How do we increase brand loyalty for YouTube among young moms?

By providing a unique opportunity to speak about the issues that matter the most to them.

YouTube reaches nearly every possible demographic as the default online video platform. Despite this, some segments are under-engaged with YouTube, including the so-called ‘Young Facebook Friendly Moms.’

While these digitally-savvy moms aged 25 to 34 have great awareness of the YouTube brand, they mostly see it as a distribution platform with very little emotional attachment to the brand, and typically engage with YouTube through external shared links and not through the YouTube website itself.

More than just consumers

Beyond their consumer behavior, what we found interesting about moms with children under 5 years of age is that they possess great unrealized political potential, for a couple of reasons.

One, there is a growing sense that ‘digital moms’ are well-positioned to be the defining voter archetype of the 2012 election. This is due to the strong online communities they’ve already established and their existing involvement in issues-based initiatives both on and offline. These moms aren’t ‘activists’ by any means, but rather passionate individuals who feel increasingly empowered given an election year and the uncertain mood of the country.

Our second realization was understanding why 70 percent of moms participate in online communities in the first place. The most significant reason was that they are looking to increase the number and quality of connections they have with other moms, with 4 out of 5 moms wishing they had more friends in their lives. Add to this fact that moms with children younger than 5 have the highest rates of depression, and it becomes clearer that moms are looking for an opportunity to be a part of something larger than themselves.

A mother’s voice is the sound of an ideal future

Whether they’re into music, fashion, use tablets or take pictures with their phones, every mom has an intrinsic dedication to ensure that the future of their children is the best that it can possibly be. They may have different priorities in what that might look like, but what all moms have in common is that their kids are their number one priority. It’s their care and concern for the future of their children that unites them, and it’s one discussion they will always want to be a part of.

Given their desire to make connections and common interest in the future of their children, we developed the insight that moms are hungry for a creative outlet to voice their concerns while simultaneously making connections with other moms. We then saw a powerful opportunity for YouTube to make a connection with these moms by providing such a creative outlet.

Moms for Change

Our goal was to make YouTube the go-to platform for moms to discuss for their kid’s future. To accomplish this, we want to allow moms with all levels of commitment and interest to be a part of the discussion through an aspirational campaign that is detailed in the above video.

Our engagement timeline is a multi-tiered process that first uses ambient and banner ads to create buzz about the Moms for Change initiative. Banner ads would be placed on popular mommy blogs and forums, while ambient ads would be placed where moms are already considering their children, such as supermarkets and playgrounds. 

A partnership with TED would form a central part of the Moms for Change channel, providing an easy way to find TED Talks relevant to moms and giving them the opportunity to interact with the speakers through their YouTube and their Google+ accounts.

The Moms for Change weekly web series is hosted by top mommy bloggers and influencers, who discuss a variety of issues relevant to moms and offers them an opportunity to be a part of the show based on their participation on the channel and the Moms for Change hangout on Google+.

There will also be a user-generated campaign that will ask mothers to submit the single most important hope for their child if a computer webcam is detected while searching or exploring mom-focused content around the web.

By seeing moms as more than consumers, YouTube can be seen as a brand that is sympathetic to the real concerns people have. This creates an aspirational mindset and high-minded expectations of moms that positions YouTube as more than just a place for viral videos, but a place for meaningful and valuable discussion relevant to their day-to-day lives.

Role: strategist

How do we grow a business whose target consumers have wholeheartedly rejected it?

We turn the problem into an opportunity to redefine the business.

Electronic Arts has had difficulty building support for their digital distribution platform, Origin. Part of the problem has been defining what the product actually it is. On the surface level, Origin is a way to deliver PC games directly over the internet without the need for any physical media. Ultimately, however, EA sees Origin as part of a larger plan to create a cloud gaming platform that gives users the ability to continue their gaming experience no matter where they are and what device they’re using, and to share it with their friends.

This ambitious plan has been set back by major problems with the Origin product, including bugs, limited functionality and almost unanimous negative feelings among hardcore gamers (their initial target audience) towards the product. These gamers feel alienated because in most cases they did not choose to download Origin, but had to in order to download an EA game that they purchased. Many gamers are so suspicious about Origin that they consider it to be possible spyware, created by EA to scan their computers in an effort to find pirated games on their machines.

Backs up against the wall

As if a poor product launch and alienated target consumer base weren’t enough to deal with, EA faces another challenge in trying to build a critical mass of users for Origin, in that there is already a PC game distribution platform that already does all of the things Origin promises to do and more.

