Brands
YouTube video bloggers and
other independent producers have been a growing part of marketing content
creation for brands, sometimes in deals brokered by third parties. Now Google
itself is getting in on the action, linking YouTube video production talent with
brands and their agencies to produce video ads for the site.
Through an initiative
called YouTube Labs, Google recently linked L'Oreal brands Maybelline, Essie
and Dark & Lovely with YouTube creators and agency Code & Theory to
create a series of videos for each brand.
L'Oreal USA had exclusive
U.S. use of YouTube Labs for 2016 in what Kirk Perry, Google president-client
and agency relations, describes as an alpha test, though the model will be open
to other companies this year. In Europe, BMW, Johnson & Johnson and
Mondelez have tested the approach.
The effort moves Google
into a sort of talent brokerage, linking content creators on YouTube with
brands. And in the case of the L'Oreal brands, that didn't mean hooking them up
with beauty bloggers with which they're already familiar in many cases through
content or promotional deals. Rather it meant bringing creative talent from
others areas, such as travel blogger Raya Encheva, together with brands.
Google doesn't make any
commission or fee from the arrangement, Mr. Perry said, though the content
creators do, and Google benefits from paid advertising revenue for placement of
the videos on its site. There's no restriction on brands using the videos
elsewhere, such as Facebook, other publishers or their own sites.
The effort came out of
brainstorming sessions earlier last year on "the next generation of
content," said L'Oreal USA Chief Marketing Officer Marie Gulin-Merle.
"The idea was to put in one room in a beauty hackathon the YouTube
creators, our marketing teams and our agencies. We would behave as publishers
and invent the web series."
Howard Collinge, group
creative director at Code and Theory, which worked on the videos for Essie and
Maybelline with the YouTube creators, said he doesn't see the outside help as a
threat.
"This was a really
great collaboration," he said. "From the creative side, I think it
gave us a lot of freedom."
The emphasis was on speed,
with the agency going straight to production once the scripts were approved,
guided by insights from YouTube creators and what they knew about the
market," he said. "But we essentially wrote scripts and went and shot
them. So we used them as a springboard. We had a lot of creative freedom to do
what we thought was the right thing."
The brief was simple, Mr.
Collinge said: "Be entertaining and really get their attention and be
relevant. That's a great brief for any agency. It was a very experimental lab
approach that felt a lot freer and more fun, nothing like a typical ad agency
where you get briefed and have six weeks to work and then research and go shoot
a commercial."
Ms. Gulin-Merle also
describes the process as "less linear than before," replacing the
usual process involving copy testing. "It was a fast and furious way of
working with one motto: Better done than perfect. It's OK if you don't take
another week to polish the content. You put it online and optimize from there
and listen to the conversations and feedback from the consumer."
Among the ideas in the
series was to tap into the stories behind the names of Essie nail polishes, she
said. One video tells a story behind "Jamaica Me Crazy," named after
an annoying vacation-intensive coworker and her trip to the island.
It's less clear if Google getting
involved as a conduit between YouTube creators and brands helps companies like
Gen.Video, which has done the same thing albeit with somewhat different
projects for such players as Procter & Gamble's Olay.
"This is a logical
and inevitable evolution of Google's facilitation role in the YouTube
marketplace," said Jessica Thorpe, president of Gen.Video, in a statement.
"It will put added pressure on companies (platforms and agencies) to
provide more services than simply matching to support and amplify the impact of
influencer video."
Credit:AdAge
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