This is social media marketing at it’s best! The Old Spice guy records a get well video for Kevin Rose creator of Digg.com, Revision3 and host of Diggnation.

This is brilliance in action.  A funny video directed at an unlikely person with a large social network.  Old Spice gets their brand to geeks everywhere.  (And it’s funny too.  This won’t work unless people want to talk about it.)  Old Spice has made scores of personalized message videos to invade other demographics too.  Check them all out in their YouTube channel.

There’s one directed at Alyssa Milano.

After her reaction, Old Spice Guy recorded and posted a response video.

Then Kevin Rose sees the video directed at him and replies on Twitter.  Then Old Spice Guy records and uploads another video to continue the conversation.

Then another video for Alyssa Milano.

This is how it’s done, people!  Old Spice is schooling us all on social media marketing!  Pay attention!

As someone who has been working very hard for four years to try and bring credibility to web video, I’m extremely disappointed in what I saw on the Streamy Awards Sunday night.

The Streamy Awards which is run by the newly formed International Academy of Web Television (IAWTV) touts itself as the “…most prestigious awards ceremony devoted to honoring excellence in original web television programming and those who create it.”  That’s what it says on their website and that’s what everyone was expecting during the months of publicity that led up to the award show streamed live on the internet on April 11.  What we actually saw during the award presentation itself however was a different matter.

The tone of the entire ceremony was crude, vulgar, superficial, and unprofessional.  There were multiple masturbation jokes in the host’s monologue, a scripted bit with an actor playing a vulgar porn producer that goes on and on and on, presenters in nothing but underwear, not to mention unplanned events like two male streakers and people rushing the stage to molest the presenters.

@streamyawards This is insulting & not funny. Gay jokes & dick jokes are not funny when Vanity Fair called you the Oscars of the internet.

– @Destini41 Destini

Sorry to any of our fans who watched and were offended by the raunchiness at the Streamys.The tone of humor was not honoring the evening IMO

– @feliciaday Felicia Day

There was a point in the show that I was like “Is this really happening?” I can’t even imagine how the brands and sponsors felt being a big part of the event. This is one of the biggest hurdles in online video is getting brands to trust the content they are advertising against. Now, they can’t even trust a show ABOUT online video!

– iJustine

Worse, the bulk of the prepared jokes played off the stereotype of Elitist Hollywood v. Web Show Wanabe.  From the host’s introductory monologue:

Tonight we have 35 awards to give out but let’s not forget the real winners, the 4 people who actually made money on the internet.

One or two of these types of jokes would be OK but it really seemed like this was the theme of the evening.  You can’t make money on the internet (not true, we do, and so do others) and nobody watches shows on the web (also not true.  We’ve had a thriving and growing community watching our show for years.)

About a third of the way through there was a pre-recorded “man on the street” video that I found particularly insulting. The host repeatedly asked random people on the street what their favorite web show was.  Of course no one they asked even knew such a thing existed, leaving the impression that the industry is a complete joke.  This meme went on and on through the evening…

My biggest personal issue with the show was that it disrespected the professional industry that I (and many others) have been working so hard to build over the past 5 years. The constant jokes about lack of funding in web series, lack of viewers, etc. cheapened our hard work, especially when a lot of the attendees ARE making money and have more viewers (and less publicists) than cable television shows.

– Casey McKinnon

All of the technical problems were one thing but it seemed like the jokes were picking on the internet – not CELEBRATING what we do.

– @buckhollywood Michael Buckley

The @streamyawards were a complete joke. I felt so bad for the people who make their living from the internet, to be ridiculed all evening.

– @ConwayJamie Jamie Conway

To be fair, there were a few very positive moments, mostly by the award recipients themselves, like the Auto-Tune the News gang who sang their acceptance speech in four part harmony.  Amazing.  Or Felicia Day who, in spite of having to take the stage only moments after what happened in the picture above, managed to deliver an extremely uplifting, generous, and authentic acceptance speech.  Very classy.

The Streamy’s could have been about the pioneering spirit of the creators, the excitement of doing something different, the possibilities of the future, but no.  Instead it was about snarky, crude, superficial, mean spirited jokes.  They spent the evening making fun of what I’ve been successfully doing for the last four years of my life.  In short the newly minted IAWTV has brought the absolute worst of stereotypical Hollywood snobbery to my industry and frankly I resent it.

Telling a thousand people that their jobs, content, livelihoods, and dreams are a joke, and that the only way they’ll amount to anything is to beg their “betters” (read: “celebrities,” but the unstated implication was made very clear) to slum it in their crappy webseries…well, that’s not gonna go over well. Repeatedly joking that it’s subpar quality, or that there’s no money, future, or reason to get involved only hurts us all.