It’s called Steam, and unlike Origin, it is widely praised and supposed by hardcore PC gamers, with a loyal community base and 70 percent of the market share. Steam offers a wider selection of games and a powerful user experience that has put them at least two years ahead of any competitor, including Origin.

Playing on the wrong playing field

Given these severe disadvantages, it’s questionable whether EA is in the right league, or if they’re even playing the right game. EA has many things going for it – they publish many of the most popular games on any platform and remain a big player in the gaming world. However, by focusing on the hardcore gamer demographic with Origin, they’re missing out on where the video game industry has been shifting towards – social and casual gaming.

Social and casual games include everything from Facebook games such as Farmville to mobile games such as Angry Birds – essentially any games that don’t require a specific console or platform and can be played in small intervals of time. They are a big and fast-growing market – social games grew 116 percent last year to create $1.4 billion in revenue, while mobile games grew 160 percent to create $2.2 billion.

It is clear that social and casual games are where the bulk of the growth in the video game industry is going. EA is fully aware of this, which is why they have now invested heavily in the development of social games after a slow start. They’re making some inroads, which is why Sims Social has cracked the top 5 most popular social games in a list that is otherwise dominated by Zynga. In the mobile sector, EA already has a big presence as a publisher of popular games such as Madden and Bejeweled.

Refocusing the target

Given Steam’s dominance of the hardcore gamer market and EA’s interest becoming an even bigger player in the social and casual gamers market, it makes sense that the best strategy to make Origin a success is to retarget the product to include social and casual gamers who are 28 to 40 years old, slightly more female and better educated than the average gamer demographic.

Besides the fact that they’re a growing and desirable market, this demographic’s user behavior is a good fit for what Origin has to offer. The demographic prefers to fulfill their entertainment needs with easy-to-use distribution services such as Netflix or Hulu and often remain loyal to them. They are also willing to pay more for their media than the hardcore gamer group, where piracy is relatively common.

This demographic also doesn’t see itself as gamers, but sees games instead as simply another form of entertainment. What they don’t have available right now is a one-stop shop for all of their gaming needs, and this is an opportunity that Origin is well-poised to take. But first, they must see themselves not necessarily as a competitor to Steam, but as more of a competitor to the likes of iTunes or Amazon and other digital distribution services.

Come out and play on your own digital playground

An effective strategy to make Origin a success is dependent on repositioning the product from one focused on hardcore gamers to one that appeals to a wider spectrum of gamers, including social and casual gamers. Origin can be a destination hub where one can play and discover a variety of games while sharing and interacting with a community.

Turning relationships into rivalries

Our campaign focuses on the gamer who’s particularly interested in the social aspect of gaming while maintaining a casual sensibility. Since these gaming experiences can happen on any device and at any time, they can easily turn into ‘rivalries’ with friends, family or even strangers. We used some of these situations as a way to speak to a casual social audience, which is detailed in the video above and the communications plan below.

Role: strategist

Slacker Radio has little to almost no brand awareness in comparison to Pandora, Last.fm or Spotify, despite the fact that they offer something that no other service has – personalized music programming from actual live humans. Given the dissatisfaction the casual music listener has had with the lack of guidance on Spotify and the lack of selection on Pandora (which has only a third of the music available on Slacker), we wanted to present Slacker Radio as the smart alternative to these services using an irreverent tone that speaks to 25-to-35-year-olds.

For this spec ad, we wanted to show the importance of having the right music for the right time, and how things can go terribly wrong without the smart personalized experience that Slacker Radio provides.

Roles: strategist, director, producer, director of photography, editor

Everyone loves Doritos for their tasty flavors, but there’s something else about them that’s just as unique – the sound of a Doritos crunch.

This entry for Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl Contest was made with the idea that the crunch of a Doritos chip can be as distinct as its flavors. The crunch can be something more than just noise, and instead a powerful form of communication. Given the popular success of Doritos’ past Super Bowl commercials, we wanted to also include humor and slapstick in an unexpected setting – with surprising consequences.

Roles: strategist, director, producer, director of photography, editor

What if you had to buy all of your groceries at your local convenience store? For about 23.5 million people in the US who live in neighborhoods without easy access to fresh food, or ‘food deserts,’ this is often a day-to-day reality.

Produced for the online public media service Turnstyle, we wanted to present this difficult reality in a format that our audience (young urban professionals) would directly relate to – the instructional cooking show. ‘Hungry in the Hood’ is a series of videos where we take a farcical look at what culinary creations one could make without regular access to fresh groceries and what consequences that can have on people’s health.

