Effectively targeting and relating to audiences is still an evolving process for many brands.
Initially, online marketing took a billboard approach to branding: If you build it, they will come. A community of people, however, does not become fully engaged purely by dint of being large. Especially when it comes to video advertising. So, it is up to the brand to find innovative ways to collaborate with established YouTube personalities to better engage with their target audience.
Here’s a common misconception: The larger the target community, the more quickly an audience will grow. Setting up shop online (or at a brick and mortar offline location, for that matter) in the middle of a supposedly populous space, like a billboard by the freeway or a banner plopped across the information superhighway (does anyone even call it that anymore?), is only one aspect of engaging members of that community. It is less then about the banner ad, and more important to discreetly segment the various placements of video assets that appear online.
Take a respected news website like www.NYTimes.com which boasts quality content and runs blue-chip advertising on its pages. Community engagement is not necessarily the top priority for NYTimes.com. Though the site does give readers the ability to quickly share content via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and email, it is not enabled for comments on the posts.
This does not mean that less engagement-driven sites are not “authentic” or that smaller, more discourse-driven sites that embrace a blog or aggregator format are more authentic. And, can we put a moratorium on the term authentic for a little while—it’s often used disingenuously around publishers that do not consider comments a hard metric. For example, how many Hermès consumers who read The New York Times feel the need to Tweet and add to a news story that runs ads positioned primarily for their perusal? Sometimes engagement means putting the messaging in the right place, at the right time, and for the right audience. Like a billboard.
Another way to look at engagement is to define, find, and deputize brand and message ambassadors that are outside of the publishing environment. The better targeted and tailored the content, the better the chance it will be remembered, shared, and made into a true social object.
A meaningful influencer online can be more than a “like” or a tweet. It can come in the form of a trusted voice, but does not necessarily have to be an “authority” figure (e.g., a celebrity or traditional publisher source).
Consider the top YouTube producers (You-lebrities?) with established YouTube channels and regularly updated—if not regularly scheduled—programming. These channels are chockablock with content that their subscribers and followers enjoy enough to peruse often, if not daily.
The responses these videos get, from commenting to video replies to shares, often culminate in great audience integration and message dissemination. Brands are now seeing the value in these YouTube channels, and are implementing creative tactics to integrate their messages and products within the programs themselves. That is, like traditional product placement, YouTube personalities will directly engage with the brand or product during their videos, exposing the brand to the YouTube celebrity's often expansive audience.
For example, check out AARP’s recently posted Grandparents’ Day-themed video reply to this summer’s breakout song, “Call Me Maybe.”
Audience engagement, be it traditional or social, does not have to be a one-or-the-other proposition. The space is evolving, and with it, so are the platforms and the players. Some of the most exciting developments in online advertising and video are illustrated through how marketers are implementing tactics that engage different people and users in tandem, rather than independently.
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