PR & buzz

In my previous post, Chris Garcia from BYU Library Multimedia Team answered a few questions about the YouTube hit his team created, but if you want to see how they did this million-view video (1,357,775 at the time of this writing including 126,150 on mobile devices), just watch this short making of:

You can also learn more about the team on the blog they created:

New Spice

Mike Richwalksy from HighEdWebTech has been keeping track of interesting videos produced by institutions for some time now. So, when I saw he posted about a higher ed parody of the big social media hit video campaign, Old Spice, I checked out the video right away.

Believe it or not, but I had been so busy those past few days with work, danah boyd’s master class and a zillion other things that I hadn’t had chance yet to watch the Old Spice video before this morning. I knew it was a hit because of all the chatter on Twitter, but I didn’t feel compel to watch it until this morning.

In case you’ve been living on an island located in an ocean of work and were not in the know, here’s the original:

And, here’s the parody the Harold B. Lee Library Multimedia Team created.

Wow. Very nice job and an instant success with more than 169, 000 views at the time of this writing.

I knew you would all want to know more about how a higher ed team managed to produce and promote this viral success, so I interviewed via email Chris Garcia, HBL Library Multimedia Project Manager.

1) First, can you tell us a bit more about the team behind this video?
We are the Harold B. Lee Library’s Multimedia Production Unit. We handle all the video and media needs of the library. We record lectures, make video materials for exhibits, promote the library (exhibits, general promos, collections, services), and occasionally branch out to do something for other BYU entities. We consist of 2 full-time employees (Mike Hill, unit manager, and me, project manager) and 10-12 awesomely talented student employees, depending on the time of year. We also get a lot of support from the library itself.

2) How did you come up with the idea of this parody? What were your goals for this video?
As our job is to promote the library in anyway we had a break in between projects and we thought we’d make another “fun” promo video (some of our other ones are on youtube.com/hbllproduction). We sat down as a unit and talked about possible ideas. Our meetings and projects, for that matter, are very student driven. We wanted something that would catch on and be seen. As far as our specific goals once the project was decided upon, we really wanted to do the whole thing as smooth as possible by making sure to give our pre-production the time it needed (which really wasn’t all that much time but it worked).

3) How did you manage to write, shoot and produce this video so quickly?
We had that initial meeting on May 27th and then we were shooting it on June 12th. We worked completely as a team to write the script and even had Stephen Jones, the actor, come in and contribute to the script. We were two full-timers and 10 students. Our team is a smorgasbord of talent. Mike and I have backgrounds in media and film and we have students in BYU’s film program, electrical engineering, chemical engineering, animation, IT. We did the whole thing under $500, however, we have all our own equipment so that was not a cost specific to this project. We have really tried to setup a mentored environment here with most if not all aspects of projects being done by students. For the shoot we also called on a lot of friends to assist with the stunts on the day of the shoot as well as a lot of BYU volunteers to be extras at the three different locations. We spent hours trying to get the shirt rip-off and the backpack drop just right. We even had a practice shoot two days before the real one to make sure we knew what we were doing.

4) The video has gone viral with more than 50,000 views this morning (when I asked the questions – about 6 hours before writing this post). How did you promote it?
We started by just showing it to full-time library employees at a meeting and then two days later it went up on the web. Promotion was a library effort I think and a real example of the power of social networking. I posted the video on YouTube yesterday (July 15th) at about 11:30am. A few of us here in the unit posted it on Facebook. I send out a library wide e-mail with a link to the video and from there it exploded. After 3 hours of being up we were getting e-mails from Canada, New York, and even Sweden about the video. YouTube stops instantly updating views after about 300 (which we hit after about 45 minutes) so we were unsure of the growth after that. We had to wait until this morning to see the real response to the video.

5) Can you share a few examples of the feedback you got on campus and elsewhere?
Some of the funniest responses we’ve gotten have been our personal friends, who didn’t know we made this, sending links to us to watch it. We’ve gotten e-mails from New York Public library, the University of Alberta (who told us that some friends in the UK were all a buzz over the video), the University of Rochester, an advertising blog in Sweden (at least the person who contacted us had a Swedish phone number), and several other libraries all over the country. The comments on YouTube have been a real joy to read as well. I’ve been checking our actor’s, Stephen Jones, Facebook page and he even got a wall post from someone studying in Egypt.

What’s great about flying across the country to attend a conference is the quality time I can get with my laptop.

I meant to post about this great initiative for more than a month now, but I couldn’t find enough quiet time to write it. My apologies.

