How do you deliver a marketing message to a Web-audience that hates advertising? A few years back I proposed a solution based on short-form television-style programs: the “120 Second Solution,” two minute brand-story commercials formatted in a mini three act Web-video presentation. Today this concept is called Branded Entertainment: a two to seven minute commercial that combines content, advertising, and entertainment in a brand story format designed to attract and hold an audience’s attention while delivering a memorable core marketing message.

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The Web is full of information, articles, videos, white papers, e-books and all matter of research and information. Some of it is very, very good, and some of it is misleading and irrelevant. Somewhere in the middle, falling squarely in the category of spectacularly mediocre, is the vast majority of the rest of it.

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If you’ve spent a small fortune on graphic designers, search engine optimizers, social networking experts and still find that your website conversions are low, then perhaps your website suffers from the marketing equivalent of Capgras Delusion, a failure to make a connection between your online content and your emotional value proposition.

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Web video is a communication technique that provides a viewer-experience that delivers several big advantages over broadcast: first, the length of your presentation is for the most part a non issue other than the degree to which your content and delivery holds your audience’s attention; second, the cost to produce and present professional online video is far more affordable than broadcast; and third, Web video provides the opportunity to intellectually and emotionally engage your audience with a memorable viewing experience, and involve them physically by prompting direct-response action. On the other hand, broadcast does provide a mass audience, but not necessarily an attentive one like your website.

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So you want to develop a Web video campaign to put on your website and add to YouTube and all the other Web video directories. Maybe you even want to create a new video micro site to promote that hot new product or service you’re about to launch. You want it done right, professional, slick, and you want it to be effective. Well of course you do.

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A rabbi, a priest, and a minister walk into a bar. The bartender looks up from polishing a glass and says, “What is this… a joke?” Ba-Dum-Tsssh!

A good story has a lot in common with a good marketing presentation, and one of the best ways to deliver your marketing message is in the form of a story. It’s how you turn advertising into content, and content into a memorable experience.

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If there is one thing every Web business executive can agree on, it’s that websites need to motivate people to act. That action can be to place an order, send an email, pick-up the phone, or maybe just join a mailing list, but whatever the intended response, your website must cause a reaction. It’s a case of simple cause and effect.

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We live in an age of clones: somebody makes a very profitable movie about vampires, and the next thing you know we’re all inundated with movies, television shows, books, blogs, websites, and every form of blood-sucking permutation you can imagine.

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We’ve all seen Web video campaigns and television commercials that we actually enjoyed watching, not once, but over and over again. Whether it’s the Mac Versus PC ads or the thoroughly entertaining Visa Pizza Twirling Commercial, great campaigns are as memorable as great movies or television shows. When commercial presentations meet that standard, they transcend mere commercial status, and reach the level of Experiences.

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Marketing campaigns should always start with a communication concept: a conceptual premise and framework that attracts attention and engages an audience in a way that penetrates each viewer’s mind, and captures the audience’s collective consciousness. It is the foundation of your brand story.

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