People often refer to YouTube as the world’s second most popular search engine, but is it really a search engine? People don’t search for ‘builder in Auckland City’ or ‘movie times in Wellington’ like they do on Google or Bing. Most people tend to be pointed to YouTube via another source, be it Facebook, Twitter, word-of-mouth or even (shock horror) email. I would personally call YouTube a video sharing platform.

More importantly for marketers, is YouTube an effective weapon in their arsonary? Many consultants, and certainly people at YouTube, will tell you that it’s critical mass makes it a great target for marketing campaigns. But is it a realistic target?

Everyone knows that getting a video to go viral is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. YouTube is a wall of white noise with the sheer amount of content uploaded every minute of every day. More important, though, is that the branded videos that have gone viral have all either had significant above-the-line support or used homepage ads on YouTube. Let me give you two examples (both, coincidentally, featuring babies).

Seen the hilarious series with babies promoting online stock market trading service E*TRADE? One of the videos has had nearly six million views. Amazing promotion and exposure for the company. Know what kicked off the viral effect? A half-time ad during Super Bowl, the most expensive TVC slot in the world. How about that cool Evian video (22 million views) with the babies roller-skating around the park; that didn’t have any traditional above-the-line expenditure right? Correct, but it did have exclusive homepage ads in YouTube’s seven most popular regions (US, UK, Australia etc.)

A rubbish, uninventive, over-branded video won’t go viral even if it has tons of extra promotion. However, how realistic is it for most companies to back their video in the way that E*TRADE and Evian did? Especially in a country like New Zealand that is primarily made up of SMEs.

YouTube is great, but I wouldn’t put it at the centre of any marketing campaign. With more and more content being uploaded and the increase in movie and TV rentals available, it appears that using YouTube as a marketing platform is going to be even more difficult without millions of dollars of supporting collateral.  

Do you think YouTube should be called a search engine and what do you think of it as a marketing platform?

Today I went to the launch of ‘PassItOn’, an initiative organised by the Kiwi Expat Association (Kea) to turn the nearly one million New Zealanders that live overseas into a network of virtual ambassadors.

Many Kiwis abroad are already virtual ambassadors, but it’s one thing talking to your mates down the pub about how great your homeland is, it’s quite another to make the connection to actually helping a New Zealand business.

This is what PassItOn (www.passiton.co.nz) sets out to achieve. It provides a platform for Kiwis to put forward what they do, why it’s special and what they need to take it to the next level. Expats and ‘friends of New Zealand’ can then decide whether they can help. The topics of the videos range from music to film to technology to food.

Linking in with the great marketing weapon that is the Rugby World Cup, PassItOn should be a great, ongoing project for New Zealand. Hopefully it will help the country to continue to punch above its weight.

In some ways it is about reaching as many people as possible in order to spread the word; but, perhaps more importantly, it’s about reaching the right people. If the right expats buy into it, then there should be no holding it back.

So get sharing people!