Jun 13

Digital is the New Black

By Heather Timmerman Digital Media Trends, Fashion, Rightster PR and News No Comments »

The fashion industry is changing. Technology is being used in ways never imagined just a few years ago. From Oscar de la Renta crowdsourcing runway shows and live pinning bridal shows, to Burberry mixing models and holograms to showcase their latest fashions (Source: The Next Web). We have increasingly seen digital become more mainstream over the past two years with women’s fashion at Rightster. Seasonal runway shows like those produced by IMG Fashion are live streaming, social networking and even offering pre-orders online, and consumers are responding (Source: Rightster.com).  MBFWA

During Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia (MBFWA) in April, online engagement surpassed the global fashion week standard 12-minute view time, as audiences spent more than 24 minutes watching the live stream with 61.5 % of viewers engaging with the shows during the live catwalk. Live-stream distribution resulted in more than 30,000 video views delivered via desktop (64%) and mobile (36%) in over 66 countries, with video-on-demand (VOD) extending reach to over 90 countries. That’s a whole lot of global interest in fashion!

Rightster’s partnership with British Fashion Council (BFC) over the past seven seasons for London Fashion Week continues to show seasonal increases in digital viewership as well. Mobile is increasingly becoming an important device and marketing opportunity for designers and fashion media houses alike. In the UK alone, 52% of UK consumers currently own a smartphone and 20% own a tablet (Source: KMPG). These numbers are also reflected in the Rightster network with 50% mobile and tablet users accessing video content.

The latest project with the BFC is for London Collections: Men on 16-18th June emphasising “both the creative and commercial potential of Britain’s brands” (Source: LondonCollections.co.uk). While women’s fashion continues to get most of the press, men’s fashion is increasingly becoming an e-commerce opportunity. According to Jonathan Bacon of Marketing Week, digital platforms are contributing to the rise in menswear sales as 68% of male shoppers online have used laptops or desktop computers to buy clothing, while 25% used a tablet and 15% a smartphone in the past year.

The interaction between online video and ecommerce is still in the early phases, but there are some great examples of innovative projects happening such as this shoppable music video featuring the music group Karmin trying on various different fashion designers clothes. Produced by music site Popdust and hosted on YouTube, the stars of the video encourage viewers to click on the link below to buy the clothes (Source: NY Times). Interesting indeed.

We are excited to see where the digital fashion trend leads us as we also believe “The fashion industry has the money and creative talent to not only keep up with the tech industry but also push it and offer a vision for new ways to encompass tech in our day-to-day lives” (Source: Amalia Agathou, The Next Web).

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth. Acquired by Rightster in February 2013, our combined offering strengthens video distribution, marketing, and monetisation services globally.

For more information on Rightster and to check out their latest blog posts, click here.

 

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May 02

What Determines the Success of a Video Campaign? The Evian Baby Case Example

By Heather Timmerman Digital Media Trends, Preview Networks PR and News, Video Comments Off

What determines the success of an online video campaign has been debated not only by us here at Preview Networks, but by industry experts alike. Although there is no one secret ingredient which makes a video go viral (check out this Ted talk video on why), good content spreads like a virus, whether you intended it to or not. Good content triggers are different for everyone but chances are if you make something informative as well as entertaining, it will catch on.

Relevancy of the video content to your brand helps link the cognitive side with receiver involvement (Source: Wright, P.L.). In other words, this could help determine whether a user might actively share the video or not. Not only that, but relevancy in terms of alignment of the brand need with the audience reached and context provided by the publisher, increases the chance the right person at the right time is seeing your video (Source: Gigaom).

The Evian Baby advertising campaigns are an excellent example of this. According to Evian, there is a history of its brand being connected with babies which dates back to 1935. Evian was first recommended as the perfect water for babies in France back then, and still to this day it is the number one water used by mothers for the same reason due to the pH-neutral mineral composition (Source: International Business Times).

Evian’s “Roller Babies” campaign in 2009 currently holds the official Guinness World Record for most viral video of all time (Source: Business Insider). This year, they are back with their “Baby & Me” campaign and if the views on YouTube  and mentions on Twitter are any indication of this year’s campaign success, Evian is well on their way to another viral video success.

Preview Networks is delighted to have been involved in contributing to the campaign’s audience relevancy and reach outside of YouTube on premium publisher sites in 11 different countries in addition to a dynamic image creation on top of the custom player created specifically for YouTube. A combination of on and off YouTube syndication strategy ensured the campaign received maximum exposure. However, at the end of the day sometimes great content speaks for itself.

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth. Acquired by Rightster in February 2013, our combined offering strengthens video distribution, marketing, and monetisation services globally.

