Pretty funny. Nothing spectacular. Verizon’s “Can You Hear Me Now” Guy and The Network stalk a real person. I got bored after the first half, but credit where credit is due. Good idea. Executed pretty well. Is this a full blown campaign or just a one-off stunt?

Verizon Wireless Surprises Customer - Watch more free videos

Thanks to Bill Irvine from The Above Network for pointing it out to us.

The College Humor folks put this together in a day:

(Inside joke, those are all guys who work(ed) for College Humor or Vimeo.)

Moderator: Will Richmond, VideoNuze
Rob Barnett, CEO, MyDamnChannel
Jeremy Lockhorn, Director of Emerging Media, Avenue A/Razorfish
Peter Hoskins, CEO, ManiaTV
Joe Frydl, Ogilvy Entertainment
John McCarus, VP, Digitas Branded Content

Will: What is branded entertainment? What does that mean? What are your clients goals as it pertains to it?

John: Clients that have a digital strategy are starting to realize they need a digital content strategy as well. It is brand content. What is the relationship that the brand needs to have with the content.

Peter: At the end of the day, branded content is entertaining and advances the brands marketing objectives, whatever the objectives may be. We look at a series of metrics, like moving brand perception according to a tracking study, for example.

Jeremy: I think more about branded experiences. It is doing away with the one-way of old media, and embracing the two way conversation of new media. It also allows the consumer to get engaged.

Peter: We talk about a continuum where you can start with a “brought to you by” around cool content. The other end is like Transformers, where there is a love story between a boy and a car, which launched the new Chevy Camaro. Everything in that continuum communicates that brand message. Adding a bit of art to that process really improves that process.

Rob: Being here, at this point, is a perfect marriage. Companies like MDC are rewriting the rules. You’ll find that we’re a lot easier to work with than traditional media. We find that agencies and brands in particular are much more interested in working more with the content. There are audiences that are very electric. “You Suck At Photoshop” is a great example. We’ve got opportunities that are a lot more personal, a lot more integrated than bigger media. There are also fewer levels, so we can move a lot faster than traditional media.

John: The fundamental difference is that there is no network on the Web. If you are a brand that is used to have things packaged up and wrapped in a bow, that isn’t going to happen on the web. We operate further upstream.

Unless you can guarantee an audience, you’ve got a non-starter. We know that in the end of the day we need to deliver an audience. We are all in the audience product marketplace.

Jeremy: There is something to the comparison of the size and the quality of the audience. If you can put my brand in front of the right 10 people, then we want to talk to you.

Will: What has worked?

Joe: Helmans. We did a broadband program on yahoo, “in search of real food.” It was successful as content because we started with “what is the brand about?” Helmans wanted to be about “real food.” When you start with the DNA of the brand, a number of opportunities present themselves. Getting Yahoo to treat this as content is also key. The more they can treat it as editorial, the easier it is for them to drive traffic and reach.

Will: Could they have succeeded without a partnership?
Joe: Probably not. You need a minimal level of distribution to get the idea seeded.

Will: Do you work with Yahoo along the way? Or do you bring it to them afterwards?
Joe: It is a fuzzy process, but they are all open to ideas like this. It was important for us that they treat us as content. Too often, people look at brands just as big checkbooks.

Peter: The brands we have the most success with are the ones that we sit on the same side of the table with. We aren’t in a hits business. We try to form a relationship with the audience through episodic content, but is independent of that advertiser. Then we can bring the right brands to the right content, and reach the right demographics. Every one of our shows follows that formula. Our video game show is consistently successful.

Jeremy: We did a program for BestBuy, who wanted to increase awareness of their appliance department. We partnered with Sarah Moulton where we did a makeover of her apartment. She had a horrific kitchen for a celebrity chef. So we did a complete remodel of her kitchen in 8 episodes. That is a great example of marrying the right concept with the right audience.

Will: Success around what metric?
Jeremy: Viewership, engagement, that sort of thing. But ultimately we wanted to drive sales. It pretty much blew our expectations out of the water.

Joe: Marketers are used to launching things in synchronization across platforms. Now we are looking at building audiences slowly, leading up to a big launch. We’ve got lower costs of production, lower costs of distribution that allow us to look at success differently than we look at it on television. What is a hit on the web?

