David Murdico, Creative Director of Supercool Creative http://www.supercoolcreative.com discusses online video and social media marketing in 2010 at OMMA Video including transparency, targeting, getting the creative message right, online video production and viral marketing. Social media marketing using tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blog Outreach and forums are changing the way companies do business. Centering a social media campaign around video is an effective way for brands to reach their customers online.

Question: So, 2009 is coming to end and I know one of the Keynote speakers at the OMMA conference (Ross Levinsohn) said that 2010 is going to be the year of social media and online video. What’s your opinion of that statement?

David Murdico: Well, I think that 2010 is going to see a lot more online video. I think we’ve got a lot of consumer generated video that’s out there like crazy and I think that the tightrope we walk as marketers, especially in the online video and social media marketing arena, is you want to create engaging content and you want people to watch it and to pass it along. But, if the audience sniffs any hint of being branded or having anything to do with a company or a product, they tend to not want to share it as readily.

Content Is King. If something is really, really good and really engaging, even the slightest social media push will get it out into the mainstream and it’ll be shared. One really nice takeaway here at the OMMA Video conference was what TubeMogul (CEO and cofounder Brett Wilson) was speaking about… that an online video really has a peak of about 4 days. The viewership is going to peak at three or four days and then it starts going down. So one really important thing is to maximize your marketing strategy before you launch that video. You don’t want to just launch a video and then say “hmmm, what are we going to do with it now that we’ve got the cool video?” What you want to do is come up with an entire strategy and a plan before you even think about creating the video and then you create the video that’s designed to target whatever audience you’re trying to reach. Then, you fit that into your social media marketing strategy the day you launch that video. So, that’s one thing and I think that as more marketers start adopting that sort of philosophy we’re going to see more and more engaging and good video content being shared.

Another key element is transparency. Maybe the trick here is… and not a trick but the anti-trick here, is to not try to fool your audience. Be transparent. If it’s a video for a jeans company or a video for a cereal, say so. Say that this video is for this or that product. People love to watch funny commercials. Look at the Super Bowl. I mean that’s the… half the people who watch the Super Bowl just want to watch the funny commercials and they know that those are for brands, so why couldn’t the same thing be adopted for online video?

If it’s good content and it’s marketed properly, with transparency, it’s genuine and it’s targeted; if you’re targeting the right audience and you’re not trying to sell diapers to football fans, well, unless they happen to be moms… and there are a lot of moms that like football… If you’re hitting the right demographic with your marketing online and you create compelling content and you market it smart it’s going to take off and 2010 will be the year that we see all of that happen.

For the record, I am an unabashed fan of OMMA and appreciate everything they do for the online marketing industry and I’m looking forward to being at OMMA Global in San Francisco!

Duration : 0:3:9

[youtube zDu3zL3n7Iw]