From rumor to reality; Google has acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion dollars in an all stock deal. This is a great investment for Google (even if Mark Cuban doesn’t think so) as YouTube will fit seamlessly into their ad platform. What do you guys think? Was this a good deal for Google? What sort of impact will this have on further growth for YouTube and the ability to search videos?
I returned from OMMA NY on Tuesday night. I arrived in Raleigh-Durham around 9:30pm. It was a great conference that included keynotes such as Chuck Porter from Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Tim Kopp, Vice President of Worldwide Interactive Marketing for Coca-Cola.
It seemed as though the entire conference had one major theme; we must stop marketing to individuals and begin engaging them in our advertisments and subsequent brand. Chuck Porter made the simple statement, "no one likes to be bored, they want to be entertained". He demonstrated this through these simple ads that Crispin Porter developed for Coca-Cola. They’re hilarious. Basically, they had "two guys from Coke"(actors) attempting to sue the "guys from Coke Zero" and the lawyers had no idea that it was a joke. Chuck Porter said that each one required an investment of only $800. It’s definitely this type of "thinking outside of the box" that we as marketers must do, especially with the popularity of mediums such as blogs and YouTube. If we can continue to be creative and engage our audience they will certainly share this experience with their friends.
I also attended a breakout session entitled Play the Email Liars Club with the Email Experience Council which covered best practices of email marketing. Most interesting was the knowledge gained on the Email Experience Council which was started by Jeanniey Mullen and Paul Beck, both from Ogily Worldwide. The EEC has a mission of creating standards in email marketing. This is something that is very interesting to us, so we at IntelliContact have joined the Email Experience Council to support them in this misson.
Overall, the conference was great. There were a few exhibitors there - about twenty or so. While I don’t think it would be beneficial for us to exhibit there it was a great conference to attend and I defnitely see us returning in the future.