Who needs TV

Theres been a long standing relationship between big business and commercial television - the television channel shows a promotional video for a big company in between its programmes and in return big business gives the TV channel a big chunck of money.

In the new media age, the era of Generation Y, the time when those of us under 30 (or around 30) are in control of the advertising budgets and what goes on to the TV screens - the roles are almost reversed.

Well actually it isn’t a case of roles reversed - its a case of the TV station being taken out of the equation completely.

A video on You Tube can get upwards of a two million views if its good enough - taking in account the number of people that turn over during the adverts or walk out to make a cup of tea - you’d have to advertise during something like Coronation Street or Doc Martin to get those sort of views for your ad.

The cost of getting millions of views for a clip on You Tube could be anything from sod all to thousands depending on how much you spend on making the advert itself as thats the only cost.

However the chance of getting millions of views on You Tube is pretty slim - first you need to build momentum for it by getting people to talk about it in blogs or message boards and then you need to cross your fingers and hope it strikes at the heart of the fickle new media audience.

The cost of getting millions of views for an ad on ITV (during Corrie) is probably around £50,000 for 30 seconds PLUS the cost of actually making the advert in the first place (which you’d have to spend to get it on You Tube).

But - an advert during Corrie is probably guaranteed to be seen by at least 1 million of the 10 million viewers it gets on average - so you’re paying for the guaranteed view.

So if you’ve created an Ad Campaign thats pretty good and says what your business does - the normal everyday traditional advertising campaign that you see all the time - spend the extra cash and run it during Corrie (if thats your target audience).

But if you have a really good idea for CONTENT - so something that ads a little extra to society whether it be a drumming gorilla, a half hour sitcom or Danny Wallace talking about every day masterpieces (new Fiat campaign) - get it on the web and hope for hte best.

The biggest mistake though is to only have the video available through your own site - at the very least release short versions or a few full versions of the videos on all the major social video sites and MAKE THEM EMBEDDABLE.

The mistake Fiat have made with what could well be a pretty good, rampant success of a viral video series - is restrict it to their site only. If they got the well produced, very funny videos out to the wider web (with a picture of their car in the bottom corner or something) it would be seen by MANY MORE people than just putting a few banner ads on popular sites.

I’m going to keep going back to the Fiat site just to watch Danny’s Clips as he’s a funny guy but I’m not going to look at anything else on the site - but if you gave me the content in a way I could easily access then I might just take more of an interest - even if you put the info on the right hand side in the notes - or provide something ‘extra’ on your site in addition to what I can get from the You Tube clips.

Although - as the Fiat 500 looks like a pig ugly piece of crap of a car I don’t think I’d be that interested however much stuff they gave me on their site. Although I’m sure it drives wonderfuly and it does have that ‘cult’ appeal that will mean it will sell VERY well among a certain subset of society.

The same subset that loves watching You Tube videos while bored in the office - hello Fiat?

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Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla

One of my favourite ways of spending an afternoon is to head to Jersey Zoo sorry Durell in Trinity, Jersey to wander around the park and look at the animals - the majority of which are from heavily endangered species.

My favourite, by a very long way, is the West Lowland Gorillas (Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla) I could stand there for hours watching them get on with their every day lives.

We went to the zoo on Monday with the kids and my little one (well he’s four and just started nursery - but he’s a bit sensitive) got a bit scared of the Gorillas - he thought they would get him.

Anyway - on hearing Jaden scream in fear they all gracefully moved to the side where we were standing to see what all the fuss was about - they just stood there watching him.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

These magnificent animals are on the brink of extinction because of everything from hunting for meat to the ebola virus.

The 2007 Red List of Threatened Species, published by the World Conservation Union listed the Western Lowland Gorilla as ‘Critically Endangered’ due to the Ebola Virus Infection.

This was an increase in their threat level from endangered the previous year.

More than 60% of Western Lowland Gorillas in Africa have been wiped out by the Ebola virus.

Together with loss of habitat to farmland, the illegal capture of gorillas for bush meat, the pet trade, hunting trophies and souvenirs and now the Ebola Virus, all species of Gorilla are now threatened with Extinction.

In one small area of Cameroon alone, an estimated 800 gorillas are taken each year, and for the rest of their range, this figure would be many thousands.

If the situation in the wild doesn’t improve, it’s more than possible that the only future for the Western Lowland Gorilla will be as captives in zoos and conservation centres.

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