Monday

Making It Personal

Many of today’s rich media experiences are driven by a highly humorous video. That kind of content is what people like to share online. In some ways creating the viral video is the easy part. Creatives who have been perfecting the art of the 30-second tv spots for years can now extend their narratives online. Developing an interactive microsite that is more than just a place to view these videos requires a new way of thinking. Two excellent viral videos and their accompanying microsites illustrate this point and highlight the potential of personalization to expand upon the videos’ initial success. The videos that are the focus of JC Penney’s Beware of the Doghouse and Nike’s Ankle Insurance Co. campaigns are equally entertaining but Nike manages to enhance their video concept where JC Penney falls short.

Nike’s big idea is that you need their new basketball shoe or you’ll end up with broken ankles on the court. Beyond the very funny video featuring Kobe Bryant on a horse explaining why you need to get the shoes or ankle insurance, site visitors can send a video to someone whose ankles they’ve recently broken while playing basketball and any witnesses of the event. Importantly, you get to personalize the video through eight variables, including the victim’s level of quickness (choices: quick or the opposite of quick) and the victim’s reaction to the break (choices: visibly shaken or totally devastated). It’s easy to imagine basketball players gleefully sending these ankle insurance forms to friends they play with.

At the JC Penney project, you can personalize their outstanding video concept by putting a misbehaving male in the doghouse or sending one a warning. The warning e-mail that is sent is only personalized by the sender’s and receiver’ s names. Beyond that, the e-mail simply invites the recipient to click on a link to go to the Beware of the Doghouse site. Actually putting someone in the doghouse is slightly more interesting, but not much, because you can indicate why the bad boy’s in trouble.

Though we’ve heard it too many times to count, this is an interactive medium and needs to be treated like one. Personalization should be an interactive tool that all viral marketers consider. Online consumers expect to be able to modify content to create something that is unique. Marketers who provide them with such environments will be rewarded more often than not.