So Mark @ Mashable wrote about YouTube updating their community guidelines against Hate speech.

He points out the obvious – people on the internet are retarded and this change means they are censoring us all, and we are fucked because all censorship is evil, and they have won because they can’t say their evil words online.

Freedom of speech is absolute.

If we can’t beat them without silencing their message, we obviously
aren’t being convincing enough to those they are converting. Fight them
with our own free speech and expression.

Overall – it’s a good read. YouTube doing a political nod (gee, just like Google did for China, and then did with Law Enforcement Agencies).

My only real issue with the article is the wrap-up:

We Need to be Smart About This
As Uncle Ben used to say, with great power comes great responsibility… If we want to keep it safe from the grubby paws of governmental intervention, companies like Google must implement and enforce standards
of policing the community.  Otherwise, the government will do that for
us, and I think I speak for all of us when I say we do not want that.

Google isn’t the little shop down the street. They’re a huge-ass corporation. If MSN was doing this people would be calling for Bill Gates head. If Steve Jobs did it, people would make shiny new logos promoting how innovative and forward thinking he’s being.

Instead, YouTube (which was purchased by Google) is taking it into their own hands. This shows the error of their “Do No Evil” slogan – nothing is really black and white. They can do something that a lot of people can consider evil – collecting user data, censoring hate speech, censoring anti-hate speech.

I do not welcome our new Internet Overlords.

Benjamin Franklin once said,

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

We continue to do so, and turn a blind eye to it. We say it’s for the best. It’s better this way. Think of the children. To me, this just shows how freaking worthless our rights are becoming. Services talk about how they’re for everything, but what’s going to happen in the future? For a citizen to express their discontentment, they’ll have to make a video, encrypt it, send it to a friend over seas to upload it to a “video sharing site” hosted on a derilect oil tanker in international waters that’s under siege by the U.S. Government for posting a video of someone saying “The Bill of Rights is an illusion.”

So what – how did I get all of this off a little YouTube censorship? Because Google was supposed to be that Little Big company. They’re supposed to be those guys that got big being good, making Microsoft look foolish for ever putting DRM on your computer. Instead they’re slowly transforming into “will this be good for the company?” type double-speak they can throw around in marketing and PR to make themselves look good.

How long until Google starts telling you what to write on your blog? “You said not nice things about Google, so we’re giving you a PR of 1, unless you delete those articles. By the way, we bought the rights to your domain, so when it expires, it’s ours unless you comply.”

Those who have the power, make the rules. Those that get the information can make their power. I know, I know, a bit paranoidal-freakish, but hey, political season stupidity always riles me up.

No, I don’t mean the fashion statement – I mean the company! (har har, I know, bad keif)

The thing is – they did a tour, “Plaid Nation 2008″ and trekked across state lines from Washington to Nevada,  and for little over a week, they twittered, they blogged, they filmed (they had a live van feed!). An ecstasy of social media and tech geek-ness. This is the first modern road trip I’ve heard of doing this approach, a kind of modern day Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters albeit perhaps minus the psychdelics. It just reeked of an awesome, modern day traveling social media party. Geeks on wheels. Nerds on boad. The kind of thing that makes me constantly ask “why haven’t I moved to the west coast yet?”

Ken Kesey and The Merry Prankster

In their venture, they managed to interview Robert Scoble (you know who he is, right?), Cathy Brooks from Seesmic and Biz Stone (of his many involvements -  Twitter, Xanga, Blogger, Odeo, and Obvious) – a little wet dream of the kind of people that brand makers and shakers would love to be involved with (or pick their brain for a moment – which Plaid did, and shared).

Is this the first event of its kind? Well, not exactly. We’ve had these kind of “live road shows” (*cough*merrypranksters*cough*) but also a lot of faux reality shows try to mimic this kind of unscripted approach to topics and interviews, but this is a pure, online approach that I really want to catch from the beginning next year (they have a countdown timer on the home page! Keep your eye on next year’s tour).

One thing I definitely dig – they have online freebies – wallpapers, buddy icons and even the 2008 theme song up for download! It’s this little cool features that most campaigns miss out on (I don’t know why, maybe because they’re simple, quick and easy?).

So do yourself a favor – grab a cup of coffee and scan through the video interviews for a slew of cool ideas and information – and keep your eye open for Plaid Nation ‘09 – maybe I’ll be lucky enough to head out to the coast and catch one of the tweetups!

Imagine this scenario – a client walks in, and they rave about something they talk an article on times online about the top ten viral ad campaigns – and they want to be on that list! They want to be a video passed from iphone to mobile to laptop – to have their campaign uploaded on youtube, vimeo and the like.

We want to be seen no matter what!

As Jennifer Laycock laid the smackdown on the Not In Columbus campaign she pointed out that when you make a campaign (and embrace social media) you still need to have a marketing strategy – they had a print campaign, a collection of youtube videos (in a self-depreciating manner), and cool shirts! (but a cool shirt concept does not make a campaign!) Advergirl also points out the obvious (well, I thought it was bleeping obvious) – we get the joke, but where’s the punch-line? Why do we have youtube videos about “not in columbus” but not following it up with “but we have Cosi, The Jazz and Ribs Festival, Sport Teams, etc. etc. etc.” Not all in one video mind you… It’s a  clever concept that just was poorly executed.

The one thing they did right – they have more than one video.

Viral means multiple outlets.

