21, 2008 at 9:49 pm
What I am concerned about, in regards to using YouTube as a marketing tool, is that the online environment is becoming too cluttered. Sure, it sounds great to say that little old me will post a video and poof—suddenly thousands of people will be laughing and telling their friends about it. This is unrealisitic and ignored the fact that millions of other people are doing the exact same thing. If you want to use YouTube as a marketing platform, please think of it as a supplement, not a stand alone tool.
May 22, 2008 at 8:08 am
Very interesting post! Nice job explaining why we should care about this with some very useful examples.
The idea of being able to use video and social networking features to improve experience of somewhat boring primarily text based websites seems like a natural way to move forward.
Re. YouTube as a marketing tool: sure, I think that’s great. I do see this a bit more broadly and not limited to YouTube. I see a trend towards marketing, for various purposes, using social networking with YouTube being a good example of one such tool.
I recently did a related post as well.
http://khairup.wordpress.com/2008/05/12/online-social-networks-video-sharing-and-copyright-infringement/
May 22, 2008 at 8:10 am
In response to your second question yes I think the use of youtube in this way might actually drive others of us away from youtube. If one thing is for sure we as a society do not like to wait and we certainly don’t want to put the necessary effort into a video search on youtube if we are going to have to do a tremendous amount of digging
May 22, 2008 at 8:21 am
Sara,
Yes, it’s true that adding more media and marketing tools to youtube may cause it to become a little clustered. But as Whitney mentioned thousands of people post a day, and we could not even begin to sort through it all, so so what if it broadens a little bit and we start to see some marketing on there as well? Will we really even know? I mean, if Britney followers of the world can go on and cry to the world to let Britney be, what’s it to us if Coca-Cola wants to go on and promote as well.
It may be a good idea to use a seperate branch of youtube for soley marketing purposes as well, so we know where to go to distinguish our entertainment purposes vs. product knowledge.
May 22, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Jessica — you bring up a good alternative. Facebook has its Marketplace, Myspace has a section where one can listen to current music artists and their music, so why shouldn’t YouTube have a seperate place for marketing? Going on with Sara’s point, I feel like with the decrease of “babyboomers”, people will need to find alternatives to capture the interest of the growing tech-savy generation. If YouTube can’t be an agreed upon media then how about another file-sharing website? To address Sara’s question on the newspaper in 20 years-I feel that, world-wide, there will still be a type of paper media because a good amount of people still won’t have access to Internet. But as for what we know as a newspaper, today, I believe that most of the papers will have most of their content online and each article will have some sort of commenting/discussing feature.
June 4, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Jessica,
Awesome idea! Now, we just need to find a way to make people actually view the vidoes =)
In my honest opinion it will only work if the advertisements dont bother the user (think Google) or actually entertain them. The primary way I see us doing this for video based ads on YouTube is through product placement in music videos and games. Games can actually have an in-game video placement.
Personally I wouldnt really want to watch a marketing video at all. Well, atleast, not as much as I would want to watch random YouTube videos about my neighbors cat doing her newest stunt. Or maybe Britneys latest escapade or really just some hot new music video!=)
June 9, 2008 at 9:54 pm
I agree with the above post if this can be done in such a way as to not inconvenience the user’s experience, because lets face it that all we are really talking about, then more power to the individuals that can successfully make the transition or get discovered through this kind of marketing