Roles: strategist, director, producer, director of photography, editor

Featured on: Huffington Post

Many of today’s microbreweries creating sophisticated craft beers started as homebrew enthusiasts who were able to turn their passion into real successful businesses. Almanac Beer Company, a new startup brewery in San Francisco, continues to follow that tradition while using influences from the Bay Area’s rich food culture to produce a truly unique beer.

Roles: director, producer, director of photography, editor

Featured on: Huffington Post, Core77, Lost At E Minor, Hypebeast 

John Cho Moore grew tired of the limitations of the industrial design process and is now trying to capture the essence of design with his beautifully handmade bamboo and canvas bags.
Follow John through his unique manufacturing process that challenges convention thinking about product design and the creative process. 

Roles: director, producer, director of photography, editor

In March 2011, I began an overhaul of promotional video content for Yerba Center for the Arts, a major contemporary art and performance center in San Francisco. YBCA’s video content spanned a wide array of approaches, formats and production values, creating a lack of cohesiveness and even confusion about what YBCA was saying about its diverse art, film and music programs.

My strategy for promotional video focused on producing smart and engaging content that could live independently outside of being a promotional vehicle for their program of exhibitions and events. In today’s world, everyone should be seen as a creator, and I saw that YBCA should take the approach of telling the stories of their exhibiting artists rather than promoting them to their audience. The stories should be seen as authentic and unique, using a simple, clean approach that matches YBCA’s aesthetic. We also wanted to create consistent formats to maintain engagement and have high production values in the process.

Embedded in YBCA’s philosophy is also a commitment to give their audience an accessible contemporary art experience. Video can be a powerful tool to bring forth this kind of accessibility by providing a more human exploration of the work than a traditional curator’s statement. These video portraits aim to provide that exclusive access while appealing to the audience’s interest in creative process and a work’s connection with the public imagination.

Roles: strategist, director, producer, director of photography, editor

One of the most important subjects for the 18-35 demographic that the online public media service Turnstyle is jobs and employment. Given that almost a quarter of twentysomethings are considered to be at least underemployed, there’s a lot of interest in how people feel about their work and what career possibilities are out there.

A barber college may not seem to be the most obvious choice to start a discussion on the subject of employment, but one of the most interesting things I discovered about students at San Francisco Barber College is that most of them came from other careers that no longer became viable as the economy has changed. The series Barber School Days features conversations with these students about why they chose their career in barbering and what it means to them. With the meaning of work as the underlying theme, these videos then also become a unique starting point for twentysomethings to talk about these issues.

Roles: strategist, director, producer, director of photography, editor

Featured on: 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting

This video was produced for Youth Radio, a nonprofit that empowers youth to tell their stories by learning and working with professional journalists. The organization’s stories have been featured on public media outlets and won many awards for excellence in journalism.

In support of 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting, a movement to prevent Congress from cutting funding for public media stations and organizations across the country, Youth Radio sought to tell the stories of how public media changes the lives of young people and gives them an opportunity to better understand the world.

The concept for the resulting promotional video was simple: to intimately show the diversity that is part of the public media umbrella while highlighting why public media is important to these young people, in their own words.

This video was completed from initial concept development to the final edit in two days, and was the featured video on the official 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting web site and social media feeds, which were seen by millions of people across the country.

Roles: strategist, director, producer, director of photography, editor

This promotional video was produced with a couple of goals in mind. One was to introduce the bold and innovative approach that Turnstyle, a new online project backed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, has been taking to reinvent the public media ecosystem. At the same time, as part of the campaign 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting, we also wanted people to understand that this whole spirit of innovation was another reason why public media deserves support in wake of attempts to cut off its federal funding.

The promo can be seen in some ways as a trailer for Turnstyle Video, an online video product that I developed from its inception, and so with this in mind I sifted through footage from nearly 50 pieces of video created over four months in order to build a narrative around the themes of exploration, experimentation and optimism about the future. Some of the pieces I culled clips from included stories about sailing around the world on a cargo ship to what people are talking about at a local barber college and how a jazz musician became a saint.

In this process, a clear message that encapsulated Turnstyle’s approach and relationship with public media emerged: “Turnstyle is taking public media to new places.” This messaging was then combined with relevant soundbites and clips was then edited tightly into a 60-second promo with a track by indie electronic artist/phenomenon Dan Deacon.

