Captains of Industry
http://www.captainsofindustry.com/
A behind-the-scenes story that reveals how one B-to-B marketer used a lot of silliness to increase its web traffic tenfold and generate thousands of sales leads
Ted Page
Ted Page is principal and creative director of Captains of Industry
and author of the Captains of Industry–Thunder Sky Pictures production
of The Institute for Backup Trauma, starring John Cleese.
PICTURE a modern restaurant full of Vikings. A customer asks the waitress for
the daily specials. She responds with an endless list of dishes, all of which
are made with Spam. The more the waitress mentions this salty canned meat product,
the more the Vikings break out in their chant of, ‘Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam
…’ This, of course, is the classic Monty Python sketch from the 1970s
and the origin of the term spam as applied to unwanted emails that simply
won't go away.
Interestingly, one of the architects of the original Monty
Python Spam skit has recently been engaged in a new form of web marketing—a
form of marketing that, unlike Spam, people actually seek out and savour. Monty
Python member John Cleese is now appearing on the internet in a wildly popular
comedy video created to draw IT managers to the web site of a company called
Live Vault.
Live Vault, a maker of disk-based data backup solutions, needed
to make a splash in the market with a new product launch. Their independent
marketing consultant, Jeff Weiner, had a solution. Make a video starring John
Cleese that was so funny viewers would tell their friends to go see it at their
web site. A small amount of print ads and web banners would help get the video
launched, but after that it would, as they say, “go viral” and spread
by word of mouth. In a moment of insanity, Live Vault agreed to do it.
And go viral it did. The end results were what Mr Cleese would
have introduced by saying, ‘And now for something completely different.’
Buzz in the industry. Dozens of blogs linking to Live Vault's site. Over one
hundred thousand views of the video within six weeks. Web traffic that increased
by a factor of ten. And thousands of sales leads generated.
How did this viral phenomenon go from wacky idea to revenue-generating
success? To learn how this happened, you have to get into the minds of Doug
Feinburg, Fred Surr, and me (Ted Page)—something that should not be undertaken
by the faint of heart. Doug's company, Thunder Sky Pictures, was hired by Live
Vault's consultant Jeff Weiner to produce the Cleese video. Doug, in turn, called
upon Fred and me, principals of Captains of Industry marketing, to write and
direct it.
In a meeting that involved too much coffee and lots of bad
jokes, we came up with the big idea. Cleese would play the part of Dr
Harold Twain Weck, director of the Institute for Backup Trauma. In the video,
which would be viewable only on Live Vault's web site, Dr Twain Weck would guide
people through a tour of the Institute, where hapless IT managers suffering
from Back-Up trauma are “treated” with a variety of unorthodox (and
entirely ineffectual) remedies. Because this was, of course, a B-to-B project,
the plot was based on Live Vault's actual marketing strategy. The Back-up Trauma
“victims” suffered their fate because they relied upon out-of-date
tape-based backup systems that frequently fail.
The challenge with web video is to make something that's not
only really funny, but that also has your marketing messages built-in. People
should get your selling points as part of the entertainment. With web video,
we're able to tailor the humour to a very specific audience. For the Live Vault
video, for instance, we needed a piece of entertainment that would be hysterical
to IT managers.
Therein lies much of the benefit to marketers seeking a better
way to reach their niche B-to-B audience: they can pull in visitors who are
actually interested in their product, and they can do it without the level of
ad spending required for a traditional campaign. In effect, web video helps
transform corporate web sites into TV channels. Why pay CNN to run your commercial?
It's incredibly expensive, and most of the people who see it won't care about
your product. With a viral video approach, you can pull in just the people you
want to your site, without spending a fortune on ad placement.
But, simply having a funny, content-rich web video is not
enough to achieve results—whether that's generating leads or promoting
your brand. In order to get the most out of the video, it must be carefully
integrated with the company's web site in order to steer audiences to the right
sections. For example, in the Institute for Backup Trauma, the script called
for John Cleese to invite viewers to click a series of buttons, all of which
were built into the web site.
Button number one leads to a tour of the highly irreverent
Institute for Back-up Trauma web site, created especially for the video. Reinforcing
the theme of the web video, it allows viewers to travel the hallways of the
institute, and includes symptoms to watch for, patient stories, and prevention
tips such as ‘copy all data by hand, just in case your tape fails.’
Button number two leads to more information on Live Vault's
solutions. It wasn't until Cleese was on the set in Los Angeles that we came
up with the infamous ‘Third Button’ option, which Cleese recorded
last. Dr Twain Weck admonishes viewers not to press the third button
under any circumstances. We knew that if we told people not to press
the third button everyone would. It's human nature.
As it turns out, virtually everyone who watches the video
presses the third button. Who can resist? It's the beauty of viral web video.
So what happens when you press the infamous third button?
You'll just have to see the video
to find out. •