For 11 Hours Straight, YouTube Stars Perform Lionel Richie’s ‘All Night Long’ All.Night.Long

YouTube stars Rhett McLaughlin and Charles Lincoln “Link” Neal have a massive online audience with more than 900,000 YouTube subscribers and more than 150 million video views of their videos. They are well-known for their web series ‘I Love Local Commercials’, in which they create humourous commercials for real local businesses.

Their latest video promotes Trident’s ‘Create a Spontaneous Karaoke‘ video contest, in which participants sing-a-long to Lionel Richie’s ‘All Night Long’. The winner will receive $10,000 and a year’s supply of Trident gum. The contest rules restrict videos to 120 seconds, however Rhett and Link’s video went on, well… all night long. They sang along for 11 hours and 9 minutes, performing the song 158 times back-to-back.

The edited version is embedded below, but if you do have all night to spare, you can watch all 11 hours (and 9 minutes) of their entire performance.

USA

UNIQLO Recruits YouTube’s Maru to Catvertize San Francisco Store Opening

UNIQLO Lucky Cube with Maru

Japanese fashion brand UNIQLO has teamed up with YouTube-famous feline Maru for ‘Lucky Cube‘, in a promotion for the October opening of their new San Francisco store.

Maru, a five year old Norwegian fold, is the star of his own YouTube channel with over 174 million views. If you love watching a large cat jumping into boxes or paper bags, this is the channel for you.

Maru’s skill at jumping into boxes is the basis of the ‘Lucky Cube’ contest. Each box contains a prize code which can be redeemed at a UNIQLO pop-up store in September or at the store after it opens in October. Prizes include 50 blimp rides, 100 ultra-light down jackets, and 1000 heat tech long sleeve crew neck shirts.

[via BuzzFeed]

USA

YouTube Star Raises Awareness of Domestic Violence with Make-up Tips for the Morning After

Lauren Luke

30 year-old Brit Lauren Luke has over 400.000 subscribers and over 126 million views of her YouTube channel panacea81. Since 2007, the self-taught makeup artist she has been posting tutorial videos for her viewers on how they recreate various celebrity looks.

Ad agency BBH London has partnered with Lauren, producing a powerful video to raise awareness for Refuge, a UK charity dedicated to helping women and children escape domestic violence.

The video is very much in the style of Lauren’s regular make-up video, making it all that more shocking when she opens the video apologizing for not being online very much as she’s being having a rough time lately. In the tutorial Lauren calmly shows how to cover up the cuts and bruises from domestic violence. The video ends with Lauren quickly shutting off the camera after hearing a door slam, the screen goes black and the message “65% of women who suffer domestic violence keep it hidden, don’t cover it up” appears.

The campaign is supported by the Twitter hashtag #dontcoveritup.

UK

TippExperience2: Travel Through Time With The Bear and the Hunter

TippExperience2 - Hunter and Bear Birthday PartyWay back in fall 2010 (before the launch of Instagram), French agency Buzzman unleashed the Tipp-Experience’ campaign to promote the Tipp-Ex Pocket Mouse, a popular European correction product.

In the original TippExperience campaign a hunter (and his video-shooting buddy) are surprised by a bear. As the hunter raises the gun, he turns to the camera and asks the viewers whether he should shoot the bear or not. Once the viewer makes their choice, they are taken to YouTube where the hunter reaches out of the video frame and grabs the Tipp-Ex from the ad and covers up the word ‘Shoots’. The hunter then asks viewers to insert any word into the blank. There were several dozen options to keep viewers entertained, including dances with, marries, paints, etc.

In the new TippExperience2, the Hunter and the Bear are celebrating their first birthday, but the fun is interrupted by a meteorite. This time the viewer’s options are to ‘End the party’ or ‘Don’t end the party’. When the viewer arrive at YouTube, the Hunter uses the Tipp-Ex to cover up the year and asks the viewer to type in any year to continue the party.

There are 46 different scenes to watch, including 8 scenes that include interactions.

Here are a few of my favorites so far:

  • 0: yes, it goes there
  • 1979: working version of Pac-Man
  • 1989: drag the player to break through the Berlin Wall
  • 1991: Saved by the Bear! episode
  • 2000: Millenium bug
  • 2001: 9/11 tribute
  • 2080: use your computer’s microphone to blow out the candle

What’s your favorite clip?

