90% Success :: 90% Fail

As you might already know, one of the most popular channels on YouTube is user iJustine.  I was just on YouTube browsing for channels to connect with for one of our clients and got sucked in by social media…  Justine posted a new video from the Law and Order SVU set and I gave it a skimming because it was a departure from her normal parodies.

It turns out that because of all of the great work that Justine has done via social media she is going to be a character in an upcoming episode.  Not only has she built a profile for herself but she has also been trusted to share a preview of her upcoming role with her YouTube friends and subscribers; the people in charge at the show realize that she has a following and they want to tap into that audience - standard cross marketing but via social media.

At the 1:56 point in the video she along with her set guide are looking at a part of the set that is specific to the forthcoming episode that they both acknowledge needs to be kept secret for viewers to tune into so they don’t spoil anything.  That was when I said to myself, “this is blog-worthy; this is a great teaser”.

I went to grab the video embed code to add it to my blog post to share this with YOU and it turns out that Justine has the video set to not allow embedding.  “Ok”, I thought to myself, “it must be because it is a TV show and they have some weird rule…”.  As it turns out all of the iJustine videos have the embed feature turned off!

AAAAHHHHHH!!!

The one major fight that always happens as we work to transition people into the mentality of marketing in the social space is in letting go of control.  Let people take your logo and personalize it, let people create content that represents your brand in their life, and most importantly let users choose where to interact with your brand - website, social network, user generated video channel, or as a post in someone’s blog.

It is my assumption that 90% of you who read this don’t bother going to watch the video.  But, if it would have been embedded along with the post you would have… and that would have been a win for BOTH Justine and Law and Order (but technically a loss to YouTube/Google…).

Subscribers: 224,031.  Channel Views: 5,272,365.  Imagine if she “let go”.