Here’s the video:

video link

Here’s the page of links mentioned in the video: rimmkaufman.com/nemoa2008

This talk does not have any grand unifying theme. Rather, it is a random grab-bag of Marketing 2.0 ideas related to online retailing that I find cool. The intended audience was catalogers, so some of the topics or suggestions may be less novel to folks hanging out on the cutting edge of the blogosphere.

I recorded the talk and optimized the Camtasia recordings for Youtube. Boof — some sections were just a smidgen longer than YouTube’s 10 minute rule. So instead I put them on Yahoo’s JumpCut. That’s why the video looks like five sections spliced, and why the image quality isn’t great — it seems optimizing production for YouTube is less optimal for JumpCut.

But we live in a TIVO society. Businesses are being built around the desire of many to avoid advertisements. How do we get consumers to voluntarily watch a commercial?

Involvement is the critical piece.

One mechanism: Make it so funny that people pass it around to their friends, a la the Bud Light “Real Men of Genius” series, which have translated into hundreds of thousands of “free” impressions. However, this is a branding play, and as much as I enjoy the spot, I’m not sure it makes me any more likely to buy Bud Light.

1-800 Flowers is trying another approach. The idea? Have people send in their own “How we fell in love, story” for Valentines Day, the winning entries get a prize. The notion of creating an involvement mechanism is great, and I’m hoping that someone will be kind enough to share some insights as to how well this “worked” for them and what they learned from the experience.

We also believe that instructional videos will be a powerful medium for getting the message out to potential customers. Our friends at Crutchfield have put out shopping guides for HDTVs and Car Stereo installation guides. We think Zales could put out video guides for selecting the perfect engagement ring.

The potential for extracting value from this new medium is there. It will be fascinating to watch it evolve as we all try to figure out how to make it work for us.

Ideas welcomed!