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Apr 10

Bringing the Runway to the Consumer

By Heather Timmerman Digital Media Trends, Fashion, Video Comments Off

A few months ago we discussed Digital Innovation in the Fashion Industry inspired by the record numbers the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Fall 2013 runway shows in New York received online which indicates an increasing interest in receiving fashion video content online by consumers. As was mentioned in an iStrategy blog post, “the gap between the high-end fashion houses and well-known high-street stores is beginning to lessen” which opens up an entirely new audience for consuming this content online. The Spring Summer 2013/14 runway shows are well underway down under in Sydney, Australia this week and efforts are focused on bringing the consumer even closer to the content this time around. Screen Shot 2013-04-09 at 4.22.33 PM

Fashion Weeks have turned into a social event offline in many cities and Sydney is no exception. This year’s focus is on public engagement with the Spring Summer 2013/14 runway shows live-streamed on a giant screen in outdoor pedestrian mall Martin Place with a pop-up bar nearby (Source: smh.com.au). In terms of online activity, the designers are also focused on the consumer by offering live-streams of the shows on their websites for the first time, as shown here by Camilla & Marc, who opened up the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia (#MBFWA) on Monday. In addition to runway show availability online, local ecommerce site JASU.com is offering pre orders of the fashions online, many of which will not be available for months in retail stores (Source: Rightster).

How long the Spring Summer 2013/14 collections will be available for pre order online is unknown, but we have seen this sort of fashion innovation before by none other than digital innovator Burberry who we have blogged about many times in the past. In the September 2012 runway shows in New York, Burberry offered guests from over 35 events to be able to purchase the runway collection exclusively for one week immediately after the show, or eight weeks before the products went on sale around the world (Source: Forbes).

Runway shows are moving from exclusive fashion events for a select audience to marketing and sales opportunities for the designers and online audience. While this is all very exciting for the average consumer and digital marketers alike, there are some fashion critics that argue that “live video could ruin fashion week and leave us with ugly clothes” (Source: The Atlantic.com). Their fear is that by allowing video of the runway shows online, there will be no more seasons or fashion weeks (Apparel Executives.com). Any time there is innovation and change there will always be resistance, but those first movers who embrace it will have the chance to reap the benefits and lessens learned, pushing them further ahead of the fashion innovation curve.

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth. Acquired by Rightster in February 2013, our combined offering strengthens video distribution, marketing, and monetisation services globally.

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Apr 03

How Original Content Production Could Pay Off in the End for Online Video

By Heather Timmerman Digital Media Trends, Video Comments Off

Last week’s blog post and the news of Spotify’s plans to potentially begin producing their own video content has inspired me to look into other businesses who have made the move to do the same. The example that comes to mind first for online video is Netflix with the launch of their original series House of Cards. When news of the series broke in February, there were many articles written speculating whether it would be a hit or pay off given the $100 million investment for two 13 episode seasons. With monthly subscriptions for Netflix costing $7.99 and having collected data from users indicating interest in the new series with no raise in price, they would need to add 520,834 subscriptions over two years in order to break even on the House of Cards investment (Source: Slate.com, The Atlantic Wire.com). When considering that Netflix plans to produce a total of 5 new shows per year, including the already highly anticipated Arrested Development, the raise in subscriptions needed becomes less daunting. Particularly since Netflix saw a 13 percent increase in streaming viewers over a one year span in the U.S. from 24 million to 27 million prior to the new content initiatives (Source: The Atlantic Wire.com).Screen Shot 2013-04-03 at 4.45.10 PM

Netflix has been said to use Big Data to predict the shows success before it even began using algorithms combining the popularity of director David Fincher and actor Kevin Spacey and using peak period and content type data streams (Source: The New York Times.com). However, it has also been argued that Big Data can only report past preferences and not predict what people will like in the future. According to John Landgraf of FX Networks, number-crunching would never have predicted the success of shows like The Sopranos, South Park, and Mad Men for example (Source: NYTimes.com).

Does the same theory apply to music? As a personal user of Spotify myself I get huge amounts of satisfaction by using their radio service based on an artist I like to find and listen to new music. Why wouldn’t Spotify then use data from their 5 million paying subscribers and 20 million active users to begin producing their own music based on consumer preferences (Source: Spotify.com)? Why the move to online video? While we know it’s a hot space to be in, the competition is tough and one could question whether this would fragment the landscape even more. Many a musical artist has been found and even discovered via YouTube (e.g. Justin Bieber) which combines both video and music, so how Spotify will distinguish themselves by creating original content remains to be seen (Source: Mashable).

