STORES Magazine - February 2008 - (Page 32) EXECUTIVE SUITE / COVER STORY Mr. Cupid Falls for YouTube Pinny Gniwisch is the founder and executive vice president of marketing for Ice.com, a Quebec-based Internet pure-play specializing in jewelry. On YouTube, however, he’s better known as Mr. Cupid. He doesn’t wear wings or carry a bow and arrow. Instead, clad in a Mr. Cupid Tshirt, Gniwisch adopted a “man on the street” persona last winter and asked passersby in Times Square what gifts they’d like to receive for Valentine’s Day. Some of the responses were funny; others were a bit racy. Gniwisch edited about 100 interviews down to seven or eight brief videos and posted them on YouTube to test the viral power of the video-sharing site. The response exceeded his expectations. “Some of the posts received more than 5,000 views; in all, the videos posted got nearly 70,000 views,” says Gniwisch, who now has a brand channel on YouTube called MrCupid2007. “We purposely didn’t go with a heavy brand-marketing approach. At the end of each video the screen reads, ‘A project of Ice.com,’ but it was enough to lift sales and drive traffic to the website.” While Gniwisch wasn’t sure at first what to expect when he began experimenting with YouTube, it wasn’t his first foray into social media. He started dabbling in online conversation in late 2006 with a series of three blogs, including one (sparkle like the stars) that focuses on the jewelry worn by celebrities. He measured click-through rates from the blogs to the Ice.com website and, ultimately, through to checkout. Even he was a bit taken aback by the findings. “We didn’t do any other online advertising – just the blogs,” he says. “It cost me about $1,200 for the postings and $9.95 for the url. What really blew me away was that the blogs have generated about $150,000 in business. That’s like free money.” While Gniwisch worries about brand protection as much as other marketers, he insists that he’d rather be “in the game” and take some chances than be on the sidelines as a spectator. “People are going to talk about your brand and interact with you online whether you like it or not,” he says. “There’s no question that you have to have a thick skin, but I prefer to interact in a humorous, fun way than to avoid this media. “Not everything you try is going to succeed,” he says. “Some stuff is going to bomb and there are always going to be those who have negative things to say. You can’t worry about that: It’s more important to test and try new things.” Prior to last Mother’s Day, Gniwisch crashed a luxury giveaway suite in Hollywood and chatted with celebrities about Mother’s Day Gifts. At the end of each segment a woman shouted, “log on to Ice.com for a chance to win a $10,000 shopping spree.” Gniwisch reports that 90,000 YouTubers viewed the videos, and 6,000 went to the website for a chance to win. “It cost me around $1,100 for my airline ticket and to hire the videographer,” he says. “I’d say we got a pretty terrific return on that investment.” veloping a thick skin and having a sense of humor.” Bologna encourages clients to think of social-networking sites as an additional media channel. With YouTube reporting between 55 million and 75 million unique users every month, she’s hard-pressed to figure out why a company wouldn’t want to put itself out there. “It’s time to understand what works in this space and come up with a creative approach to building content. Last year you could watch from the sidelines: now it’s time to get in the game.” Defining moment ndeed, 2008 is shaping up to be a defining period for online videos. Once a renegade source of content, online social networking has morphed into a segment that’s difficult to ignore. According to the latest comScore Video Metrix, Americans viewed nearly 9.5 billion online videos in November, when they spent about an hour more watching videos than they did just 10 months earlier. YouTube’s share of the online video market is edging past 30 percent and climbing, propped up by Google’s $1.65 billion in- I vestment in November 2006. comScore found that 74.5 million people viewed 2.9 billion videos on YouTube.com in November – an average of 39 videos per viewer. This compares with 43.2 million people who viewed an average of nine videos on MySpace during the same period. BIGresearch compiled a snapshot of the YouTube user as part of the Simultaneous Media Usage Study (SIMM) it published last month. The average YouTuber — those who say they use YouTube.com for video or music content — is just over 32 years of age (contrary to widely-held assumptions, users are spread relatively evenly across the 18- to 24-, 25- to 34- and 35- to 44-year-old age ranges). Forty percent of YouTubers say they regularly give advice to others about products or services: 56 percent dole out advice “occasionally.” Twenty-nine percent of YouTubers regularly purchase items online; 63 percent “occasionally” buy products online. The upshot: Social media users, led by YouTube surfers, are an engaged group capable of influencing purchases, and they seek out sites that offer rich, entertaining experiences that they WWW.STORES.ORG 32 STORES / FEBRUARY 2008 http://Ice.com http://Ice.com http://YouTube.com http://YouTube.com http://WWW.STORES.ORG
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