Spending the least amount of money to achieve the greatest publicity effect is the common goal of all enterprises and advertising companies.
"Viral" online advertising videos are one such way of publicity. The so-called "viral" online advertising is a kind of advertising that can be spread without artificial promotion. For example, Baidu's series of small ads a few years ago and the spoof video "China Mobile satirizes China Unicom" rely on the spontaneous transmission of Internet users. It is done without spending money to buy advertising space on major websites. Since there is no need to spend money to buy advertising space, now companies are very happy to use this method to promote products or publicity, especially the "spoof movie" method (that is, re-editing and splicing together various movie shots, (re-dubbed), the "spoof movie" was cheap to make and seemed to work well. In the past two years, companies have often come to me to do this kind of stuff.
But now I would like to advise those companies that still want to continue to do "viral" online advertising not to waste money on it. Have you noticed that, except for Baidu’s series of small ads and the spoof video of “China Mobile satirizes China Unicom” a few years ago, there have never been any successful cases of “viral” online advertising? Today’s “viral” "Online advertisements are emerging one after another, but they have not achieved the goal of independent dissemination. Netizens are unwilling to read them, let alone pass them on.
In order to deceive business owners or build momentum, advertising companies (or video production companies) have to spend money on traditional media to publish soft advertising articles to promote their spoof videos, so that they can attract some people to watch the video. What’s even worse is that in order to deceive business owners, advertising companies (or video production companies) cheat on video click-through rates and netizen comments. Videos that no one has ever watched have millions or tens of millions of click-through rates, and there are many " Netizens” praise. Coupled with the soft articles in newspapers, business owners mistakenly thought that the publicity campaign was successful, but they did not expect that they were taken advantage of from the beginning. Of course, all this stems from the enterprise's lack of understanding of the current network status and network culture, resulting in wrong judgments.
Today's Internet is completely different from the time when Baidu's small ads and China Mobile's spoof videos appeared. Baidu Advertising and China Mobile's spoof videos appeared before 2005. At that time, the Internet was still in the era of text and pictures, and there were almost no videos. One or two videos occasionally appeared. As long as the content was funny, it went viral. The reason why this type of video can be spread is that in addition to being good-looking, the lack of online videos is also an important reason. In 2006, online video began to rise. Hundreds of video websites suddenly appeared in China. Coupled with the wanton misappropriation of movies and TV series, online video suddenly showed explosive growth and the content was extremely rich. In this case, it is even more difficult for one or two self-portraits or spoof video programs to stand out. It is not enough to be generally attractive. They must be particularly attractive (for example, videos like CGX). This is why there are so many videos now, but only a few can be widely disseminated. This is the same as the traditional cultural communication industry. Whether it is newspapers or magazines, whether it is TV, movies or music, although the overall sales and viewing rates have been growing, their respective sales and viewing rates are all without exception. It is a sharp decline. The reason is that there are more and more newspapers and magazines, more and more TV channels, more and more movies, and more and more music songs and albums. The era of a movie reaching 100 million viewers, a TV series leading to a sell-out, and a spoof video triggering a huge discussion on the Internet is over forever.
China's Internet is different from foreign countries and has its own particularity. This particularity has led to the ineffectiveness of "viral" online advertising in China. Foreign netizens have never been able to watch movies and TV series online. Due to the improvement of the legal system, no website will post movies, TV series and TV programs for netizens to watch. Foreign netizens can only see selfies taken by netizens and videos that the producers are willing to broadcast for free on websites such as Youtube. There are absolutely no movies, TV series. This kind of big production stuff.
But China is very different. Netizens can easily watch all kinds of movies, TV series, and TV programs on the Internet. The content is rich and colorful. Even if you spend a few hours a day, you may not be able to finish watching these American blockbusters and a large number of American, Japanese, and Korean movies. TV series, who wants to spend time watching other things? With movies, TV series, and TV shows flooding the Internet, how much room will there be for those netizens’ selfies and small-scale productions?
Finally, the low quality and boring nature of current "viral" online advertising ultimately leads to things that no one would watch in the first place, and no one wants to watch them anymore. Let’s take Baidu ads and China Mobile spoofs as examples. These two videos themselves are of high quality and interesting, which is the primary factor in their spread. Baidu advertisements are shot completely according to the TV advertisement model, and high cost is the fundamental condition for high quality (of course not the only condition).
In contrast, today's enterprises or advertising companies are not willing to spend money when doing online marketing, and they are trying their best to save money. How can they get high returns if they are unwilling to invest? And the video of "China Mobile pranks China Unicom" , the whole story adopts satirical techniques, which just combines with the advantages of "spoof". You know, the reason why spoofs are good to watch is because they are ironic. A spoof that is not ironic will definitely not look good. Nowadays, most of the spoof videos used for product promotion on the Internet have no satirical content. In order to cover up their own boringness, most of them are disguised as "netizen spoof" videos (in comparison, Baidu advertising and China Mobile spoof videos are all in the same place. At the beginning, I told the audience openly that I am an advertisement), and kept rambling in the first few minutes. In the last half minute, I still half-hidden the product to be promoted, but because the purpose of promoting the product positively cannot be abandoned, , so all the previous jokes are unnatural and deliberate. Even if such a spoof is all in local dialects, even if a lot of vulgar language is added, and even if the products to be promoted are introduced at the last minute, it still can't compare to "China Mobile spoofs China Unicom" "This is a satirical video that uses standard Mandarin and civilized terms and gets straight to the point from the beginning.
So I think "viral" online advertising is no longer effective. Of course, those soft advertising articles in newspapers and the fabricated click-through rates and "netizen" comments may make some people mistakenly believe that "viral" online advertising is a cheap and high-quality way of publicity, but this is just wishful thinking. It’s just self-deception.
If you are a business owner, I recommend:
1. Using movies to edit dubbing spoof videos, although the cost is very low, the advertising effect is also very low (again, never believe in the "click-through rate" thing). Moreover, this kind of spoof that uses local dialects and vulgar language will greatly reduce the image of your product.
2. Seriously shoot and produce videos. Although the cost is high, it has a certain advertising effect.
3. Don’t think that hiding advertising intentions or “spoofing some hot topics first and then bringing them to the product” is a good idea. In fact, successful cases of "viral" online advertising in China and foreign countries all openly tell the audience "I am an advertisement", while those who are secretive or even use "netizens' prank" or "I am not an advertisement, I am just "A funny video" to deceive the audience is unsuccessful. Even if you allow the producer to play freely for five minutes first and only promote the product for the last half minute, it will be difficult for the producer to let go and play freely, resulting in empty and boring content that the audience will not watch. If you close it halfway, your final product promotion will be ineffective.
4. Directly spend money to buy advertising space in popular online video programs or video websites to play regular ads for 15 seconds or 30 seconds. The number of viewers will be higher than the number of viewers if you make a "viral" online advertising video and let it spread freely. A lot more. Therefore, it is recommended that you buy advertising space honestly and stop fantasizing that your advertising videos will be spread independently by netizens.
5. If your company does not have an advertising department, but directly entrusts the business to other advertising or marketing companies, it should be noted that they have the following methods to deceive you:
a. Spend money to publish soft articles in newspapers to create the illusion that your video is being noticed.
b. Use human clicks or machine clicks to create high click-through rates, or even work with video websites to directly modify the numbers to create the illusion of a large audience.
c. Hire people to post and comment to create the illusion of attention and praise from netizens.