While the Netflix move and Spotify news are all very exciting to speculate about, brands have been producing their own video content for some time. We all know about the emergent trend of brands becoming more like media companies, particularly with the production and distribution of online video (Source: Preview Networks Blog). Major fashion labels like Chanel and popular consumer products such as Red Bull have been producing their own content marketing for years, distinguishing themselves from advertising centric strategies. Even B2B companies are joining the ranks of online producers with Rightster Studios’ launch of their online comedy football show “Off The Ball” which can be seen on YouTube and ESPN making their model more of a B2B2C (Source: Rightster.com). Instead of physical products or subscriptions however, the break-even point lies in distribution and advertising.

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth. Acquired by Rightster in February 2013, our combined offering strengthens video distribution, marketing, and monetisation services globally.

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Mar 27

Major Moves in the Online Video Space

By Heather Timmerman Digital Media Trends, Video Comments Off
Yahoo-Spotify

Image courtesy of pcworld.com.mx

For a slow holiday week, there are a couple of big news stories that could potentially change the landscape of the online video space. It could all be speculation, but anyone that pays attention to what’s happening in online video or is in charge of digital marketing for their organisations should probably take note nonetheless.

The Stories:

On March 25th the Business Insider and Fast Company both released stories about major players looking to do some interesting things with video. First up is Spotify, the digital music service that allows users to play music wherever and whenever they are online, via computer, tablet, or mobile, for a monthly fee. The service also has a social element to it which allows users to create playlists, see what their friends are listening to, and share great new song discoveries. While Spotify is popular with many consumers, their margins are relatively low due to the fact that they have to pay the music labels each time a user listens to a song. Therefore, they are looking for ways to create exclusive content to increase their margins and turning to video. Whether that means they become another on-demand video service such as Netflix or HBO creating successful series such as House of Cards or Sex and the City remains to be seen (Source: Business Insider).

Another interesting development in the online video space this week revolves around Yahoo. They are in talks to buy Dailymotion, a relatively small YouTube competitor which, according to Fast Company proves “that the future of the Internet lies squarely in video” (Source: Fast Company). The article makes some pretty impressive points in terms of how the web is shifting from text to online video which makes the potential Dailymotion purchase by Yahoo all the more interesting. While YouTube is for the moment the “single point of upload and playback for web video” other major players such as Facebook, AOL, and Amazon have made an impact in the video space. Most notably for those of us in the video syndication space, is AOL’s revenue jump in part due to their 5Min acquisition.  This has allowed them to build a video network with a mix of created, curated, and live video with the ”understanding that they need to be both a destination and a distributor of video to third party sites” (Source: Fast Company).

The Trends:

The three trends the Dailymotion acquisition and/or the Spotify video business model move could validate for the growing popularity of the use of online video revolve around: audience, devices, and money. The holy trinity for lack of a better term. Video drives website traffic and the increasing use of mobile devices increases the use of video, which ultimately brings in advertising revenues. Here are a few fun facts to chew on keeping those trends in mind:

Audience: The sum of all forms of video (TV, video on demand [VoD], Internet, and P2P) will be approximately 86 percent of global consumer traffic by 2016. (Cisco)

Devices: 93% of smartphone users use their devices in the home, and almost 50% of users watch videos on their smartphones. 90% of smartphone searches result in an action such as a purchase or a visit to a business. (Google Blog, April 2011)

Money: Online video is the fastest growing ad format in 2012 with nearly 55% growth. (eMarketer, January 2012). The online video industry will reach $28.72 billion in 2017, soaring from the $3.79 billion recorded in 2010 and the $11.14 billion expected in 2012. (Digital TV Research). Source: Fast Company

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth. Acquired by Rightster in February 2013, our combined offering strengthens video distribution, marketing, and monetisation services globally.

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Mar 20

Digital Marketing Strategies Done Right: Red Bull Case Example

By Heather Timmerman addience, Digital Media Trends, Video Comments Off

Red Bull has been long known in the marketing industry for their association with extreme sports sponsorships often linking them to adrenaline seeking stunts and athletes. The world was introduced to this concept with the Red Bull Stratos event featuring Austrian adventurer, Felix Baumgartner on October 14, 2012 with the world’s biggest jump from 128,100 feet, breaking the speed of sound (Red Bull Stratos.com). Although the data on the Red Bull Stratos website is mostly scientific, marketers around the world have written tons of articles about the content marketing lessons that can be learned from Red Bull.