Brazil Tourism Board Transforms YouTube Channel Into Interactive Vacation Planner

Brazil Tourism Board - YouTube Vacation PlannerBack in September I published a post about the creative ways that organizations are using their YouTube brand channels including Perrier’s ‘Le Club’, Dodge Journey Scavenger Hunt, Royal New Zealand Air Force’s Step Up recruitment campaign and Kiwibank’s Green Ops.

Brazilian tourism board is the latest to transform their YouTube channel beyond a simple library of videos to an interactive destination. The channel features 253 videos of various destinations and events around Brazil.

Visitors can filter the videos by selecting which month they are traveling, how long they plan to stay, who they are traveling with and what type of things they are interested in doing (from shopping to sports to nature). Visitors can add videos that interest them to their itinerary with the click of a button. Once the site visitor has selected their destinations, the itinerary can be saved and shared to their Facebook profile.

He Tweets, He Scores! Which Team Leads the NHL in Social Media Success?

Which team leads the NHL in Social Media?It’s NHL All-Star weekend in Ottawa and the best players in the league are set to face off against each other in the skills competition and of course in the big game Sunday afternoon.

Social Media has become an essential part of any organization’s digital communications strategy, and the 30 teams that make up the National Hockey league are no different. The following is a ranking of which teams are (based on my formula) leading the NHL on the four big social media platforms; Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google+. Every team has an active Facebook and Twitter account, only 15 have a YouTube account, and 21 teams have a Google+ page of which 14 are active. I debated whether to include YouTube and Google+ in the final rankings, but in the end I thought it was important to recognize teams that were having success with YouTube and ones that were establishing themselves in Google+. I did not include Foursquare, LinkedIn Groups or Tumblr (the Boston Bruins have an awesome Tumblr page).

It’s obvious when you look at the overall ranking that teams with long histories, strong fan bases and on-ice success are going to rate high. When the numbers were added up the Philadelphia Flyers came out on top, thanks to a top 10 presence on all four platforms. Original 6 teams were in the top half of the list, only the Rangers’ rank suffered at #16 due to their lack of YouTube or Google+ accounts.

To create the individual platform rankings I looked to metrics that would help to show user activity, rather than just rely on number of likes, fans, followers or subscribers to define the team’s success. The numbers in brackets below show where the team ranked on the individual platforms. For example Philadelphia ranked #6 on Facebook, #3 on Twitter, #10 on YouTube and #7 on Google+. When I add these rankings together they add up to 25 which betters Vancouver’s total of 32. You’ll see several teams with rankings of #16 and #22 for YouTube and Google+. For teams that did not have a YouTube account I ranked them all at #16, and for those without any ‘official’ Google+ presence were ranked at #23. (teams with inactive Google+ accounts were rated below the active)

Top NHL Teams on Social Media

  1. 1. Philadephia Flyers (6-3-10-7)
  2. 2. Vancouver Canucks (3-6-16-7)
  3. 3. Detroit Red Wings (4-4-2-24)
  4. 4. Toronto Maple Leafs (7-11-16-1)
  5. 5. Montreal Canadiens (5-15-6-11)
  6. 6. Chicago Black Hawks (1-10-16-15)
  7. 7. Buffalo Sabres (2-7-16-22)
  8. 8. Anaheim Ducks (16-16-1-9)
  9. 9. Edmonton Oilers (12-5-3-25)
  10. 10. Pittsburgh Penguins (14-1-16-16)
  11. 11. Boston Bruins (2-7-16-22)
  12. 12. Los Angeles Kings (15-21-8-3)
  13. 13. Tampa Bay Lightning (18-9-16-5)
  14. 14. San Jose Sharks (10-8-14-17)
  15. 15. Washington Capitals (8-17-16-13)
  16. 16. New York Rangers (9-22-16-12)
  17. 17. Dallas Stars (19-23-16-2)
  18. 18. St Louis Blues (25-13-13-10)
  19. 19. Colorado Avalanche (24-14-16-8)
  20. 20. NY Islanders (26-25-4-22)
  21. 21. Calgary Flames (13-18-12-22)
  22. 22. Nashville Predators (20-12-16-19)
  23. 23. New Jersey Devils (22-19-9-18)
  24. 24. Carolina Hurricanes (27-22-5-21)
  25. 25. Minnesota Wild (17-29-16-19)
  26. 26. Ottawa Senators (23-24-16-22)
  27. 27. Winnipeg Jets (21-27-16-22)
  28. 28. Florida Panthers (29-28-11-22)
  29. 29. Columbus Blue Jackets (28-30-15-20)
  30. 30. Phoenix Coyotes (30-26-16-29)

Facebook

FacebookWith over 800 million users worldwide, Facebook is the reigning king of social media platforms and all 30 teams have active brand pages there. Over 11.5 million people have ‘Liked’ NHL brand pages with the Penguins, Red Wings, Bruins and Black Hawks leading the league with over 1 million fans each. The new Winnipeg Jets have managed to attract 133,838 ‘Likes’ since launching their page less than a year ago on May 31.

