YouTube and beyond: How PR pros discover and create buzz with online video

By Chris Cobb

You don't have to persuade the creative minds at Capstrat that the fledgling video-exchange Web site YouTube is destined to play a role in public relations.

YouTube did, after all, help launch the Raleigh, N.C.-based PR and marketing firm to the heady heights of the "Late Show with David Letterman."

Here's how it happened. David Chatham, Capstrat account director, got inspired while watching the "Late Show" one night earlier this year when he saw Letterman introduce a bust made of cheese of his floor manager Biff Henderson. (Regular Letterman watchers will know that likenesses of Henderson created from unlikely materials are a frequent feature on the show.)

On a wall back at Capstrat's offices was a staff-generated mosaic image of Albert Einstein composed entirely of Post-it notes. Einstein had replaced a similar sticky image of Elvis Presley only weeks before and just for fun, Chatham sent a video to YouTube of Capstrat staffers tearing down the Elvis and creating the Einstein. After watching the "Late Show" segment, Chatham sent the Einstein YouTube link to Letterman's producers suggesting it would be a cool idea to create Henderson's image from Post-its.

This was how Todd Coats, Capstrat's creative director, and one of Capstrat's digital media designer, got themselves on "Letterman" March 20 armed with 2,000 sticky pieces of paper

"The goal was to demonstrate that a lot can be done with a little," says Chatham, who adds that the appearance drove thousands of people to watch the video on the Capstrat and YouTube sites.

An obvious attraction
The attraction to the San Mateo, Calif.-based company is obvious: It costs nothing to use (yet) and, according to its own figures, is disseminating in excess of 25 million original videos daily to all corners of the world. For a company in business for just 16 months, its growth is phenomenal.

Logically, YouTube is being used by movie and TV companies who see a ready-made promotional vehicle, especially for product it wants to target to a younger audience. This spring, it featured a video of Queen performing "Bohemian Rhapsody" as part of a Hollywood Records promotional campaign for the new compilation "Queen Stone Cold Classic."

Along with growing relationships with networks such as E! and MTV, the site has also featured promos for "Scary Movie 4" and "Clerks 11." The "Scary Movie" trailer was watched 1 million times. (Incidentally, the film opened with a robust $41 million at the box office the weekend of April 14-16.)

More than just YouTube
Although influential, sometimes YouTube is not enough for a multimedia campaign.

"We create video or digital animation for clients, and many times we're looking for ways to distribute virally - not just on a Web site or as a TV ad," says Chatham.

"But viral marketing would have to be part of a wider multimedia campaign, because although YouTube has a large audience, it wouldn't reach the breadth of viewers that most of our clients want to reach."

Kori Skinner, an executive with the McCormack Group of Des Moines, Iowa, views YouTube and its competitors - notably Google, iFilms and Atom Entertainment - more as convenient tools for discovering current buzz, especially among younger people.

"Internet technologies have created a democratization of ideas and are offering PR professionals new listening tools," says Skinner, who chairs PRSA's Central Iowa Chapter's technology committee. "Any smart communicator knows that pushing your perspective out there is about listening to what your audience wants and framing it in the vernacular they communicate in."

Skinner sees these forms of viral marketing working especially well for advocacy groups - animal rights groups, for instance - and companies with products aimed at a younger audience.

"We're not talking corporate video here or TV commercials," she says. As an example, she says a company that manufactures snowboards could produce an extreme sports video of a snowboarder, wearing company logos, performing stunts. "Cool images circulate quickly and make it easier to create a buzz," Skinner says.

YouTube and its clip-culture brethren are signaling the end for many conventional modes of public relations, says Jamie Izaks, Chicago-based PR manager for the Hyatt Hotels Corporation.

"You can't just put up any old piece of video," he says. "You have to be creative. I certainly wouldn't put up traditional PR material such as video news releases or conventional interviews. You need to strive for something that is both promotional and entertaining."

PR agencies need to encourage more creativity, adds Izaks.

"A lot of PR [agencies] are stuck in the use-a-press release-to-get-the-news-out-there kind of attitude," he says. "If creativity is ingrained in the group, YouTube and others like it can have a significant impact on the way a PR campaign is executed." But Izaks says more conventional mainstream businesses, such as Hyatt, should tread carefully.

"I like to take risks, but you have to be very careful how you promote a company through something that's essentially underground," he says. "It can be done, for sure, but at Hyatt we're not there yet. Our best customers are business travelers, and, from a PR point of view, [the best outlets to reach them] are The Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Maybe the next generation will focus entirely on what today we are calling new media."

Rules to be rewritten
Michael Geist, an attorney and specialist in Internet and E-commerce at the University of Ottawa in Canada's capital, says broadcasters and other creators and disseminators of video are looking to the Internet as the primary method of distributing their content.

Especially significant, says Geist, was ABC's recent announcement that it will screen its programs online, with commercials that viewers can skip, a day after they appear on conventional TV.

"Within another year we will be in an environment where just about everything will be available online, hours after it's been broadcast on conventional TV," he says. "ABC will open the floodgates. There is as huge amount of experimentation happening. The rules are being rewritten."

As broadband proliferates and technology gets easier to use, the audience accessing online content will become older, Geist predicts.

"ABC isn't putting its programs online to attract teenagers," he says, "but who knows how this is all going to look in two years? We live in a world where YouTube wasn't even on anybody's radar screen a few months ago and now it's generating literally millions of downloads a day."

Author and journalist Chris Cobb is a senior writer at the Ottawa Citizen newspaper in Canada's capital where he specializes in reporting on media and government communication.

This article first appeared in PR Tactics.
Copyright 2006 PR Tactics. Reprinted with permission by the Public Relations Society of America ( www.prsa.org )