Great work, but you missed the whole point
Back in August Worcester was all a buzz with the release of the Worcester College Consortium promo video “Worcester Rocks”. Today the T&G did a follow up which honestly, reads like they just discovered it. It’s a very weird piece to read though, it screams of the sort of internet ignorance that makes me sad for kids in Worcester who really do have to live in the shadows of adults who just don’t understand the world they exist in.
Let me back up. The video itself is great, better than great, it’s nearly perfect. Exactly what the city needs for promo. It may have been way overpriced ($65k) but it remains pretty much the best ‘official’ marketing Worcester has ever pulled off. The problem is, six months later the video has been viewed by 9500 people per YouTube stats and the Consortium seems to think that’s excellent.
It’s not. It’s terrible.
In terms of web distribution of a promo piece targeting the most easily accessible audience on the web, it’s absolutely horrendous. To date this works out to approximately 7 dollars per view and that’s including the 1000 or so reported links coming in from local sources, people who already live here and obviously do not fit into the target demographic. 9500 people isn’t enough to significantly affect car traffic downtown never mind online.
For the sake of comparison, here’s a Worcester sharks clip that has 4500 views in under a month
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkFY4V2WTcs
Here’s a rodeo clip from the DCU that has 314,295 views in a month and a half
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-7UabJdf38
And those are just local clips; take a look at this Jimmy Kimmel video added three days ago; 2,244,730 views in three days.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIQrBouWRiE
that, is viral.
Again, I think the video is great. But I’m not part of the target demographic. The real question to ask here is what are the conversion goals? Do we know how many people have seen this video and decided to come to Worcester for school? Or just to get drunk, even? We can publish ‘OMG WORCESTERS ON YOUTUBE!!!’ fluff pieces as quickly as we can find PR people to type them. But actual results are a much different game.
If the T&G really wants to focus on local, successful, viral, video marketing online (done for less than 65k) the only story in town remains the kids at Worcester Love and the T&G has handled that potential cash cow of a partnership pretty abysmally, if you ask me.
edit: thanks to Keith over at Ale Works for reminding me of what may go down as the Grandaddy of Worcester viral video. The Dukes of Worcester at 14k views in 11 months(40k+ if you consider the multiple sources hosting it on YT alone) with no PR muscle behind it.
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8 Responses to “Great work, but you missed the whole point”
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Don’t forget the “Dukes of Worcester,” currently around 14k hits.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzCYhJ9RvOY
Exactly my point, Thanks for reminding me of that gem, Keith.
Man, even cable access videos aren’t doing too bad compared to that.
WCCA posted this video in several places, without good number-tracking, but I think it’s in the 10,000 range:
http://www.wccatv.com/node/229
This clip about Worcester’s HBML gets a steady 1K downloads a year:
http://www.wccatv.com/node/222
The first episode of the Snow Ghost is not yet one year old, and will probably reach 2.5K hits by that time:
http://www.archive.org/details/snowghost_001
Nobody spent a dime promoting any of these.
You would think that the T&G could turn the Worcester Love connection into a dominant role in local net video.
RDW, the advertising agency that created the video, just charges clients a lot of money and they don’t know how to execute campaigns. Especially interactive campaigns. Which is too bad, because the Worcester Consortium’s idea was a good one.
I wish I had a client who thought 4500 views on YouTube was a successful campaign. But the Consortium shouldn’t be blamed - I’m sure their ad agency is telling them that “this is a great campaign.”
$65,000 was way too much to spend on this effort. Too bad - good idea, cute video, bad execution.
Mike makes a great point. WCCA TV has been blazing the trail on this for more than the last couple of years at least. The city is missing out on a great opportunity if it fails to further encourage and support WCCA’s efforts to continue to move more of its mission to the on line world. There is more Worcester centric video on line because of WCCA than any other single initiative. I heard it was more than 65K to produce the Consortium’s few minute piece, that stands nowhere in comparison to the the 120 plus hours streaming on line and the many clips available for downloading at wccatv.com at no burden to the tax payers or to the hundreds of organizations and individuals utilizing it.
It really irks me that the media, and some others, seem to gloss over the amazing work going on at WCCA TV everyday. I wonder if it is because it is non-profit organization with not much advertising budget that earns the apparent blackout. WCCA TV’s programming may not be all bells and whistles but it is TV By, For and Of, the People.
Great points. Per usual nobody ever checks on the success of any of the campaigns or ordinances in the City of Worcester.
Think Dennis Irish use to work for RDW , gee think that was maybe why they got the gig. Agree it is good but $65,000 seems very very high.
You are also right about Worcester Love, but they were not connected in the the city of worcester “network”
Maybe Mark Billotta should sit down with you and you can tell him how to go about promoting it more effectively via social media sites.
And how they need to have a sustained effort. I had no idea it was $65k. That’s ridiculous. They should have launched a videoblog, given a few students a cam corder and paid for their tickets to a few cool events in the city.
If they want to engage with prospective students, give students the tools and *permission* to engage with prospective students. They’re all online. But, they want to talk. They don’t want to be talked to.
I don’t know if the first step is even to pursue social networks. I think the first step is to get the damn colleges to put the YouTube on their sites!
I just spent 3 minutes clicking around the Assumption and Clark pages, looking for info for prospective students, and nowhere did I see the video.
When I wrote the show notes for our podcast on this a couple weeks ago, I went to the Consortium website, assuming they’d have the YouTube on their front page, but I couldn’t find it anywhere.