Roles: strategist, director, producer, editor

Featured on: Huffington Post, Gizmodo

I was contracted in October 2010 to build a new video department for a new online public media service called Turnstyle. Funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I did everything from create a production workflow to managing freelancers and developing the creative vision, all with a limited budget.

We received an invitation to cover the Sundance Film Festival, and our video strategy was to focus on the films that were culturally diverse and/or experimental in nature. One such project was director Lance Weiler’s transmedia storytelling project Pandemic 1.0, a part-film, part-interactive game, part-sociological experiment that was one of the most talked-about experiences at Sundance’s New Frontier program.

In this video, we learn about how this sprawling work tries to recontextualize ideas of interactivity and collaboration for the technological 21st century.

Roles: strategist, director, producer, editor

Featured on: Boing Boing

One of the topics that urban, sophisticated 18-to-35-year-olds are most interested in is, somewhat surprisingly, religion. We wanted to fulfill this interest by bringing to light unexpected takes on religion, which led us to a church that claims the legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane as a saint and primary focus of worship. This story simultaneously also highlighted another strong interest of this demographic – music – to explore how there are as many ways to worship as there are people who worship.

Roles: strategist, editor

I created the video series Word on the Street as part of a partnership between Turnstyle and Youth Speaks, an acclaimed performance poetry organization. We sought to introduce these poets to an audience that was new to performance poetry, as well as to take a different approach in capturing their performances than the Youth Speaks HBO series, which mostly featured competitive performances on a stage. The idea was to take the poets’ performances off the stage and back to the streets in these raw, unedited ‘guerrilla’ performances.

Roles: strategist, director, producer, director of photography, editor

The concept for “Turning On” was to turn tastemakers at the online radio station AllDayPlay.fm into ambassadors for music news and commentary on the public media online service Turnstyle. Using original ideas from the talent, I created an ongoing video opinion series that was tailor-fit for a young, urban and diverse audience interested in hip-hop/R&B, viral videos and social media.

Roles: strategist, director, producer, editor

Turnstyle Asks was conceived as a weekly video segment that focuses on a current event inspiring discussion and creates a mash-up of answers from regular people on the street that created a ‘unified narrative’ that would set it apart from the typical man—on-street interview. The goal of these segments is to not only gain a sense of popular opinion with a quick and simple production turnaround, but to engage viewers on ongoing discussion topics well beyond the initial story.

With all Turnstyle Asks, the question was reframed to be broader and part of a larger discussion. The initial story that inspired this segment were the Wikileaks cables that were revealed in fall of 2010, which was then reframed into the larger discussion about government transparency overall.

Roles: strategist, producer, editor

Can social change start at your local laundromat? We take a look at how The Laundromat Project is looking to rebuild communities by putting art into your laundry basket.

This video was a collaborative effort between Flip Video, The Laundromat Project and The Quotidian. I pitched the idea to Flip to produce a user-generated video about The Laundromat Project, a nonprofit in New York that brings arts programming to local laundromats in the city. The organization was looking at producing a video to spread word about their programs while Flip was looking for examples of content about good causes that showed the capabilities of their product.

The footage was shot entirely on low-cost Flip cameras by Laundromat Project staff, artists and volunteers, who received direction and weekly feedback on their uploaded footage. I supervised production remotely over the six weeks of filming, completed the final edit and promoted the story on social media channels.

Roles: strategist, producer, editor

The video for ‘Epitaph on the World’ by David Karsten Daniels & Fight the Big Bull uses imagery from sources as diverse as New Orleans funeral marches, Hungarian carnival and American Indian face painting to bring the musical epic to life. Using themes of death, rebirth and man’s place in the natural world, a narrative is created with simple yet arresting images that are as ambitious as the song’s sprawling sonic palette. Just as every end has a new beginning, the video uses a series of double-sided scenarios to explore these ideas.

After discussions and negotiations with the artist and record label, Fat Cat Records, I made a proposal which consisted of concepts and sketches for the music video. As further conversations with the artist continued, I began to develop imagery that corresponded creatively with the main themes of the song, which takes all of its lyrics from a Henry David Thoreau poem. I then designed the costumes, sketched out a storyboard, created a budget, cast the young actors, found someone who could fabricate the costumes, scouted for locations and then went on to complete all aspects of production for the video.

Roles: director, producer, director of photography, editor

Chow.com’s series ‘You’re Doing It All Wrong’ helps the average cook perfect their culinary skills by reminding them of some common mistakes made by even more seasoned chefs.

Roles: director, producer, director of photography, editor