Back in April, Nicole Sweeney Etter from Marquette University’s magazine brought to my attention a great online video that had been produced by a group of current students. Marquette Magazine published an article about this group, The Spanish O’Donnells, as it had “developed quite a campus following for their pop parodies and YouTube music videos.”

When he read this magazine profile, Dave Murphy, senior director of brand marketing at Marquette University contacted the students and asked them to create a music video for scholarship aid. The Spanish O’Donnells were given a fact sheet about financial aid as a starting point and just ran with it. “The guys were jotting down lyrics before they even left the office. At the guys’ request, we also provided some historical photos and video footage to mix with their own footage,” wrote Etter in her email.

The students recorded the music in a mini-recording booth set up in a dorm room closet. It took them about a month to write, record and edit.

The resulting video has been very successful. At the time of this writing, it has been viewed 9184 times.

Because it includes a very clear and specific call to action – i.e. donate money to support student scholarships, it was possible to measure its results.

The video was promoted to Marquette’s Alums via the university Facebook page and Twitter account as well as on the Give Marquette website. It was also used for an email campaign delivered to close to 38,000 alums and individuals including all donors and non-donors. The email signed by the University President, Father Wild, was sent on March 25 and invited alums to watch the video. The subject line of the email was “A clever video from our students.”

Thanks to Sara Harvey from University Advancement I can actually share with you some very interesting data about the results of this campaign:

• Email open rate: 31%
• Click-trough rate: 18.4% (only 6% in March 2009)
• Open to click-through rate: 59% (only 17% in March 2009)
• Unsubscribe rate: less than 1%
• 34 donations* for a total of $7615 three weeks after delivery (15 donations for a total of $3,832 in March 2009)

* The donations were determined by counting those constituents who clicked on a link to view the video and who also made a gift via the on-line giving form through 4/14/2010.

Sara Harvey also shared with me many replies made via Twitter, Facebook and email. I’m just including a couple below to give you an idea of the feedback the video and the email got from Marquette University alums:

I just wanted you to know that although I had stopped donating a few years ago (putting my own kids through college took most of the discretionary spending), a friend forwarded a link to the Spanish Odonnells’ video. I was immediately moved to donate. I’m happy to help support the education of such clever and talented students. I don’t know how you plan to disseminate this video, but I hope you will do so. This was so much more effective than the telephone call in the middle of “Grey’s Anatomy.”

If this is the kind of energy, communication creativity, and innovation that MU is developing in its students, and if this is how MU students are making efforts to understand generational differences connect with them in a diverse and inclusive message, and if is how they are astute enough to recognize past tradition and memories to connect with alumni to make a meaningful appeal for finanical aid… Then as an former MU student, I need to step up and match the that MU student enthusiasm, their skill,and demonstrate my support this kind of fantastic “reach-out” attitude at Marquette. I will be donating to the scholarship fund for the second time in five days, following an excellent call from an MU student on Sunday who also demonstrated that attitude through her telephone manner. We certainly need more of this “MU Creative Connectivity” in our business environments.

Marquette University also posted another video on YouTube including some of the comments made by alums about the song.

Wow. Amazing how a student-produced video can reach the hearts (and pockets ;-) of alums.

Has your institution used online videos in an original way? Let me know at karine@collegewebeditor.com or by posting a comment below.

You might have already heard about this YouTube video as several higher ed bloggers (mstonerblog, The Old College Try and edustir among others) and twitterers have mentioned it this week.

President’s Day at Macalester College is a 5-minute online video featuring President Brian Rosenberg.

Not your traditional college president video at all.

This online video is a humorous insider’s tour of Macalester College where the president does all sort of things to showcase the school and its spirit.

Take the time to watch it now if you haven’t yet.

Released on President’s Day – just 4 days ago, the video has more than 15,000 views – it’s not a huge hit in YouTube terms, but it’s definitely a popular video that resonated with the MAC community as some of the comments on YouTube prove it.

Here are just a few among the 22 that were posted on YouTube at the time of this writing:

• I love this video! It makes me proud to be at Macalester. I think it takes courage and ability to look at things in a fun manner to do something like this. I am extremely proud to be a part of this community and I want to thank people whose creativity and hard work makes this college one of the most amazing academic environments in the country.
• That was great! ….. Makes me even prouder to be a “Mac Dad”! ;-)
• It’s this kind of self-aware humor that makes the Mac community awesome.

Since I know you are always interested in learning more about this kind of initiatives, I contacted Amy Phenix, director of Communications and PR at Macalester College, yesterday and asked her a few questions about this original video.

1) Can you tell us a bit more about this video? How did you get the idea? How did you convince your president to go for it?

