ShanaRay.com

YouTube is the latest social network that is offering brands free demographic data about users who click on their offerings. These facts will highly influence how bands, TV shows, movies and consumer products are marketed virally on the Web.

A feature called YouTube Insight, introduced in March, gives YouTube account holders a range of statistics, charts and maps about their audiences, and it is free!

YouTube is becoming the world’s biggest focus group

The data bring some science to what has in the past just been a crapshoot in terms of knowing who exactly is watching/reading a brands viral marketing efforts.

I know I already mentioned the latest “viral” hit: Weezer’s music video “Pork and Beans.”

The video was posted on May 23 and in less than two weeks, over 5.5 million have watched it, and now because of Insight we know that 65% of viewers are male. And after three days, 38% of viewers had discovered the video on other websites where people had posted it.

With this information, Weezer is planning on figuring out how to target the same demographic groups that watched the video, and how to reach out to those that didn’t.

Snapfish.com, the online photo-sharing leader, wanted to leverage Valentine’s Day with an online, viral card-making application. My company, Hamilton Partners was chosen to create the site because of their creative card ideas, web UI design and quick turnkey development.

The new Snapfish Valentine site offers a choice of three interactive and fun e-cards. Each one lets you easily upload a photo and add a personal greeting. Go to Snapfishecard.com to send a fun e-Valentine today!

Here is a card I made of my niece, Kayla and I.

I love everything about a clever marketing campaign surrounding a movie, The Simpsons Movie started last year off for extremely well done marketing (the movie, not so good) and one of Cloverfield’s many viral campaign’s (Widget where people could embed the trailer on their blogs, MySpace, Facebook, etc. and if their widget was grabbed the most, they won a special screening of the movie, along with several websites) was a huge success (over $40 MM at the box office). I am seeing this movie this weekend.

The newest campaign I learned about has been under sad conditions. I just started paying attention to “The Dark Knight,” but for nine months, comic book geeks and Batman movie fans have been interacting with a web marketing campaign to “slowly unveil the new look for one of Hollywood’s most popular characters: the Joker.”

The viral campaign came out last May. Websites, thegothamtimes and thehahahatimes came out along with an online scavenger hunt.

With the death of the Joker, Heath Ledger, will the marketing change? According to a Wall Street Journal article, no it should not.

“The best thing that could happen is that all this marketing stuff just goes on and the movie and the campaign don’t turn into some kind of weird grave marker.”

Will his tragic death just turn into a marketing ploy? Should they studio continue their marketing as they have been or change it to not be seen like they are trying to capitalize on the death?

Earlier today a colleague of mine reminded me to check my Twitter account. So I went on this afternoon at 2PM to take a look.

The latest Twitter was from Hugh MacLeod.

It was posted 1 minute earlier.

My response Twitter said “What?? Heath Ledger is dead??”

So of course, me being a pop culture junkie, I had to go onto my iGoogle home page to see if People.com had posted anything…… THEY HADN’T!!

10 minutes later I looked again and it was up. The article said “Heath Ledger found dead, more information to come…”

So through the wonders of social networking, I found information out before it hit the magazine’s website.

I had to go to my MySpace page to change my status to “Shana is shocked that Heath Ledger is found dead.” Instantly, 4 people left me comments is response and 2 people changed their own status to “RIP Heath”

Interesting…….

On a completely different note, today is the last day to resister to vote in The CA primaries. I was reminded of this by a friend of mine who posted MySpace bulletin this morning

“If you haven’t already—today is your last chance to register to vote on February 5th.”

I took it one step further and in my bulletin I provided my MySpace friends the url to download the application and the address where to send it to. An hour later a few of my friends commented as well as sent out their own bulletins about the subject.

The uses for social networking are endless, but mindless entertainment (I apologize for calling a talented actor’s death, mindless entertainment—It is just for emphasis) spreads much faster than actual news.

I love that it is easy to get into the head of the consumer, because for the most part, it is my own head.