With over 5,000 videos and 50,000 photos, Red Bull Media house has become a case example of the emerging trend of brands becoming more like media companies (Source: Mashable, Preview Networks Blog). Digital content has become the currency that drives audience, engagement and eventually revenue opportunities. It begins with the development of a good story and then capturing content worth sharing (Source: Econsultancy). Whenever there is interesting content, it increases the options a brand has to capitalise on it according to the Content Marketing Maturity Model from Altimeter Group (Source: Mashable). However, the key is subtlety, or developing contextually relevant content around the brand itself.

“Red Bull has introduced its content marketing around and about the product, but it is never directly correlated to the drink itself. Nobody is going to go to a website and spend 45 minutes looking at video about a drink. But Red Bull has aligned its brand unequivocally and consistently with extreme sports and action. They are number-one at creating content so engaging that consumers will spend hours with it, or at least significant minutes” Rebecca Lieb, Altimeter Group.

The energy drinks latest adrenaline-junkie event series is the Cliff Diving World Series 2013 events happening around the globe. It kicks off in France in May, stops by our very own in Denmark in June, and continues onto Portugal, Italy, USA, UK, Brazil and ending in Thailand in October (Source: RedBull.com). Check out the video above for a taste of that great content marketing everyone is raving about which we have syndicated to sports and entertainment publishers in Denmark such as On Side, Kino.dk, and EkstraBladet.

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth. Acquired by Rightster in February 2013, our combined offering strengthens video distribution, marketing, and monetisation services globally.

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Mar 13

Emerging Trends in Social Media: Facebook Opportunities For Marketers

By Eric Taylor Digital Media Trends, Social Comments Off

If you’re a social network user, whether using social media to advertise or simply to keep in touch with your friends, then you have probably noticed quite a few trends. For advertisers in particular, following these trends can make or break your advertising efforts. It takes time and resources to use a site like Facebook to draw in a big crowd, for example. Not only do you have to compete with an untold amount of competitors, you have to consistently provide valuable material and incentives to bring people to your brand page. By looking at some of the emerging trends and understanding why they’re emerging in such a big way, you should be able to more effectively target your audience. Below are some Facebook-specific trends on the rise to help focus your marketing efforts.

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Brand Marketing

One of the big trends on the rise is brand marketing. Why is marketing your entire brand becoming the preferred method over simply pushing a product? It’s because brand-based marketing is more appealing to social users. You can be a professional business, all about the sale, but still be about customer service, trust and loyalty, and offering people something of value. But advertising products cannot get this message across; only your brand image can.

Mobile Social Use

Another huge trend out there is social mobile usage. Because so many social sites are playing directly to the mobile crowd, the average mobile user has a great experience logging on via their iPhone or Galaxy or tablet. The graphics are great, the content and interface is typically streamlined, and they can access this material anywhere they have a signal. That’s exactly why catering to a mobile market is a trend you should think about following.

Real-Time Data and Third-Party Apps

Receiving your data in real-time to make corrections is something that’s trending in a big way, and that’s coupled with Facebook advancements and third-party apps that enable campaign splitting and instant monitoring to improve your overall social network advertising methods. Using more tools to reach more people and the ability to track your results more accurately and in live time is a self-explanatory trend.

Action-Oriented Campaigns

The type of campaign that’s becoming more popular on sites like Facebook is an action-oriented campaign, wherein you seek to induce actions from people. This all ties in with brand-building and relationship-building. By inducing actions, it enables you to separate your fans and other visitors and to more directly drive traffic into a conversion funnel. Having each separate piece of material drive a user toward making an action isn’t as fragmented as it seems. It all ties in with the greater point of building up an interested user base.

Why You Need to Follow these Trends

As you can see from the trends themselves, they’re helping people come together more efficiently. They’re helping advertisers to target markets more effectively. They focus on everything from basic connectivity and a wider reach to specifically targeting users in an area or by their profile page. Following these trends is how you’ll ultimately succeed in social media marketing if you’re a small business. Just remember that these few trends listed are far from the only trends out there. Keep up on your research and pay attention to the market. When it comes to social media, emerging trends can soon become the norm.

About Preview Networks

Preview Networks is a content marketing platform for brands and content aggregation and syndication platform for publishers. We provide the tools for brands to centrally distribute and manage marketing and PR content across media destinations, devices, and commerce platforms; allowing media partners to automate content acquisition delivering audience and advertising revenue growth. Acquired by Rightster in February 2013, our combined offering strengthens video distribution, marketing, and monetisation services globally.

About the Author

Eric Taylor is a social media enthusiast, business developer and a freelance writer for Qwaya, a Facebook ad campaign tool. As a guest blogger, Eric’s opinions are his own and do not necessarily represent those of Preview Networks.

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