Digital video is maturing despite the recession

OnMedia NYC, a conference that brings technology and advertising executives together, concluded yesterday in downtown Manhattan. The event was, dare I say, encouraging, given the recession climate in New York. Tim Draper of VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, speaking at the event, went so far as to say there’s no better time to be an entrepreneur in digital media.

The kinds of online commercials we’re seeing today have certainly evolved well beyond what we saw just a couple of years ago, if you can still call them commercials. And the Best of Broadband Awards, announced at the event by conference organizers AlwaysOn Network, gives some insight into exactly what’s changed and where digital video is finding its strengths. The winning videos showed how much smarter marketers and their technology partners are getting in figuring out what makes online commercials work.

Take Electronic Arts’ winning “Tiger Woods ’09 Walk on Water” commercial, for example. It’s genius in that it slips itself seamlessly into the conversation on YouTube. YouTube user levinator25 inadvertently kicked the whole thing off by posting a video about an apparent glitch in EA’s Tiger Woods ’08, in which he shows Tiger Woods walking on water. EA’s agency, Weiden + Kennedy, got smart and turned it into the best piece of video marketing Tiger Woods ’09 could have asked for. (We wrote about this video back in December as part of a story on how game publishers were using YouTube to market games). The commercial shows the real Tiger Woods actually walking on water to prove the “glitch” wasn’t really a glitch at all, just pure skill.

This is how the conversation needs to develop between fans and content producers. EA even followed YouTube protocol and posted it as a response to levinator25’s video.

Here’s the original glitch video:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h42UeR-f8ZA&hl=en&fs=1&w=425&h=344]

And here’s EA’s commercial:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ1st1Vw2kY&hl=en&fs=1&w=425&h=344]

Another great example comes from Nike with its Kobe-Bryant-jumps-over-an-Aston-Martin commercial. This one’s disguised as a piece of fan video Kobe happens to be in. It doesn’t look like your regular Nike commercial, but it’s how Nike commercials are going to start to look. The panel presenters at the conference maintained this was a real viral video with no involvement with Nike or its agency (also Weiden + Kennedy), but that’s not the case—it was produced by Nike, filmed in under 30 minutes, and cost far less than the typical commercial budget. The point is that it doesn’t really matter who made it, because the emerging digital media audience is comfortable blurring the line between editorial and advertising, if it if it even still cares about the distinction.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hWJkdUMiMw&hl=en&fs=1&w=425&h=344]

And finally, winner Nintendo’s Wario Land commercial shows just how far out of the box marketers and publishers have already climbed. This one was produced by agency Goodby, Silverstein and Partners. If you aren’t one of the 4.5 million people who’s already seen it, then take a look. As Mario navigates the game, the action is so powerful that the YouTube page outside of the video itself starts rattling and falling apart, leaving nothing left on the page but the video player by the time you reach the end.

What we’re seeing is the result of talent cross-pollination between marketers and publishers and between marketers from different backgrounds. In January, Coca-Cola’s former director of emerging media, Shane Steele, moved to New York to join video startup Tremor Media, for example, and agency veteran Donnovan Andrews joined Tribal Fusion as VP of Strategic Development. That cross-pollination is accelerating the cooperation between digital marketers and media startups, and it’s making for more sophisticated partnerships as well.

I expect to see even wilder fare at next year’s show.