A VC - Latest Comments in Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

teegee — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 20:47:32 -0000

This is the concept that MOFILM (http://www.mofilm.com) used for their user-generated content competition at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival. Contestants asked to create an ad for one of 12 brands, best one chosen for each, an overall winner chosen by Spike Lee last week (a young Japanese guy won with his ad for Nokia).
With advertising budgets being slashed worldwide, surely this trend can only continue... I'm sure some ad firms have got their heads round the idea, but I wouldn't like to be in one of the 'stodgy' companies right now.

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

fredwilson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:07:35 -0000

Good question

But many online video ad units are in the 15 and 30 second format

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

fredwilson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:57:43 -0000

Great suggestion. Thanks

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

fredwilson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:57:39 -0000

I heard about from my daughter who watches weeds religiously. She was impressed

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

fredwilson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:57:35 -0000

Very interesting and relevant to earned media and passed links, two of my obsessions right now

Thanks!

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

fredwilson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:38:23 -0000

That's for sure. I see that every day. It is the essential truth of the open source movement

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

fredwilson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:38:21 -0000

Yeah, there's a lot going on in this space. Much of it has surfaced in the comment thread. I should have written a longer more complete post about this sector.

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

fredwilson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:38:17 -0000

Surely this is not the way to get the most professional and high quality work. And surely it is the way to get the most authentic and passionate work

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

fredwilson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:38:16 -0000

Etsy uses a lot of open source code in its service which it pays nothing for and which is built by a community of passionate programmers working together because they love to do that

Etsy's community (both sellers and buyers) are doing the same thing with the marketing function

Etsy's marketplace will approach $200mm in annual revenue this year but Etsy extracts very little of that revenue leaving most of it for the sellers. Items cost less under this low cost model which benefits the buyers

And yet Etsy is a profitable business because it utilizes a new model where everyone chips in and helps

You can call that cheap. I call it smart

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

BillSeitz — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:46:23 -0000

Hey, it only cost $7k to make ElMariachi!

http://webseitz.fluxent.com...

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

BillSeitz — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:41:22 -0000

Is this for online-use only, or might they actual buy TV ad-time to show? The focus on exact-duration spots makes me wonder...

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

fredwilson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:37:25 -0000

Thanks for doing that

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

ShanaC — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:39:45 -0000

I don't date people my parents like as a general rule. I like em "bad" as they say. Plus, the gender line is noticeably stronger. I'm feminine- my reference points include things like baking and makeup, but I play a harder game of ball intellectually than most often acceptable. (This is probably healthy in the long term- in the short term it is very ehhh feeling). And I date across kippot and affiation lines within some limits- which also drives people up the wall when they ask to set me up. *shrug* More than one third of my high school class may be married or engaged- but at least I know I won't be a secondary dependent partner in the game of life.

I generally shy away from the orthodox or just orthodox label currently- per the age group parts of my identity are in flux- but sociologically I am very closely tied to where I grew up. Lots of education and low level seclusion from the rest of the world will do that (The neighborhood I grew up in is now primarily Orthodox of various stripes).

That being said- it is one of the reasons I maintain a totally separate identity on the Jewish blogsphere land- which is quite active. Actually, I regularly see blogs there that post multiple times a day and end up with comment threads over a 100 comments long. The internet is really radicalizing to those in niche communities- it gets alternative messages out that would otherwise be suppressed, and suppresses those it doesn't want to hear as well. As a result it is probably better to maintain semi-separated personas- real life can hurt when reputation on somewhat silly things is all that matters.

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

Steven Rosenbaum — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:14:31 -0000

Joseph, you're asking an interesting question - but "standard ad agency rates" is a bit of a red herring here. Clearly no one is making these hand made contest entries as a professional enterprise. It's more like a new form of digital word-of-mouth. And not all brands have the ability to engage in this way. You need to have passionate, creative, engaged users who want to make content for you.

But what is worth noting is that there a whole collection of spaces that were previously "professional" that now embrace low cost, or no-cost consumer created content. CNN quotes Twitter, Huffington Post publishes unpaid contributors, Craigs list provides free classified ads for people who used to pay newspapers. Digital desktop tools break down barriers for creative expression and lower cost. Who's to say what the "standard" fee for a :30 commercial should be? If Etsy finds the contributions useful, and it helps build the community around Etsy, the makers of these ads benefit as well (as more traffic to Etys brings more buyers to the Etsy marketplace).

Overall, smart marketers are exploring all kinds of ways to engage social media. It's way to early to say how consumer created content will play a role, but its clearly going to be part of them mix.

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

fredwilson — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:09:15 -0000

I'll let you know if we can use your help and I'll check our your service too

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

Morgan Warstler — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 01:09:41 -0000

Shana, this is just my fairly worthless two bits, but be wary of marrying "well." Pick a dude that really annoys your parents... at least one that keeps them up at nights. Have the same attitude about the sucky job market. Esty is about DIY... it's brand promise is authentic and unique. Find that guy instead. He'll wear the crocheted yarmulke too.

