Conversations: Showcasing the Power of YouTube
Client: YouTube Advertising
Strategic Service: B2B Content Strategy
Team: Sarah Cunningham (Client Lead); Josh Combs (Creative Lead); Ophelia Stimpson (Strategy Lead); John Stalling (Cinematographer), all AKQA.
Opportunity
Goal: Change perception
Audience: Marketing decision makers
Market: North America
With a global reach of over 2 billion engaged consumers, YouTube is one of the world’s biggest media platforms.
Yet bluechip brands in North America under-invest in YouTube’s paid media and Creator offering due to fears of brand safety. For them, YouTube is a wild west of unpredictable content – and unlike other media platforms, not a place for meaningful audience connections.
YouTube came to us to change this brand perception. We were asked to find a way to showcase the best of the platform as creatively as possible, on a minimal budget – for a primarily B2B audience.
Insight
YouTube is a place where billions of consumers go to find meaning, light relief and information. A key part of this is YouTube Creators, who cater to their audiences with incredible speed, ingenuity and authenticity – and in so doing are reinventing how you market to consumers.
The insight was simple – YouTube is where culture happens. By underestimating YouTube, marketers are not only missing out on ROI but valuable audience connections. We had to convince marketers of the value of investing in YouTube – by showing how the platform is pioneering marketing itself. In a time where marketing budgets are forever shrinking – particularly in the wake of COVID-19 – YouTube is one of the most effective platforms through which to engage an audience without breaking the bank.
We came up with the idea to show the power of YouTube in as human a way possible, through the people who make the platform what it is – Creators themselves.
Execution
We developed Conversations: three eye-opening videos pairing experts with experts: gold-standard Creators Liza Koshy, Marques Brownlee and Alisha Marie with world-renowned CMOs Jen Sey (Levis), Marc Pritchard (P&G), and Gail Tifford (WW).
The result was a set of conversations where the CMOs – despite being leaders in their field – perhaps learnt more than the Creators about marketing to a digital-first audience.
This campaign was an important first step in changing perception of what it means to advertise on YouTube. Due to COVID-19, the paid media was paused – but organic flighting saw some important shares, engagements and brand-building for YouTube Advertising across multiple platforms.