Michael Bay directs new Victoria’s Secret ad..

Transformers director + Lingerie = 100% Boy fun.

Channel 4 & YouTube..

Channel 4 recently fixed a deal with YouTube meaning that as of 2010, all of Channel 4′s programming will be available to stream in full and for free from a branded Channel 4 channel on YouTube. It’s a powerful and savvy move from Channel 4. Not only will it ensure a stronger online presence – vital when consumers are spending more and more of their time online, but it also means they should be able to increase and diversify their advertising revenues. Even better is that those revenues (in theory and if the deal allows it) will be able to come from more targeted and therefore more relevant advertising. Everyone is a winner. With Web TV (see below) rolling out from most TV manufacturers nowadays and an increasing amount of offline hardware now able to offer a level of YouTube integration, Channel 4 aren’t being slack in helping to turn the pages of convergence.

Epiphanies and viral video..

YouTube recently announced that it was receiving  100 million hits a day and that over 20 hours of content was being uploaded to the video sharing website every minute. Behind Google, Facebook and Yahoo!, YouTube is the fourth most visited website in the world.

Although the most recognized and used website in video sharing, it’s not just YouTube that’s in on the game. Sites such as Google Video, MySpace Video, Vimeo, Metacafe and many others all have a slice of the pie. Online video sharing is huge. And this certainly hasn’t passed the marketers by…

For many years now, viral video has occupied a modest chunk of many a brand’s digital marketing budget with high buzz potential and next to free distribution costs proving to be alluring. To some extent certain categories and brands were initially more suited to this form of viral communication and definitely more suited amongst specific groups of people (early adopters of video sharing tended to be younger audiences). However, in a day and age where even the British Monarchy have their own YouTube content, the mass exposure and consumption of video on the internet is now as mainstream as using a search engine.

A few years ago YouTube announced its brand channel project, which allowed brands and corporate identities to customize their YouTube pages, remove advertising and incorporate their own content within. YouTube became another important touch point and much like a blog, a Twitter profile or a Facebook page – a branded YouTube page hosting brand specific content became a given for companies, particularly companies that embraced social technologies. And it is these social technologies that have energised the viral potential of video, catalyzing the distribution of campaign content in a way never seen before in traditional media.

So.

Marketing questions.

What role does my viral video have in communicating my campaign message? What is the effect on my brand? Is there one at all? Should I even be doing this? So many questions yet so hard to answer. And two broader truths at hand are what make things a bit messy.

1) There has been a shift in power -- Joe Internet has become active broadcaster over passive receiver. He takes the seat and deems what he wants to see, when to see it and more importantly..if he’s going to share it.

2) There is too much information – The sheer volume of online video that Joe Internet can consume is staggering. YouTube say that the amount of video that gets uploaded in a week is equivalent to Hollywood releasing 86000 feature length films in a week. Of course a lot of that content consists of this and unfortunately a lot of that and not necessarily the content that’s particularly interesting. But a lot of it is.

These truths compounded are the very foundations of the ‘fast food’ information culture the internet seems to have spawned -- it’s all about being here today and gone forgotten tomorrow. This paradigm shift in how we consume has impacted on all online media and particularly online video. From a campaign point of view we’re now seeing viral video acting almost like a foot soldier in an army of more antiquated, more trusted and ultimately more senior media choices -- viral video is committed and ubiquitous but at the end of the day, entirely expendable.

So if I am someone that has decided that an online viral is something I need in a campaign wouldn’t it be a bonus if this viral could also sit more centrally in the campaign mix and speak with as much authority and weight as more traditional media? That not only had viral capacity but at its very core was saying the things that are relevant to my campaign and intrinsic to my brand?

Something that told the whole story.

That might work.

This is exactly what Epipheo Studios are trying to do. And it’s trés cool

Epipheo studios create short, often animated videos that companies and brands use as a vehicle to visualise a core idea underpinning their product, their campaign, their event… their story. The aim is to create epiphanies by telling a story through video. Epipheo. You see what they did there? Their broad vision is that any marketing campaign will benefit with an Epipheo at the ‘centre’ of the communications rather than on the ‘periphery’. Have a look.

Epipheos are fairly abundant. There’s a quite a heavily viewed one on the social media revolution, there’s one on Google Wave and even one on the history of…er, evil. There is also a website (epipheo.com) which acts as a hub where users can share and rate epipheos they find.

Check out their own epipheo below. It’s all about where they’re coming from and what they’re trying to do. I’m particularly fond of this. It tells a story in a graceful, memorable way that ‘I get’.

Oh and I’ve also now shared it on Facebook, Twitter and written about it in my blog that you’re reading right now. Job done.

Clip.