Rob: If we were to build a YouTube today, it would costs $80-$90k. The question is how many videos do you want to host and have people watch. If you are going to create content, don’t create too much of it. If someone is going to consume 3-4 pieces of content, you want to be able to deliver your content to them consistently. It is more like an HBO model than a broadcast model. We have 8 channels. We don’t want to say that every single video in the world is here. We brought in Don Was (music producer) for a program for Lincoln that focused on bands from Detroit. It was twice as successful as any of their other campaigns.

Will: Where does the push for branded entertainment leave the agency world and their role?
Jeremy: The new world is about earning attention, not buying attention. It makes us work a lot harder, rather than just buying the eyeballs.

Joe: You also need to embrace the ambiguity. And recognize that everyone is trying to eat your lunch. The roles are going to be very fluid.

John: This is a whole new space. We sit with our clients at “the gate to the distribution swamp.” We discuss a distribution and engagement strategies. One of the challenges is to think about costs and process and the role of traditional creative.

Jeremy: There is a blurring of the line of what is media and what is content. One of the things we’ve learned about in social media is that distribution trumps destination. The philosophy behind social media is about bringing pieces of functionality that are relevant to an audience where they are, instead of driving them back to their site.

Head on over to Kevin Nalt’s Will Video For Food and read his post on video sponsorships, product placement and selling out. Its spot on.

In it, he cites 5 trends for online video product placement. I particularly liked #4:

4. There will be no trend four. Trend four is often wrong, which itself is a growing trend.

So go read the other trends, and the rest of the post.

Hysterical video from Bikini Zone.

Uncensored Bootlegged Japanese Bikini Commercial - Watch more free videos

Let us know what you think!

In a move much wiser than the WB made a few weeks ago, Comedy Central has begun a test offering of John Stewart’s Daily Show and Steven Cobert’s The Colbert Report on Web TV portal Hulu.

Just as Netflix has become the go-to destination for all things DVD, Hulu is quickly living up to its promise and potential to become the first stop for users looking for TV content online. The addition of a 480p viewing option is also very much appreciated by those of us streaming web content to our TVs.

With monetization rights management tools like FreeWheel hitting the market, syndicated content owners are getting the ad revenue they rightfully deserve, removing the risk to hyper syndication of content. We’ll be seeing more deals like this as specific destination sites become the one-stop-shop for the content you are looking for. YouTube’s quality, and lack of formal distribution deals with broadcasters, won’t cut it for long…..unless you still want to watch “Dog on Skateboard.”

I love a good coincidence. And this morning, I woke up to one.

Last night I was watching the movie “Untraceable,” staring Diane Lane. Quick synopsis: Psycho guy streams the torture and death of people online. The more people that go to the website, the faster they get killed. Social media at its worst.

This morning, The Today Show did a segment on a series of viral videos - “Fire in the Hole” - that are pranks on fast food drive thru employees. One victim found the video and got her attackers arrested. The punishment? Make a video, apologizing, and post it on YouTube.

Given that the prank videos have received millions of hits, and the apology a mere few thousand, I can’t help but wonder which direction this trend is headed.

Here’s the Today Show segment:

As most of you know, ClickZ’s Kate Kaye provides some of the most insightful analysis of the online ad market. Like me, she’s also a political junkie.

Now that the primary season is over, Kate explains to the Business News Network how the campaigns leveraged new media, and who succeeded, and why.

Ed sidenote: Are non-embeddable players even acceptable any more? Why I can’t share this clip with you right here is beyond me.

Weezer has done a pretty good job of virally promoting their new album. The music video for Pork and Beans featuring YouTube stars like Tay Zonday and Chris Crocker was the most watched video on YouTube this week. And they programmed a channel of additional content to keep viewers coming back.

Weezer Introducing Pork and Beans

Pork and Beans Music Video

Daft Dancers Doin’ Weezer

Pork & Beans: Will it Blend

Flight of the Conchords has a new video out on YouTube by way of their label Sub Pop Records. The band plans to write season two back in New Zealand and they’re on tour now so it may be a while before they’re back on HBO. In the meantime, enjoy this:

Above: Flight of the Conchords - Ladies of the World