AM
#kittencamp session from Rubber Republic, who advise on the best practises for good content.
The first slot of the day was with Will Cooke from Rubber Republic, who focused on sharing the best practises for making good content. Will, a professional ‘word spreader’ and ‘love sharer’ (it was on his name badge!), introduced us to the #kittencamp concept (unfortunately, due to the weather, Will was not dressed in his usual attire that we were told to expect- a full, head-to-toe furry cat outfit!). Kittencamp is a monthly meet-up that’s been running for two and a half years, where representatives from a variety of agencies meet up to talk about inspiring and innovative content and campaigns.
To demonstrate how they identify the ‘hooks’ in specific videos that make them so popular, they showed us a series of examples. The first was a topical, if not slightly grotesque, re-worked version of the popular moonwalking Shetland pony by 3 which, conveniently (for want of a better word), came out at around the same time as the horse meat scandal… I’ll let you come to your own conclusions about that one. Another example was the hilarious parody of Adele’s ‘Rolling in the Deep’ music video that potter Keith Brymer Jones created to promote his pottery line. Re-worked as ‘Rolling clay with Keith’, it is a perfect example of ‘advertising without an advert’!
They identified three categories of video content: ‘watchable’, ‘shareable’ and ‘remarkable’. Their corresponding formula of ‘why + who = win’ (complete with Charlie Sheen meme) allows media agencies to ask themselves which audience would potentially share their content and their reasons for doing so. The key point comes in the form of (what they call) the Kevin Costner problem: ‘If you build it they will come’ is the assumption that is usually made about media content. WRONG! More often than not, you need to take the content to the audience if you want to bump it up to ‘remarkable’ on the scale! Thanks Rubber Republic!
LUNCHTIME
VEVO
The first slot of the lunchtime session, ‘I Want to be a Producer’ was with Jason from VEVO, who explained exactly what they do and how they create various different types of video content that is streamed from all over the web- in fact, 80% of their streaming is directly from YouTube. VEVO’s ‘bread and butter’ is music videos, as they monetise artists and own digital video rights. They not only produce your standard music video, but they have created other categories such as ‘VEVO Stripped’, which shows exclusive footage of artists performing their songs a cappella without any techie effects. We were shown their favourite campaigns for Lucozade which featured hot artiste of the moment, AlunaGeorge in their exclusive category, ‘VEVO Presents’. Definitely one to consider especially as they can reach a diverse viewing audience across multiple screens and platforms!
MixCloud
Next up was Fran from MixCloud, the biggest online community/platform for DJs in the world, from the likes of Avicii to independent bedroom DJs. Having been described as the ‘iPlayer for audio’, MixCloud allows DJs and radio shows to upload their mixes- called cloudcasts- to the site for free, where all their followers can stay up to date with the music they love. Offering a more personalised service, there is a general dashboard for all users, which displays the activity of the DJs that they follow, as well as the ‘up next’ feature which predicts other mixes that you would like from your existing tastes. Fran emphasized that MixCloud’s truly unique feature was the uniqueness of their blanket music licenses which allow all the content that’s uploaded to the site to be accessed by anyone- when MixCloud creates a mix for a brand, it becomes theirs to do whatever they like with, from sharing on Facebook to using in a banner ad. Overall, MixCloud has become the middleman between the talent and the brands that want to use the talent and as a consequence, they have exploded onto the tech scene with 10 million listeners- all at the tender age of 3 years old.
Hoot
Last on the lunch menu- but certainly not least!- was James Rawlings, the creative director and co-founder of Hoot, a comedy production company. Or in media terms, a comedy content agency, but James doesn’t like putting it like that because he thinks he sounds ‘like a d***’. Hoot is four years old and was founded by comedian James, along with his two pals Ben and Ben- two very successful broadcast writers. The first point that James emphasized was that comedy for content and ads has to be a good as what’s on TV in order to compete, or even compare. An example of this can be seen in their hilarious video with Alex MacQueen of the Inbetweeners for Virgin Atlantic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyCSm3NGdaI), about a man who falls in love with (and consequently becomes ardently obsessed with) a plane. Hoot particularly like creating characters will fully comprehensive background information and unique character traits in order to promote brands or causes and according to James, using YouTube talent is an untapped goldmine in this area: they’re enthusiastic and they’re thirsty for exposure, so they’re flexible to work with. It also gets the job done as fast as possible.
PM
Rockabox
The three o’clock session was with Torie Chilcott, the founder and CCO of Rockabox, who pride themselves in ‘making content count’. Founded in 2007 at a coffee shop with only a pen and paper, Rockabox is now very much a reality, creating valuable content for online advertising and distribtuon, by which the audience is brought to the brand rather than the other way round. Their unique and defining features are known as ‘shutters’: ‘technology to get content which is clean into the internet as an ad in the form of a banner or a hotspot word’. In other words, it could be seen as a microsite within a site, instead of an ad or MPU. This clever innovation relinquishes the use of the back button and of multiple tabs and windows and even more impressively, it works on all different types of device, from smartphone to tablet to desktop.
The shutters have created massive engagement so far where used: 50% of all users that visited a specific page with a shutter on it clicked onto the shutter, and 35% of those people engaged with the content. Torie then proceeded to show us some of the ‘timepoints’ that Rockabox has been working on extensively, which are graphic timelines of how a shutter campaign will progress over the course of however many weeks the brand has requested. All in all it was an extremely fun session- we were asked to design our own shutters for a new phone that is coming out in October- and came up with some really great group ideas! Oh, and did I mention that there was free beer all round? Talk about getting our creative juices flowing!