The video was truly a collaborative effort with the president. We knew that we wanted to do more video as another way of engaging alumni. The communications team got together and brainstormed five concepts that we shared with the president and vice president for Advancement. I continued the brainstorm with them and we settled on President’s Day as the hook for a humorous look at campus and student life today, through the eyes of President Rosenberg. From the very first conversation, President Rosenberg was engaged. He came up with some of the funniest bits. No convincing was needed, which is a good thing because I don’t think it would have worked with a reluctant star.

2) How long did it take to create this video? How big was the team and how much did the video cost?

We shot all but one scene in a day (probably about 6 hours of shooting), and we turned it around edited in a week. It was a very fast production process and the shoot was well-orchestrated so we were able to stay on schedule.

The team included four people on our staff, plus an alum we hired to shoot and finalize the script.

It was very low-budget. Other than a freelance videographer, who spent about 40 hours on preparation, location scouting, script and shooting, we did all the work in house. Total cost was about $2,500.

3) How did you promote this video?

We sent it to our alumni (about half of whom we have email addresses for), friends, and current parents, promoted to the campus community, and posted on Facebook and Twitter. We also shared with reporters who cover higher education.

4) This video generated a lot of buzz (15,000 views and many mentions on blogs, etc.). Has it met its goals? Have you noticed a bump in donations or requests for information from prospective students yet?

We are extremely gratified with the response and have exceeded our goals. Because this is the first time we’ve done something like this we didn’t know what to expect. We have seen a bump in donors and donations. The impact on prospective students is a bit more difficult to gauge this early.

Unless you’ve been really, really busy (and away from your computer, iPhone or iPad – wait that one isn’t out there yet ;-), you’ve already heard about Yale’s admissions video: “That’s why I chose Yale,” a 16-minute tongue-in-cheek musical, highly produced but all done by students or recent alums.

Picked up by the New York Times, the Washington Post and other big names in media, the video has gone viral on YouTube (more than 300,000 views at the time of this writing) – and has resulted in many high praises as well as angry comments on different blogs and listservs.

Here’s the video in case you didn’t get a chance to watch it yet:

Brian Niles from TargetX – who is very well connected in the admissions world – managed to contact Andrew Johnson, senior assistant director of undergraduate admissions who was behind this production, and got him to sit in front of a web camera for a 20-minute discussion about the video.

No time to watch the interview now?
Here are my notes:

• The video wasn’t designed to be put online initially, but to be used as a fun introduction before the traditional information session and the campus tour. Johnson explained that it was meant to be used as one component of a campus visit and definitely not as part of a new branding campaign. However, it was decided at some point to put it online.
• They decided to do the video in-house with students after requesting some bids from video production companies. Johnson said it was done with a little amount of money – about 10% of what professional companies were asking for this type of video. When prompted to give a dollar amount for the video budget, Johnson explained that it had not been tallied up yet as the expenses were on several admissions officers’ credit cards (Really? Wow).
• The video took 10 days to film and several to edit. The video was then reviewed in house to make sure it was vetted.
• The musical format was chosen to showcase a more fun yet accurate side of Yale. The student film maker, Ethan Kuperberg, had just completed a musical when he was asked to do this project. Johnson managed the project, but also wrote the music.

Make sure you watch this great video interview by Target X to learn more as I’ve just highlighted the most important points. And, again kudos to Brian for getting us more info on this unusual video.

Care to tell us what YOU think about the Yale video? Post a comment!

My new UB column is now available in the October issue as well as online: “Social Media Measurement 101: A seven-step plan to set up (and benefit from) a simple social measurement program “

Here are the 7 steps:
1. Define measurable goals for social media activities.
2. Choose key performance indicators (KPIs) carefully.
3. Plan ahead and properly set up the right measurement tools.
4. Capture the data at preset intervals.
5. Don’t forget some benchmarking.
6. Share your measurement data.
7. Use measurement data to craft your next moves.

Social Media Measurement 101

If you are a University Business reader who has just discovered collegewebeditor.com, welcome! Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog via RSS or email.

Previously AVP of Marketing and Public Relations at his alma mater, the University of Florida, Joe Hice started to work as the chief communications officer at NC State University last week.

What’s really interesting here is that Joe has decided to share his first 100 days on the job through his new professional blog (he used to blog at The Gator Grotto) cleverly named HiceSchool Blog.

HiceSchool Blog

So, if you ever wondered how it felt to start a new job at this level, check out the blog.
You might learn a thing or two along the way. You might even offer some useful suggestions to Joe.

This is one of these posts I have to write as soon as possible.

