You Could Win an Emmy!

Yep, for the first time, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences has made broadband television eligible to win an Emmy!

So, if you fancy yourself quite the producer, you can register for your chance at fame. To be eligible, the program has to be created for broadband transmission and must fall within the categories traditionally recognized by the Academy: drama, comedy, reality shows, etc.

You must enter your show by April 7.

Start thinking about your acceptance speech now…

The Viral Video Awards

And the award goes to….

If you’re looking for inspiration for what kind of online video is sure to be a hit, take a lesson from these top 5 for 2007, according to company GoViral.

1) Cadbury Gorilla
2) Smirnoff “Green Tea Partay“
3) Ray’Ban “Catch Sunglasses“
4) Blendtec “Will It Blend?”
5) Lynx/Axe “Boom Chicka Wa Wa“

Let me know your favorite and start brainstorming how you can come up with a video that people will love that can draw attention to your brand.

Holiday Shopping 2.0

For years, we’ve been able to shop online for our myriad holiday presents, so that’s certainly nothing new. But some retailers are pulling out all the stops to create a useful and fun online experience using many Web 2.0 tools.

Dell
Dell is a great example. Like many people, they’re jumping on the online video bandwagon, but in a smart way. They created a site, http://www.yoursishere.com/, where you can choose a video plea (performed by various B celebrities) for the product that you want and send it to your friends and family. For example, George’s mom from “Seinfeld” says in her video, “Not that it’s any of my business, but you usually get them a thoughtless gift every year anyway. Would it kill you to get them something nice this holiday season?”

Then, you can link that to your PayPal account to encourage friends and family to contribute to the “fund”. You can even embed a widget on your Facebook and MySpace pages to track the fund’s progress and thank your contributors. The initiative launches Thanksgiving weekend.

Sears
With the reissuance of their famous “Wishes” catalog, Sears is continuing their Wish theme campaign. One new component this year is a social space they have created with Yahoo called Where Wishes Begin. Log on and you can vote on what you would wish for, ask and answer questions about gift giving through Yahoo Answers, share your “wish” photos on Flickr, and learn about special “wishing hours” both in store and online during which you can get special holiday deals.

Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart is heavily pushing its Web site, www.walmart.com, this season with about 100 special sales revealed daily on the site over the course of the season. And they are also tapping into mobile marketing, letting people who text the keyword “save” to 96278 get a message back, revealing the sales item as soon as it’s announced.

They’ve also added some new features to the site to make holiday shopping easier, including a free shipping program where you can buy something online and have it delivered to your local store for free, an option to check availability of products at your local store (that sounds great to me, I hate to go in Wal-Mart looking all over for something and not find it), and a rate and review system where you can post comments about products on the site.

Wal-Mart execs anticipate sales will rise 40-60% on Walmart.com this year and expect about 800 million visits by the conclusion of the year.

Anything that makes holiday shopping easier gets a thumbs up from me!

Marketing With Online Video

I came across two great examples of creatively using online video to promote a product (in both of these cases the product was a new album) that I thought I would share.

First, Sony BMG recently launched a contest to promote Bob Dylan’s new three-disc collection, Dylan, by allowing people to submit video on YouTube of themselves lip-syncing to “Like a Rolling Stone.” They will pick their favorite submissions and edit them together to make the very first video for the song. Check out the submissions so far here.

Nelly and his label also came up with a creative way to engage another popular Web site, Panraven, which allows you to create “stories.” Essentially, it allows you to meld together text, photos, audio and video to create an interactive format that tells a story. Here, Nelly posted a “story” about the making of the video for his album’s first single, “Wadsyaname.” You can watch video, see photos, read about it and more, all while listening to the song. As far as the promotional part, they created a contest where the person who brings the most new people to Panraven to view the video by clicking the “shout it out” button wins an expense paid trip to a Nelly video shoot.

So when it comes to promoting yourself and your product, get creative! Think about your target audience, what they enjoy and how they communicate and come up with a unique campaign that may not only get you some publicity, but will resonate and speak to your audience.

The Hubbub Over Hulu

No, I am not talking about the Hawaiian form of dance, I promise. Those of you in the 2.0 or tech world have probably heard more than you care to in the last two days about the test launch of Hulu.com. Those of you who are not are probably thinking what kind of crazy site is this?

Well, it’s actually quite a revolution in the world of online video, seemingly the first real contender to take a stab at challenging the dominance of YouTube. NBC Universal and FOX teamed up to create their own video site, which apparently tries to offers visitors a more user friendly experience in viewing television shows and movies. NBC even pulled its channel from YouTube last week before this beta launch (us regular folks can’t visit the site quite yet) of their new video site Hulu.com.

So far the reviews from bloggers who got to test it out are pretty good. Hulu allows you to cut clips to send to friends, provides the code which allows you to embed the video into blogs and emails, and advertisers; messages are actually embedded into the clip itself so users don’t have to wait for that ad to finish before the clip starts.

What will you find on there? So far, it appears to be NBC and FOX TV shows, as well as Sony and MGM movies. Both movie companies signed deals with Hulu shortly before the launch. What you can’t do, however, is upload your own videos. So I guess what Hulu is trying to do is create the new platform for a place to get all your TV shows and movies online, but not compete with YouTube on the individualized content. And it’s all free, by the way!

It will be interesting to see how it pans out once the general public can get a view of Hulu!

Here are some interesting articles on the subject:

• Wall Street Journal
• New York Times

The Office and Web 2.0

I would be remiss if I didn’t address one of my favorite TV shows, The Office (though I must profess I like the British version better), and NBC’s clever tie in of lots of Web 2.0 tools. If you saw the episode last night, you’ll see Second Life, a virtual community that has gained much hype of late, was featured in the show. One of the main characters, the very geeky Dwight, was using it as an escape from his life (he recently broke up with his girlfriend) and had even created a Second, Second Life application within the world to further remove himself from reality.

But in the real world, NBC has creatively used many Web 2.0 tools to further engage fans of the show. Head over to the Office Web site and there’s a world of things you can do.

Social Networking: One of the most creative applications is the Dunder Mifflin (the name of the company in The Office) Infinity site, which is a social network where you can do all kinds of fun tasks related to the show. You can “apply” to be an employee of the company and get assigned an official position. Then, you can perform all sorts of tasks, just like the characters do on the show. For example, last night the crew was tasked with creating a local ad. Go to the site, and you too, can create your own ad campaign for the company. According to an article on MediaPost, this network now has 100,000 “employees.” Not bad.

Blogging: Read character blogs, including Dwight Schrute’s “Schrute Space” blog and Creed’s thoughts.

Video: NBC (along with several other networks) recently started offering full episodes of its most popular shows for download for free. So you can get past episodes, download deleted scenes, watch Webisodes only available online, see interviews with the characters and more.

Misc: There are lots of other interactive tools, like message boards where you can chat with others about the show, a contest where you can try to make Creed look young using a variety of online tools and submit your entry, subscribe to the Scranton (the city where the office is located) newsletter, play office basketball and more.

Kudos to NBC for coming up with some creative ways to keep the fans involved and coming back again and again. It seems to be working — MediaPost reports the site has had 800,000 unique visitors to date.

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