To create the Facebook rankings I used total ‘Likes’, ‘People Talking About’ and percentage of total Page Likes Talking About. People Talking About provides a nice ‘snapshot in time’ adding up all the page, post likes, shares, comments, photo tags over the past 7 days. The ranking for each metric was then added together for a final overall ranking for Facebook.

Top 10 NHL Teams on Facebook

  1. 1. Pittsburgh Penguins
  2. 2. New York Rangers
  3. 3. Philadephia Flyers
  4. 4. Detroit Red Wings
  5. 5. Edmonton Oilers
  6. 6. Vancouver Canucks
  7. 7. Boston Bruins
  8. 8. San Jose Sharks
  9. 9. Tampa Bay Lightning
  10. 10. Chicago Black Hawks

Twitter

TwitterTwitter is an ideal place for any fan to stay up to date on the latest news and game updates from their favorite NHL team, and all 30 teams have active accounts. Montreal and Vancouver with 233,664 and 216,747 followers respectively are out on front of the pack, with Pittsburgh trailing in third with 167,246 followers. The Winnipeg Jets are the fastest-rising team on Twitter, they already rank #14 in followers despite only launching on May 31st, of 2011.

The Twitter ranking uses number of total followers, the number of lists the team has been added to, as well as the number of retweets and references in previous the 7 days. The results of these individual metrics are added together to create the final twitter ranking.

Top 10 NHL Teams on Twitter

  1. 1. Chicago Black Hawks
  2. 2. Boston Bruins
  3. 3. Vancouver Canucks
  4. 4. Detroit Red Wings
  5. 5. Montreal Canadiens
  6. 6. Philadelphia Flyers
  7. 7. Toronto Maple Leafs
  8. 8. Washington Capitals
  9. 9. New York Rangers
  10. 10. San Jose Sharks

YouTube

YouTubeEvery second one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube, and a quick search on any hockey team will bring up a long list of fan posted clips. Only 15 of the 30 teams have active YouTube accounts, the remaining teams host video on their main sites using the standard Neulion video player. 2007 Stanley Cup champs, the Anaheim Ducks are the leader on YouTube with nearly 1.3 million total views. Almost half of that total is for just two videos, 375,000 views of the Predators Ryan Suter kicking the puck into his own net in a game against the Ducks, and 199,000 watched Anaheim players attempting to speak Finnish. The NY Islanders, who have had an active YouTube account since September 2006 were second with 730,243 total views. The Red Wings followed in third with 565,250 views followed closely by the Oilers with 554,868.

Top 10 NHL Teams on YouTube

  1. 1. Anaheim Ducks
  2. 2. Detroit Red Wings
  3. 3. Edmonton Oilers
  4. 4. New York Islanders
  5. 5. Carolina Hurricanes
  6. 6. Montreal Canadiens
  7. 7. Buffalo Sabres
  8. 8. Los Angeles Kings
  9. 9. New Jersey Devils
  10. 10. Philadelphia Flyers

Google+

Google+Google+ may only be 6 months old, but in that time it has attracted 90 million fans and many more to come as Google forces new users to sign up for a G+ and Gmail accounts. Some NHL teams such as Toronto, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Buffalo have embraced Google+ and are posting content regularly. 21 of the 30 NHL teams have created ‘official’ Google+ pages, while only 14 of those 21 were active at the time of review.

Teams are ranked on Google+ rankings based on a total of how many circles they have been added to and times they have been +’d. Teams with inactive Google+ accounts were ranked below teams that are active, and teams that have yet to establish any presence were all ranked #22.

Toronto Maple leafs currently lead the league as they belong to 1569 circles and have been +’d 1008 times (as of Jan 27, 2012). Dallas is second belonging to 1231 circles and have been +’d 133 times.