– Barrett Garese

I can’t fathom what the producers of the show were thinking during the months preparing for this broadcast.  How could they get it so wrong, insult their own membership, and frankly tarnish their own brand on purpose like this.  The producers have posted an apology and have promised to do better next year.  Fine… I don’t think simply trying harder is going to resolve the issue though.   The problem goes to the basic core values of the IAWTV.  What kind of organization do they want to be?  Do they represent all types of web video?  …or only those that try to mimic broadcast television?  Do they truly support all web video creators?  …or are they only interested in getting the attention of a few large studios?  Are they going to be inclusive and truly international as their name suggests?  …or only cater to the worst superficial stereotype of LA based “Hollywood.”  Time will tell…

Today Consumer Reports asked me to do an online survey.  Normally I don’t do this type of thing but I’ve supported Consumer Reports for a long time and I was curious what was in their survey given the dire state of the magazine industry.  The “bait” in the e-mail was the opportunity to choose their next magazine cover.  These were the two choices.

Really?  You couldn’t figure that one out? You don’t know which cover is going to attract more readers at the newsstand?

After filling out the rest of the survey I was actually surprised at how low I scored Consumer Reports.  I used to read the magazine every month and I used much of the information.  I don’t get the magazine anymore obviously, but I do subscribe to their website.  I used their ratings to buy a vacuum cleaner about six months ago but not for much else.  The internet now gives me access to lots of other product users and I can get information from them directly.  The product information available online is also so vast that any one company just can’t test and rate everything.  It’s too bad.  I think an organization like Consumers Union provides certain “watchdog” services that you can’t get anywhere else.  I don’t think they will survive though unless they figure out a way to add more value to their ratings.

Check out the related videos that are presented after watching an acoustic version of Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? on YouTube.

The big budget movie “Avatar” gets the top three spots. Why? The official music video version of Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? has almost the exact same title and also has WAY more views than any of the other three, yet it gets bumped to fourth position. The movie “Avatar” only matches one word in the title of the current video but it gets the top three spots. I sense something fishy. Are small independent producers getting pushed down in the rankings in favor of companies like 20th Century Fox? It looks like it to me.

CAT won a contest on the revision3 website and we were able to attend the recording of diggnation episode #207 at the MSNBC.com digital cafe in Rockefeller Center. Rachel Maddow was a guest on the show and she made us cocktails!

We had a great time! Check out all the pix I uploaded to flickr.

With only two more episodes to go, Dave Winer posted his theory about how Battlestar Galactica will end. I think he’s got it wrong. I’ve had a different theory for several weeks now so I’m going to sandblast it into the internet right here so I can get the prestige if I’m right! (If I’m wrong, everyone just move along. Nothing to see here…)

The Galactica has one jump left and they all somehow go through a time warp. They end up back on Earth many thousands of years ago, long before the atomic war and either become the first humans or mix in with them. All except Starbuck who only goes back part of the way and crashes her viper on Earth and dies.

It turns out that Earth wasn’t the 13^th colony it was the FIRST and some time before the atomic war on Earth ships leave to form the twelve colonies.

Everyone on Glactica throughout the series was actually part Cylon because of their distant past on Earth. That’s why Baltar could see Six in his mind without actually being a Cylon.

Why do I think this?

“All this has happened before. All this will happen again.” – Pythia

…or to be more old school about it,

There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. That they may have been the architects of the great pyramids, or the lost civilizations of Lemuria or Atlantis. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive somewhere beyond the heavens…

..or not… Who the heck knows with this show?

I came across this cartoon the other day.

It’s called “Word of Mouth” but I think what it really illustrates is that impressions that are closer to you are more valuable than others.  It speaks to Old Media v. New Media – Traditional Advertising v. Social Networking.  The friend isn’t even promoting her drink, she’s just sitting there, yet that influence is more powerful than all the overwhelmingly powerful noise of traditional advertising.

This is the power of Social Media.  A video podcast (for example) that has a regular community surrounding it creates a small family.  The number of viewers is perhaps smaller but the impressions are much more effective and valuable.    I think this needs to be taken into consideration when setting a price for ads or product placement.

Yea, I know, many advertisers and agencies don’t get it.  That’s the mantra.  But you know what?  I think many of them do.  They sit around and think about this stuff all day just like we do.  I think some of them want to feign ignorance so they can get something valuable for free.  Don’t fall for it.  A simple mention in the right video podcast is much more valuable than a magazine ad or a banner on a website.

This is a response to a post on Michael Geoghegan’s blog called Podcasting – It’s a Community Not an Industry.

Podcasters, it is time you face the facts. If you are waiting for a podcast advertising service to ride in on a white horse and rescue you from your monetary woes, let me help you: start looking elsewhere.

Over the past year we’ve basically come to the same conclusion as Michael. The various new online ad “networks” aren’t going to do much for you as a podcaster.