I was working on my weekly newsletter when I checked very quickly Twitter and saw this tweet from Mike Richwalsky about an online video:

Twitter / Mike Richwalsky: Great 1-take video from UQAM. Great coordination + shooting.

Mike knows online videos, so I checked it out and you should too (if you haven’t already seen it on CNN):

It’s a great 1-take 4-minute video that was produced in just 2 hours and 15 minutes.
Really great work with close to 200,000 views on YouTube at the time of this writing.

But, it’s actually more than another silly – yet successful – student video.

It’s the ultimate energizing campus (more like building in this case) tour video with class rooms, labs, cafeteria, commons, etc. And, it’s part of a student-led project started in Germany, University LipDub, inviting students to produce this kind of videos to showcase their institutions, students and even faculty members… just for fun.

What is lip dub? » University LipDub – What do you do after studying?

I’ve watched a few of these videos and it really looks like this is a non-US trend started in Germany, picked up in other European countries – widely in France – and currently catching up in Canada, especially in Quebec, the French-speaking province.

Here’s a playlist including 18 videos:

After watching a few, I can’t help but think that there’s something to be done to get more of these produced in the US.

What a great project to suggest to your students and an innovative way to present your institution!
What do you think?

Duke University has done it again.

With “Office Hours,” a new series in partnership with Ustream launched today at noon ET, the institution has found another great way to showcase the expertise of its faculty.

The idea – put a professor in front of the camera for an informal Q&A with the university community and Ustream viewers – looked interesting on paper (well, I mean on the web) when I saw the announcement yesterday on Duke Today.

Ariely to Launch ‘Online Office Hours’ Series Friday at Noon

That’s why I was in front of my screen today at noon ET to see if its implementation could meet my expectations.

It did.

Duke University has again written a page of higher ed web history (can’t you see I really liked what I experienced? I bet you can).

Accessible right from the Ustream homepage, the 45-minute (?) long office hour with Professor Ariely gathered more than 150 viewers. Questions could be asked via email, on a dedicated Facebook page – broadcasting live the stream – as well as on Twitter.

I asked the first question via Twitter and it was promptly answered by Professor Ariely (around 9:00 in the recording).

Twitter question

You cannot imagine (well, you probably can, but I’m emphatic today) how excited I was to be able to ask a question – while at lunch – to a Duke professor and get the answer in a matter of minutes.

Just great.

Watch the recording – made available a few minutes after the end of the event- and I’m sure you will agree (if you don’t, please tell me why. That’s why comments are for)

Please note that the recording takes 39 seconds to start – so be patient if you watch it from the video player below.

Who needs television when you can actually interact with experts at this level?
Who needs television when you can actually demonstrate the expertise of your faculty to the world?

So, I’m pretty sure it won’t be long before other institutions follow in Duke’s footsteps and we see more of these “Office Hours” with faculty all around the country (world, should I say).

What do YOU think?

The registration deadline for the “Writing Right for the Web” 2-webinar series scheduled on May 5 and 6, 2009 is now approaching fast.

For more info and to register, you can visit www.higheredexperts.com/writingright

This series features 2 speakers who have mastered the art and craft of Web writing: Tim Nektriz from SUNY Oswego and Mary Beth Kurilko from Philadelphia U (and former Temple University)

May 5, 2009 – 1PM-2PM ET (rain date: May 12, 2009)
Web Writing 360: How to write right for all the online media
Tim Nekritz, Associate Director of Public Affairs at SUNY Oswego and Chief Content Editor of Oswego.edu, will explain why good web copy still matters in this age of YouTube, Flickr and Twitter. He will also share best practices in authoring great copy for websites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter make sure your messages reach your targeted audiences.

May 6, 2009 – 1PM-2PM ET (rain date: May 13, 2009)
Web Writer Coaching 101: How to find, train, and nurture web contributors on campus
Mary Beth Kurilko, former Director of Web Communications at Temple University, will show you how distributive web content authorship can be the solution to all your institution’s web content issues. She will also share her 10-step plan to enroll, train and turn into great web contributors any of your campus administrative or academic writers.

Webinars: Higher Ed Experts

Already registered institutions include:

Appalachian State University
Suffolk University
Lethbridge College
Harrisburg Area Community College
Widener University
Penn State University
SUNY College at Oneonta
Kettering University
Indiana University East
SAIT Polytechnic
Eastern Mennonite University
Saint Anselm College
Olympic College
Florida International University
CSU Office
Connecticut College

For more info or to register: www.higheredexperts.com/writingright

If you have any questions, just email karine@higheredexperts.com