The Power of Viral Video…
and how to take advantage of it
It’s generally assumed that a viral video is a momentary diversion. It’s something that pops up out of the blue, entertains you for a few minutes and then disappears as quickly as it arrived. But what if you or your show is the source of that video? Can a video gone viral have a lasting impact? Well over at Q the answer to that question is yes.
It’s been over two months since Oscar winning actor and musician Billy Bob Thornton’s disastrous interview with Jian Ghomeshi. That’s two months for the senior team at Q to assess the impact the video has had on their online properties.
“In the first 24 hours our (YouTube) channel had over one-million views. It was the number one video in all of Canada and I saw it hit number three in all of YouTube, although it may have gone higher. In that first day we also had over 1,200 people subscribe to our channel going from 2204 to 3409. The numbers continued to be astronomical for four days until they dropped below 250,000 views a day,” wrote Ben Aylsworth, senior producer of Q on Bold TV in an email.
Arif Noorani, Q’s executive producer said that their website went from an average of 20,000 page views a week which is high for radio programs to 300,000 during the initial week. The Q audio podcast on iTunes we went from being ranked anywhere from 20th to 50th, to being in the top five of all podcasts for that week. The video podcast made it into the top ten.
But here’s the interesting part. While the numbers have dropped down since their initial spike. They have stayed higher than they were before the video went viral.
“All our numbers are higher than they were before the video and this is two months later. We have definitely expanded our core audience and broadened the number of loyal viewers/listeners…(our website) regularly ranks in the mid-30,000s. Q is often the top-ranked or second-ranked program site in radio,” wrote Noorani.
Aylsworth said that Q’s YouTube views are on average 50-75% higher than they were before the video.
So what steps did they take to capitalize on the video as it spread?
“We made sure that the video of the interview was up as soon as the show was over both on the CBC site as well as Q’s YouTube site. Q’s goal is to be cross platform and provide our content in as many places as possible. We also Twittered the link. We didn’t editorialize around the interview, just pointed people to it and let them judge for themselves,” wrote Noorani.
“I would also add here, immediately after the interview we discussed strategy for getting this material out there. We decided to contact all of the major global media outlets, including CBC, to see if they were interested in footage, embedding, linking, etc…,” wrote Aylsworth.
Jian also did interviews with other media outlets about the Billy Bob meltdown.
So the lesson here is that it’s not enough just to hope a viral video will work magic for your show’s numbers. Q was proactive. They encouraged the video to spread by featuring it prominently on their sites and they pushed out outward by making clips available to whoever wanted them.
If only every bad interview had such good consequences.
|
Email This Post |
| Q |
Interesting.
If the Q team had respected Thornton’s request there would be none of this discussion of a “success story”.
You’re right, if media folks did exactly as it was told they would be boring and useless, good point there.
The Smoking Gun’s copy of his rider rider makes for good reading if you’re still unsure as to how committed he is to keeping his careers sandboxed from each other:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstagetour/billybob/billybob1.html
I particularly like the fact that they have to be billed as “Billy Bob Thornton And Special Guests The Boxmasters”, and that he gets his own room separate from the band.
“as they were told”, even
right away this incident smacked of smarmy orchestrated ‘controversy’. a real producer would have pulled to plug on the interview and it would never have aired. sparing us all the banality of bb’s band and this contrived circus…with jian cast as the poor victim. in a way i can’t believe they’re admitting it so readily.
you know. vice magazine used to write their own ‘hate mail’. made them seem all
provocative and shit.
How about a some CBC pizzas on the Q set?
[...] of Q’s viral video Check out InsideCBC’s “The Power of Viral Video … and how to take advantage of it” Here is an excerpt (emphasis added), It’s generally assumed that a viral video is a [...]
They spun it into a TV commercial as well. I thought it was great.
Kev,
are you suggesting that the media do not do as they are told …by the advertisers, by the government, by pressure groups, by Celine Dion!? WAKE UP. Are you suggesting that what Jian did was “brave” and “daring”? La-la land is calling.
Just yesterday, Darryl Stuerdan had a published interview with Chris Martin of Coldplay. In the article, Stuerdan mentions that he was asked/told not to speak of Martin’s personal life with G. Paltrow or his present legal problems regarding song ownership. What did he do? He honoured the request and proceeded to conduct a valid interview.
It’s a question of respect, pure and simple. If you do not want to follow the instruction, then you can –on principle– refuse to conduct the interview or to air it, later on. It would have been alot more revealing had the Q team said : “we refused to conduct the interview because Billy Bob did not want us mention his acting career”.
You know why they didn’t do that? Because we’d have concluded that they had nothing else to talk about.
The interview proved it.
Let’s not mince words here – BBT’s musical career is nonexistent. He has a bunch of session musicians on an extended contract and gets himself onto the bill purely on the basis of his acting fame. American Idol winners have more of a claim to having paid their dues, and in general about as much talent.
Even given the fact that that’s the only thing that’s in any way interesting about him in a musical context, Jian barely mentioned the fact that he was an actor in a throwaway paragraph at the beginning of an interview where he manfully played along with the fiction that he was interviewing a musician, until said fictional musician decided to throw his toys out of the pram.
At this point, as proven by the massive response to it, it actually became interesting precisely because it gave an insight into BBT’s personality and the motivations behind his “art” – which is the kind of thing cultural journalism is supposed to do.