The promise of joining an online “network” and automatically getting ads (and payment) as you focus only on making your content has always seemed a dubious promise to me. I do a video podcast about knitting which I think is a strong niche with lots of potential. In the various meetings we’ve had with these online “networks” it’s always been about raw numbers with very little consideration of the strength or subject of your content. There seems to be a blind focus on grabbing eyeballs, and advertising as the only way to monetize those eyeballs. Last year pre-roll ads were the answer. This year it’s overlays. The online mainstream media and all the VC money seems to be focused on developing advertising technology ONLY. No other options are being explored with such vigor. However, this is a new industry. Everything is changing very fast. There are a LOT of things that aren’t going to work. We really need to be exploring many new, different, out of the box models to find a FEW that are really going to be successful and repeatable.

The focus today seems to be to try to give the traditional ad buyers exactly what they want. The problem is, all they want is what they know. And all they know is what works for them now on TV and radio. I don’t think a traditional broadcast model is going to work for podcasting. We’re seeing a paradigm shift in the media industry. The Digital revolution is separating content from delivery technology. Shows go everywhere and aren’t confined to the specific distribution technology they were created for. At the same time the content producer is moving closer to the consumer. In the TV broadcast world there are lots of middle men. There’s the producer of the show, the cable channel corporation that pays for the show, the cable TV systems that delivers the show, etc. etc. before you can see it in your living room. With podcasting it’s, producer –> internet –> viewer. Any monetization model is going to have to leverage this greater simplicity. The mass media models from the past aren’t the answer and that’s all anybody seems interested in trying to develop.

So, I called podcasting an “industry” above and I guess I should probably respond to what Paul Colligan posted on his blog about podcasting NOT being an industry. These days I use “podcasting” as more of a synonym to New Media. The whole landscape is changing and constantly morphing into something else. It’s harder and harder to be strict about the definitions of specific technologies. For example: Our show Let’s Knit2gether is technically a podcast because it’s downloadable with an RSS feed but on the new AppleTV you can just click on it and play it. Does that make our show NOT a podcast? We also sell DVDs. Is our show a podcast when it’s on DVD? I don’t know anymore. In any case the media industry is changing rapidly. What it is becoming may be unknown (and un-nameable) but I still think it’s an industry.

A final thought. There’s so much more in Michael’s post to address. CAT and I have been talking about it all day. I think I’m going to cut it off here though and save the rest for future posts. When I made the decision a few years ago to shift my broadcast TV career into New Media I expected it to be a wild ride with plenty of excitement and change. I have not been disappointed in that respect and I’m sure there will always be plenty to comment on next time.

picture – maryjanemidgemink

Check out these interviews Zadi and Steve got at the Spirit Awards.

“You can’t see paintings on the internet.”That really struck me. I’m not sure why. It doesn’t make much sense to me. I went over to the epic-fu community site and left the comment:

…you can’t slice a tomato with a karate chop either.

It’s interesting how some filmmakers in the video totally get it and some don’t. I guess we all move into the future at different rates.

I just finished watching the first two episodes of Quarterlife.

There’s an article over at NewTeeVee that examines the shows audience numbers, specifically that the numbers were going down. Andrew Baron commented about it on his blog too. Quarterlife seems to be losing their audience. The question is why.

I had no idea who made this show until the end credits and I nearly fell out of my chair. How could Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick be responsible for a show that I thought was so terrible? I usually like their work!

I’m reminded of a conversation I had a few days ago. We were discussing the difficulty in doing drama in short segments. Comedy and spectacle are easier and more satisfying in short clips but drama takes time to build. I think maybe the 8 minute length is part of the problem. It’s dragging the show down. There’s just not enough time to get into it.

OK maybe that’s part of it but there are other problems too.

So the main character calls her roommate an alcoholic on her blog and then she’s surprised that it becomes a problem? How clueless are these characters? How can I care about someone who basically creates their own problems this way?

Oh, and having TWO product placements in the first 90 seconds was really off putting. Product placement needs to be much more subtle to work. Corporate logos invading the frame constantly hovering in front of and behind the actors just kills the authenticity of the drama. It really pulls you out of the story and makes you think you’re just watching a contrived advertisement. The main character rolling around on her bed with her computer just screams product shot! product shot!

The product placement right up front set a really bad tone right at that critical point where you should be concentrating on winning over the audience. Hmmm… Maybe I was just put off right from the start and didn’t give the show a chance after that…

OK, so I just watched the third episode. I’m trying. Maybe it’s getting better. I’m not sure. I’m thinking that there are too many characters. With so many character arcs to cover in 8 minutes the plot moves forward way too slowly. Maybe this show is over-reaching and would be more successful concentrating only on one character.

And where is the RSS feed? Why isn’t this show on iTunes? I want to subscribe and watch this on AppleTV in my living room. That’s a much better place to watch something like this. Maybe it would help me get into the show more.

I’m going to watch a few more episodes but only because I respect the producers’ past work. I really want to like this show, but it’s hard.