I heard a great story the other day from a friend who runs a business in the Outdoor Sports market. He described the paradigm shift we're experiencing really well.
My friend says that he's at a crossroads. He currently has his agency produce TV spots to run on targeted cable channels. All in, he's spending a few hundred grand to reach a similar number of viewers.
It’s all good.
Until he starts looking at what his fans are doing on YouTube. People, who love his brand, are making their own spots by the hundreds. And, they’re popular. A half dozen of the videos have been viewed by over 1.5 million people.
At the end of the day, it comes down to math. It's either creating TV spots and buying the media for them for a lot of money or getting 9,000,000 viewers at the cost of $0. The decision seems easier than it really is. While the cost of the 9,000,000 viewers is 0, my friend has lost some of the control he had over his brand when he used his agency. The trick is moving from a creation mindset of controlling the message and broadcasting it to a curation mindset of inspiring and guiding the people who are creating and sharing the digital videos.
What do you think?
Comments