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

lizstless — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:54:38 -0000

Or, you know, he's busy with work that pays a little better than the chance at a couple grand, like most talented advertising filmmakers

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

ShanaC — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:08:50 -0000

I find that on a limited basis- just very basic post-product without rendering time, without adjusting sound, without adjusting lighting and filters, ect:
Every five minutes you see = 24 work hours. That's very basic post production. So it takes 4.5 hours to just cut and edit and insert transitions. Filming takes god knows how long. Really pro people will have totally separate people editing than filming.(Always film more than you need to).

Rend time is whatever it takes when it comes to effects. And you might need to go back and fix it. Sound I am not an expert on, but because one records sound separately from the image- you can go in and edit that, as well as rerecord if you are able to.

Mind you- $3250 will only buy you an apple with the proper video card to run Maya and Final Cut Pro, Bootcamped, without sales tax (The NVidia that comes standard can't run Maya...and the better version of Maya should probably be run on Vista at 64 bit). No peripherals. No other graphic programs. No monitor. No cameras, mikes, ect. Not even the programs themselves.

You are not even recouping labor costs. (The only reason I know is because I am desperate to invest in one already and I can't afford it, and I am not sure how anyone does...Solutions anyone- since the jobmarket is sucky?)

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

ShanaC — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:46:18 -0000

A) What is the purpose, given Etsy's history, to pay advertising rates if their typical market has a history of being underground? They need to jump to a broader market- but they ain't my male lawyer friends watching Hulu. Their market are geek girls and trend girls- Getting a crafter's goods in Gossip Girl, Vogue, or Lucky would do ten times as much than a lot of the ideas floating here because of how gender and advertising works. I was responding to that thought in the back of my head.

If I gossip out to others outside of the demographic because of this campaign, the end result is that Etsy won customers. Etsy is not my friend. It is a service that provides an outlet for a need at a price. I'm fine with it, mostly because I know that it would be impossible to produce real money there for the vast majority. And I think the majority realize that fact as well.

B) I know- Even though I want to do high art on a computer about the internet and society- I know that to build cash to do so- it is better to sell my 3d drawings on Vellum Paper first. Fungible items that are difficult to copy in a portfolio and are Unique to me, even if they are somewhat personal- can have a stable market value, despite art world funniness. Theoretical work that plays on internet funniness depends far more on the art market and on the tech market. And it doesn't help that I am a student without real resources to the machine works that produces the graphics to create high art. You don't start doing art, and expanding outward from there, unless you think too much.
I know my goals relating to my work long and short term- one of them is to avoid exploitation if I can.

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

ShanaC — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:28:09 -0000

The cross-over problems of "free creative" is what allows Etsy to do this in the first place.

The Legalease basically allows unlimited editing of the winning products- not much different than a good deal of free-lancing terms out there, which is how a lot of people get their feet in the doors...

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

Alex Salkever — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:22:13 -0000

Part and parcel of the new "lean company" realities. The differential between traditional ad spots and really creative digital video spots / UGC are shrinking constantly. Love it.

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

rich caccappolo — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:12:31 -0000

Etsy received some great advertising last night - a mention on "Weeds".

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

Jan Schultink — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:02:43 -0000

Video still creates a professional barrier, not everyone knows how to produce something decent.

You could turn this into a presentation slideshow contest. The combination of PowerPoint/Keynote, high-quality stock images and a sharing platform such as SlideShare provides the infrastructure to make pretty good and engaging slide shows (no bullet points of course).

Not as slick as video, but likely to get many more people to contribute.

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

kirklove — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:29:39 -0000

The topic of “free creative” is not black and white, but rather a lovely shade of murky gray, kind of like PMS 438. ;)

Sure Etsy is being a cheapskate by having users do promotion for them for next to nothing – but they are also genuinely engaging their rabid user base. Nothing wrong with either. It’s their choice. (And I think a smart one at that.)

Though I can understand why professionals (and for the record I’ve been a Creative Director for the last 15 years) could get upset, (like the recent flack over Google not wanting to pay designers for themes - http://tinyurl.com/mbjyaj). But, I don’t think that applies to Etsy in this case since they are a fledging company sans the Google coffers, with non-professionals contributing. Still to eliminate the notion of exploitation, Etsy should have given anyone who participated credit on Etsy. In turn it would drive folks to interact with other sellers, further community involvement and grow the service. Then everyone could put down their exacto knives and get along. ;)

Re: Need Some 15 and 30 Second Spots? Hire Your User Base.

Jim Rogers — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:12:09 -0000

Very interested in crowdsourcing and user advocacy. Something that may be helpful to Etsy is uVizz (full disclosure: portfolio company). They're an user-generated content platform that integrates campaigns with social network. The reason for my suggestion is because they enable campaigns to track the nature of their viral spread. Etsy may be interested in being their own judges regarding the videos submitted. However, if they want some insight into who finds each video interesting, and how that content gets distributed and viewed, uVizz could provide insight. They just went live (public beta) last week, and can be found at www.uVizz.com.

Hope this comment isn't seen as self-serving. Just thought it might be interesting.