Amazon’s new features allows customers to review products by recording a video of themselves – or by submitting their video review. This is going to open up an entirely new type of product placement.

Imagine an interactive talent agency, lets call it “pay per review modeling company,” which offers beautiful actors and articulate, regular people to sample products, film reactions and post them online.
I think this will add to the clutter online and make it even more difficult to discern quality content from paid endorsement. I wonder if Amazon, or other companies, will serve ads against the video reviews…“

Video reviews sponsored by Buzz Agent: Get Cool Stuff For Your Opinions, Buzz Agent.”

I’m sure that brands will conduct video product review contests: “Come up with the most innovative way to review our product, send us a link of that review posted online, and if our panel of judges selects your video review—we’ll use it in a national commercial and give you xyz prize.”

Curly: You know what the secret of life is?Mitch: No, what?Curly: This.Mitch: Your finger?Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean shit.Mitch: That’s great, but what’s the one thing?Curly: That’s what you’ve got to figure out. My business partner has an amazing philosophy: the essence of focus is sacrifice. I think this philosophy is particularly relevant in marketing businesses.Think social life for a second. When you’re describing a girl at a party to a friend: “She’s the girl with the obnoxious laugh,” or “He’s the guy that works for Microsoft.” Seldom do we provide an in-depth list of the features that the define people we meet. Unless there is no one characteristic that emerges as memorable. Those descriptions sound something like, “Don’t you remember, she’s the girl who went to school with Scott, she was wearing a blue dress, and she spilled that drink…” “Oh, now I remember, the girl who spilled the drink.”When a business stands for one thing that is clear and differentiated it helps consumers not only remember the business, but also to evoke associations. If we were marketing a flower shop whose big ideal was cheering up office workers with flowers. Cheer up could become the one thing…and in conversation….Zach’s flowers…the cheer up people…What’s your one thing? Right now mine is sleep.

Google Audio and TargetSpot have dramatically increased the efficiency of radio, and in so doing, created opportunities for new advertisers to invest in the medium. While the media on these two platforms, remnant terrestrial and streaming spot inventory respectively, is less desirable than the prime spots available on the same stations, the turnkey process of placing an ad, setting the demographic criteria and instantaneous reporting might just justify the quality difference to an interactive media buyer.

It boils down to having data in a language that’s easy to analyze and compare across media. Google Audio and TargetSpot makes it easy to measure the ROI of spot radio in the same language as an interactive campaign. That’s their greatest asset. And it doesn’t hurt that you can place an entire buy in minutes…

I am impressed the NBC’s digital strategy for JourneyMan, a new series about a time traveling man. The advertisement on Pandora, an online music website, invites people to listen one of several JourneyMan channels on Pandora. Clicking the ad, opens the radio player.

People often talk about creating an online experience, JourneyMan’s advertising strategy nails it!  It’s not only contextually relevant, it’s completely engaging.

• Check out the microsite here and notice how they’ve integrated Honda…
• JourneyMan radio channel screenshot on Pandora. I actually like the songs they’ve picked…I’ll “Subscribe” to the brand…

I am impressed the NBC’s digital strategy for JourneyMan, a new series about a time traveling man. The advertisement on Pandora, an online music website, invites people to listen one of several JourneyMan channels on Pandora. Clicking the ad, opens the radio player.

People often talk about creating an online experience, JourneyMan’s advertising strategy nails it!  It’s not only contextually relevant, it’s completely engaging.

• Check out the microsite here and notice how they’ve integrated Honda…
• JourneyMan radio channel screenshot on Pandora. I actually like the songs they’ve picked…I’ll “Subscribe” to the brand…