Branded Content a Hit on YouTube

According to PaidContent:

12 percent of the top 100 videos, including ones featuring Mercedes-Benz and Microsoft’s Halo, were branded promotional videos.

This is a good sign for those hoping to use branded content as a advertising delivery vehicle though one has to wonder how much of the success of these videos was due to YouTube either deciding to or being paid to feature those ads on their frontpage.

As I have personally experienced, a frontpage feature on YouTube is good for at least 500,000 views in a week.

However, it does look like audiences are perfectly content to watch branded content as long as the entertainment value is authentic.  Where most brands fail is when they sacrifice entertainment in the name of message.

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Will Machinima Videos Be the Next Victims of Copyright Takedowns?

If you aren’t familiar with Machinima, it’s basically when people use the graphics of games like Halo combined with voice-overs and sound-effects to create original videos.

One of the best examples of the form is the legendary Red Vs. Blue series:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BAM9fgV-ts&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

There are literally millions of other examples and tons of software to help you make your own.  For the time being it seems like various videogame companies are taking different approaches but I am curious to see where the lines will be drawn.

Take a look at this post from Tilzy about another Halo-based series.  Not only is the filmmaker using the game footage but he is also using “authorized” action figures.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyjLnvI4yE0&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

Halo is made by Microsoft and I can’t imagine they are real lax when it comes to copyright infringement and one can argue that some of these unauthorized third parties are making some amount of money, however small, by making these videos.

At the same time, even if they were making millions of dollars from this sort of work, would they owe some of it to Microsoft?  Have they re-imagined and re-purposed the original material in such a way as to make it a new, wholly original work? Not to mention how it acts as free publicity for Microsoft – but publicity with a message Microsoft doesn’t control.

Big questions to be explored.  Stay tuned.

ARG’s Coming of Age

ARG’s, or Alternate Reality Games, have been hovering just below the mainstream for a while now but it looks like that’s beginning to change as content creators and brand marketers and seeing big opportunities.

CNet’s Daniel Terdiman recently received the first pieces to a new, Olympic-themed ARG:

“For months now, I’ve been hearing whispers that a big new alternate-reality game was on the way. I never got any details of what it was about, but when a box arrived at my desk on Friday filled with clues, I knew this was it, and it seems that it’s linked to this year’s summer Olympics…Inside the box, there was a reproduction of what appears to be a 1920 Olympics poster with a figure of a discus thrower on the front, and the text, “VIIe Olympiade. Anvers (Belgique). 1920 Aout – Septembre 1920. Subsidee par les pouvoirs publics. On the reverse, there’s also the text, “It’s a secret someone has been keeping for a very long time.”

CNet has updated that post with some more info:

“The game’s conceit will be to have players help Ariadne find her identity, through a complex series of online and, most-likely, real-world clues and puzzles. Somehow, it will all tied in to the Olympics. One clue of that is that on the game’s site, she offers up the “fact” that after waking up, she spent a week in the hospital being treated for her very rare form of amnesia and that doctors there “say I’m an Olympic-caliber athlete.”"

If you go to FindTheLostString you will be able to find out more about the game, which has been developed by 42 Entertainment. (UPDATE: turns out 42Entertainment is not involved in this particular ARG, thanks thebruce!) CNet also has a cool interview with one of the game developers at 42Entertainment, a company that has created a number of ARGs.

“Like most big ARGs before it, “Last Call,” which recently ended for active participation but can still be seen online, was an extraordinarily complicated marketing campaign, in this case for Activision’s just-released “Gun” video game. It was free, whether people wanted to play poker online, join in the community, or just follow a story that has remained archived even though the live events are completed.”

Other ARG’s included ILoveBees, a game made as a marketing ploy for Halo.

More on LostString here.