Creating A Marketing Buzz Via Video

Everyone is looking to create buzz online, so it is no surprise to hear that Petco is using user-submitted videos in its latest marketing campaign.

The contest, a variation of America’s funniest pet tricks, asked people to upload to Petco’s web site a one-minute video of their dog or cat performing the winning pet trick. Petco then had their site visitors vote on their favorite video to decide the contest winner, who received a trip for two to Los Angeles and a role for the pet in an upcoming Petco advertising campaign. Not a bad deal.

So what made Petco decide to build a marketing campaign around user-generated content? John Lazarchic, Petco vice president of e-commerce says that:

“At the end of the day we always want sales. And with the video reviews, if they are done well, I think we will see an uptick on the products that have that type of review,”  “With the written reviews, we’ve been able to tie it back to ROI. But I think the return with video will be more on engagement with the web site, site stickiness, and people’s tendency to come back to Petco as a source of information than necessarily a direct purchase as a result of this technology.”

John Lazarchic goes on to see explain why he believes that user-generated content gives Petco an advantage in the marketplace.

“With more sites profitable, it’s now about building a loyal customer base against your competition, especially in a category like pets where you have several competitors selling the same product. The reality is if a customer does a search for a pet product, you and your competitor are both right there. So if a customer has to make a decision between the two on something besides price, what else can I use?”

Petco is not the only company using user-generated video in their marketing campaigns. ViTrue, a consumer-generated advertising platform that hosts and runs consumer-generated video contests for brand marketers recently completed a contest for Pringles in which consumers uploaded self-produced musical odes to the snack chip for a chance to win a trip to the finals of TV’s “American Idol.

The growth of YouTube and the common availability of video recorders has reached a tipping point and is causing a shift in how marketers market. Video is one of the mediums that they are testing.

“Companies like Coca-Cola, where it’s really about the consumer experience, are feeling they are not getting as much out of television,” says Emily Riley, advertising analyst at JupiterResearch LLC. “They are used to spending larger budgets for testing; it’s the comfort zone they have. If you are pretty much any other type of advertiser, you are sticking to a smaller-budget test version.”

Expect to see more online and offline user-generated video campaigns as the year progresses. The big question that many marketers ask is how do they measure ROI from this type of campaign? That is still a metric that many people are struggling with.