According to Church of the Customer, those wild and crazy Mentos-Diet Coke fountain guys have so far gotten over $25,000 in ad revenue from their fountain video being viewed over 4 million times through Revver.Yikes!
Of course the guys are elated that the wonderful world of the hyper-connected internet has led them to a windfall of quick cash, right? Guess again, the boys are mad as hell because there are 'bootleg copies' of their video popping up on YouTube and GoogleVideo, which means they won't get cash for them.
Give me strength.
Jackie nails it when she adds: Think not "How do I make direct revenue from the video?" but "How can I harness this incredible visibility I have just created?".
Exactly. Instead of trying to get in touch with their daddy's lawyer, the boys need to be trying to get in touch with Leno and Letterman. I'm sure their display would be a hit on the late-night/talk-show circuit.
Recently, I gave a journalist some background info on blogs for an article she was writing, and to illustrate how viral in nature blogs are, I mentioned how shortly after I left my '100 CDs for 100 Bloggers' post on Daily Fix, that labels began contacting me so I could explain to them exactly how the promotion would work. She asked 'Well weren't you afraid that a label might want to steal your idea?'. I told her that they definitely could, but it would be pretty short-sighted of them to do so. The smart labels would say 'Hey this is a great idea....maybe we should talk to this guy and see what other great ideas he has!', whereas the dumb label would say 'Hey this is a great idea....let's steal it!'. Of course, the dumb label wouldn't be smart enough to be reading Daily Fix or The Viral Garden, so it really doesn't matter ;) But my point was, when you have a good idea, the last thing you do is try to impede its flow. Let it come in contact with as many people as possible, and do anything you can to help increase its rate of exposure.
Something the Mentos dudes would be wise to learn. You only get 15 mins of fame lads, and the clock's ticking too fast to be worried about legal issues.
Pic of Rakim via Flickr user sketch_wiz
3 comments:
I can't believe that. Those guys are gettin' a little too big for their britches if they're already complaining about money.
I think I would just be happy that I got 25k for screwing around with diet coke some Ssturday afternoon.
control is an illusion, and they need to realize that. I think fair play to them for earning some money from their creative, and that's fair enough.
IMHO if revver could figure out how to monitize stuff that ended up on youtube and google video that would be a great scenario.
In the end creativity is coming up with great ideas consistantly, unbelievably zefrank comes up with a new video every freaking day and he's on revver, by the time his stuff is getting spread around youtube it's already old.
http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/
Karl
Mack, great posting - even better vision and advice on the nature of ideas!!
Ideas just want to be free - release them.
Give your ideas away - it makes room for more in your head.
Get known for being the "great idea" guy (and you are Mack) - that's where your future lies.
And if you have only one "great idea"? Well,don't they call that a "one hit wonder" in the biz?
Thanks for energizing the conversation Mack!
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