I can make a video viral – so can you. It’s a matter of creating something funny, humorous, and *most likely* racy and against the society’s norms. Just as you wouldn’t create a single ad for a campaign, you wouldn’t create one “viral” aspect for a campaign – if you notice, the political campaigns for Obama/McCain are constantly evolving and changing – like your campaign should.

Unfortunately – you need to make your viral media stick out. Poking fun helps, as does self-depreciation. But when you create your one youtube video or your one online application/widget and it fails, it merely reinforces that you can’t “will” something viral.

How does being racy help?

This video for the Volkswagon Polo featuring a sucide bomber got passed around in 2005 – causing a little stir because of its insensitivity towards Muslims – culturally, a no-no, but on the internet it created a lot of attention (on both sides of the fence – people screaming for heads, and people laughing at the “mock” campaign that wasn’t ever endorsed by VW).

The Rathergood Kittens

Rathergood is another example of something that got passed around because of its bizarreness – and it even lead to commercials – and we have simple flash videos like The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny that got passed around (and who can forget – or did you miss – All Your Base Are Belong to Us?).

The point is – these are all small “campaigns” – cheaply done, and simple in nature. They weren’t products of million-dollar campaigns – but just something quirky dreamed up.
Which leads me to another item that went viral – Cahan & Associates created corporate reports in new formats – doy scouts guides, children books – because they felt “Annual reports need to evolve: They need to become more interesting and more entertaining. Otherwise, they won’t be able to compete for people’s attention.” (This is another topic altogether)

Racy, Quirky, Entertaining… I can do that!

A scene from The Ultimate Showdown

Now that you are willing to throw your corporate dignity out the window (and hand the reigns to someone else) – you can have a viral campaign. When you start interjecting your own ideas (and shooting down things as being “too much”) you risk losing out the focus – lots of discussion of you, your brand, your message – like Starbucks saw (alas, the link evades me) when they started letting people put quotes on their cups (and Starbucks refused to censor them).

What this did was create a lot of discussion from both sides of religious groups – atheists upset over religious quotes, and followers of religion upset over atheistic-themed/interpreted quotes on their cups (just check out the google link!). Lots of discussion – and starbuck willing to step to the side and say “it’s not our place to tell you what to believe” – instead they let their customers say what they want.

I’m afraid of what they may say!

No doubt a business is hesitant to go viral. They could end up looking like the joker from Batman: The Dark Knight’s awesomely successful campaign – there worried they could be the butt of a joke and out of control. This is where you start thinking about why you’re wanting to go viral – for sales, for discussion, or for attention.

Where’s the beef?

Where’s that elusive dollar $$$ bling-bling for your campaign? How does this pay off? I’m still looking into this one, as we see the Writer’s Guild of America went on strike (with concern for future digital media like the internet/video streaming/etc.) and South Park responded in kind – viral videos can theoreticall make you rich – and you know who’s gained the most from those videos we pass around? Star Wars kid sued. Numa Numa has a fan club. A number of e-celebs have been in music videos for Barenaked Ladies and/or Weezer.

The point here – you’re wanting discussion. I don’t think you’ll get ROI in terms of dollars and cents – at least not immediately. If it’s truly successful, you could end up with a hit film (I’m willing to admit – the viral campaigns for Cloverfield and The Dark Knight were cool – but didn’t make or break the films. Blair Witch? The campaign MADE the movie – “Dude, is this real? It’s not real. It couldn’t be real.” Five minutes later “Dude, is this real?” True story.)

The Elf Yourself is another quirky fun one – it doesn’t really relate to the brand, it was just something fun to do around the holidays (which helps drive traffic).

Viral campaigns are fun for the users – but it’s important to recognize that they can drive traffic and discussion and not necessarilly make you rich – but they can get you talked about.

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog!

This is something I have twitter to thank for – I stumbled on it from some random tweet, watched out of sheer morbid curiosity (it starts out like a vlog… Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible reading his email).

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

It was once the singing kicked in that I loved it. It’s like “The Tick” from the villain’s point of view – just trying to be recognized as a villain, and have a personal life. I can’t say too much, but if this is where the future of generated online series goes – I’m loving it.

Part tragedy, part musical – it comes together in just under 40 minutes. Great performances, great music – and the idea behind the series was that:

The idea was to create something small and inexpensive, yet professionally done, in a way that would circumvent the issues that were being protested during the strike.

They succeeded, and I can’t wait for part two (or the DVD to come out so I can actually purchase it :D

I love that my prior work had me working with some of the stars of this video (in a totally not directly way).

Seesmic – the video twitter? Twitter – the text seesmic?

I’ve got to agree with VentureBeat – Twitter and Seesmic are quirky web applications, with increasing adoptions.
I’ve heard of Seesmic before – and I’ve clicked around a bit – and am convinced that video will kill the internet star. Or maybe Seesmic will kill that ideal, and could make webcams and the personal web identity “the next hot thing.”

I’m not sold – the whole “video response” thing kind of creeps me out (despite seeing more and more people do it). It kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it? Twitter let’s us send a line or two to people (or no one in particular). We send links. Seesmic, you… talk. You express yourself. It’s twitter with emotion. As illustrated by Robert Scoble in response to a Techcrunch article – okay – so Scoble’s job is a freaking video blogger for Fast Company, and I don’t think they could’ve picked a better person for it.

So – video is the future? Will WebCams make a come back – or have they ever really left?