Top 10 NHL Teams on Google+

  1. 1. Toronto Maple Leafs
  2. 2. Dallas Stars
  3. 3. Los Angeles Kings
  4. 4. Buffalo Sabres
  5. 5. Tampa Bay Lightning
  6. 6. Philadephia Flyers
  7. 7. Colorado Avalanche
  8. 8. Vancouver Canucks
  9. 9. Anaheim Ducks
  10. 10. Montreal Canadiens

Hope you enjoyed this social media snapshot of the NHL. I have plans to look at the NFL, NBA, and English Premier League in the near future. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or comments on the way that I ranked the teams.

Now that I have the numbers I’d like to dig down a bit deeper and review the content and engagement strategies that are being used, but first I’m going to relax with a few ‘pops’ and enjoy a weekend of All Star hockey. Cheers and Go Leafs Go!

Axe Promotes New Fragrance With Fan Influenced Graphic Novel

Axe Anarchy Fragrance Graphic NovelThis week (Jan 10) Unilever brand Axe launched Anarchy, a new fragrance that they are marketing to not just their traditional young male audience, but this time also to young women.

To get the word out, digital agency Razorfish are telling the story of the fragrance’s creation as a serialized graphic novel that is being written and illustrated in real-time based on suggestions by it’s fans on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

In fact, the artists and writers of Aspen Comics will be including some of the contributors into the graphic novel as characters as the story develops.

If you’re at all familiar with Axe’s past marketing efforts you won’t be very shocked to see that story too consists mostly of super-hot women losing their minds when the scent of an Axe product reaches their nose. Let’s hope that the contributors can steer the story in a more interesting way.

Blink-182 Taps YouTube Fan Clips For New Video

Blink 182Blink-182 hasn’t released an album in nearly 8 years, and for some folks that’s just fine. Judgmental rock-snob comments aside, the trio of Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge, and Travis Barker are back after a few years of side projects, reality shows and near-death experiences, and they’re set to release a new album entitled Neighborhoods.

For the video of the album’s first single ‘Up All Night‘ the band (with some help from AT&T) searched for fan videos on YouTube that had used their music without permission. They cheekily-titled the project ‘The Blink-182 Film Festival You Didn’t Know You Entered’, and edited together dozens of clips from the 170,000 results.

I’m not ambitious enough to start digging through YouTube’s Terms of Service, but I’m not sure Blink-182 can technically use the video clips for promoting their new album either. I’m sure someone got YouTube’s permission. For now, let’s tack it up to a little tit-for-tat between the band and it’s fans.

If you’d like to watch the original fan-made videos, click on the Blink-182 logo that appears as Tom & Mark read out the names of the selected videos.

As part of their partnership Blink-182 is also appearing in ads for AT&T’s HTC Status where they glow like smurfs mimicking the blue glow of the phone.

Use Your Head (Literally) to Navigate Interactive Hugo Boss Video

Hugo Boss YouTube Just DifferentAfter a few minutes watching the Hugo Boss ‘Just Different’ Interactive YouTube experience I’m still not sure what exactly is going on and I have a pain in my neck.

I’m not kidding about that pain in the neck. The interactive movie makes use of your webcam to track your head movements to navigate between the three different versions of the video. Various elements fade in and out as you tilt your head back and forth.

What’s it all about? The interactive YouTube experience is promoting their new Hugo Just Different fragrance. The video itself shows male models in sharp looking suits delivering red suitcases to a secret destination.

Watch the experience now on the HUGOBOSSTV channel on YouTube.

Mountain Equipment Co-op Link to History Via QR Code

Mountain Equipment Co-op - QR code muralDespite seeing QR codes popping up on virtually every corner around Toronto these days, it’s always interesting to see and make note of the various ways that retailers are using them. I spotted this QR code today outside the Mountain Equipment Co-op store at King West and Peter Street.

The mural celebrates the 40th Anniversary of the BC-based recreation outfitting company, and the QR code links passerby to a mobile page and great video detailing that history from the original group of six climbers pooling their $65 to create the company in 1971.

Awesome

  • The QR code is a good size, it’s easily scanned if you can get close enough.
  • The destination page is mobile friendly (seems obvious but still some executions fail on this)
  • the content is a natural extension of the campaign and mural

Not so awesome

  • No instructions on what the QR code is, what to do with, or how to get download a QR code scanner app.
  • No alternative short code or url for users without scanner apps.
  • The position behind the bike racks is awkward to get to.

I think expecting every single person walking by with a mobile phone to stop and scan the QR code is unrealistic. Alternative ways to access content should be made available to the user as in the Macy’s and First Bank examples that I wrote about last week.