SIGMA::BLOG

It has over 2.9 million fans that “Like” it on Facebook.

In August this year it hit the 1 million subscriber mark for its YouTube channel, with individual videos receiving view tallies well over 20 million each.

It made the current Bloomberg Business Week “Popularity Issue” as the Top Web Series. And it was recently discovered by my family during our annual beach vacation. Ugh! Why the ugh? It’s the Annoying Orange.

And it’s exactly that. Annoying Orange is the wisecracking, purposely irritating punster who stars in his own YouTube web series.

The videos feature a real orange with superimposed human eyes and lips.  The plot line for each video is simple: Annoying Orange meets his episode’s co-star(s): another fruit, vegetable, object, or even other YouTube “celebs.”  Annoying Orange tells jokes, laughs a lot, makes fun of and annoys the co-star, who ends up being eliminated, whether it’s by knife (the demise of most fruits and veggies), or by some other physical comedy.

Having had to listen to and/or watch the videos again and again during my vacation, and looking to make lemons out of lemonade (or orange juice out of oranges), the videos got me thinking about what’s making this series so amazingly popular, and what marketers can learn from it in attracting an audience.

It’s simple, basic, and consistently updated – Seriously, no big budgets here.  It’s just a talking orange with a little bit of editing magic and other household props.  The plot lines are mindless, easy for anyone of any age to get, and pure shtick.  And the videos are refreshed every Friday – a good reason to subscribe and/or return to the site.

It’s quick – The videos are less than three minutes each.  No attention span needed.  A great video “snack” for anyone surfing through YouTube. It’s appropriate for the channel – According to eMarketer, videos shot by consumers and uploaded to YouTube (i.e., user generated) are the most frequently watched type of online video.  (May 2010 stat)

It leverages partners – A few of the videos feature other YouTube “celebs” as the targets of Annoying Orange’s antics.  At the end, you can click and go to these stars’ specific YouTube channels.  It’s an interesting means of cross-selling these “brands” within the YouTube community.

It has lots of engagement opportunities – The Annoying Orange YouTube channel features, and each of the videos end with, lots and lots of engagement opportunities.  Calls to action include: follow on Twitter, Facebook, answer a question relevant to the video in the comments section, buy a shirt, download a ringtone, subscribe to the channel, or just click to watch another episode.  Annoying Orange truly is its own brand looking for ongoing loyalty.

Now, I’m not suggesting that marketers use third-grade boy level jokes, bodily function noises, nor any type of produce in their creative approaches in order to achieve success.  Rather, Annoying Orange is an interesting case in how to deliver content and sell a brand, without letting a consumer know that you’re really selling a brand.  It’s the right content, in the proper amount, delivered in the perfect channel, and given support, ongoing attention, and engagement opportunities that make it work.

Interesting to note that despite its popularity, very little has been written about the Annoying Orange.  CNN.com – one of the few press sites that has picked it up – said that the current Nabisco Cheez-Its “Mature Cheese” is probably the closest creative rip-off of the series.

Hey…hey reader.  Hey reader.  Orange you glad I shared these insights?  *rimshot*  Ugh.

One of the core groups here at Sigma is our web-development team—that’s right we have an in-house web-dev team here in the heart of Oradell, NJ fully integrated with our planning and creative units allowing us to identify, develop and deploy digital properties that build meaningful experiences and relationships. What sets us apart on the development side is not just our full suite of technical skills, experience and intelligence, but more importantly the close relationship we have with software/platform providers (e.g., Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, etc.) as well as developers from all facets of the business. Without them, infusing innovation to our work would be like skiing on grass.

To give back to the web-development community, we are proud to sponsor Flash and the City. The brainchild of our web-dev leader Elad Elrom, this four-day, out-of-the-box conference will bring the Flash community from around the world together in New York City and redefine the way we share and marry artistic creativity with technological ingenuity.

Continue reading …

Let’s face it, we’re a society who wants to have our cake and eat it, too.  We’re consumers who say one thing…but embrace new products and services that indicate something else.  Often, for a brand person, it’s seemingly impossible to serve up engagements that satisfy these mixed signals among consumers.  How do you address the needs of a consumer when they say one thing, and you have the brand or product that offers great benefits, but then they just don’t buy it, or they just don’t act, or they head in another direction?  Honestly…when all is said and done, it’s simple:  don’t just satisfy consumers, make them feel good.

A great example of the contradictions in behavior is with food.  Look at the landscape in recent, food headlines and news bytes (no pun intended).  And then take a peek at what’s tantalizing our pallets as trends and recent intros.  The juxtaposition not only demonstrates consumers’ contradictions in choices, but at its core, it reveals consumers’ desire to be surprised, delighted, and to just walk away feeling happy. Check out this “salty and sweet mash-up” of sorts…

Continue reading …

If you own a car, there are countless ways you can find yourself at a body shop: you back into a fire hydrant, you develop a strange attraction to shopping carts, someone keys your door. You get the idea. Most cars have also become quite good at letting us know when someone needs to look under the hood – idiot lights on the dash, funny sounds, a new smoking habit, or one day it just decides to not move.

Why is it then, that we fail to act when we think—sometimes even know— that our brand is in disrepair? Well, whether it’s an abandoned Buick on the side of the road, or a brand new Prius with a sticky accelerator, there are identifiable indicators that it’s time to make a visit to “the brand shop”. The following are a few things that may light up your brand’s dashboard:

1.  Your market environment has changed. Your customers’ expectations of how a brand in your space looks, means, and behaves has altered. Are you keeping up with it? What your brand offers is still relevant to your customers, but how they think of you (and talk about you) needs to change to allow you to be more competitive.

Continue reading …

At this time every year, Information Resources, Inc. (IRI) issues an interesting report about what they call “pacesetter” products.  Essentially, it’s the best performing new product introductions from the prior year for consumer packaged goods, food and non-food.  Now, aside from the brand-specific details (e.g., “Love those Arnold Flat Breads!” or “Bud Light’s beer with lime flavor, who knew?!”), what’s interesting are the consumer behavior implications and trends.  Given that most new product launches fail, and that consumers – particularly in today’s economy – tend to purchase their known favorites, these trends are interesting indications of what’s sticking with consumers today.

So what’s grabbing consumers’ attention and share of wallet?

•    Known Equities – Line extensions and slight variations in products made consumers feel comfortable with their choices, for example, Campbell’s Select Harvest was #1, selling $201.8 million in better-for-you soup.

Continue reading …

Some might think a morning with 100 children all under the age of five is not their idea of a good time. However, if you add some new faces, a couple of Dr. Seuss books, and a funny hat you have a successful recipe for smiles and laughs.

On March 2nd Sigma Group’s Team Hercules proudly partnered with Read Across America.  We gladly celebrated the birthday of beloved children’s author Dr. Seuss by reading to several groups of children at the YMCA of Greater Bergen County.

Dana, our Associate Media Director, said it best when she noted her favorite part was, “Captivating the children’s attention and taking their imaginations for a wild ride through storytelling.”  With Dana manning the ship the children were indeed treated to quite a ride.  She spent over an hour reading story after story to a group of three-year-olds who sat with wide eyes and open mouths through it all.  Dana provided a voice for each character in her story and with an animation that rivaled even the most dramatic Disney character.

Continue reading …

What scares you?  What keeps you up at night, and nags at the back of your consciousness?  There are few things that frighten me, one of them being that I have stopped learning and, like old bread, have gotten stale.

Can you imagine waking up one day to discover that your capacity to take in new knowledge has ended?  That everything you are going to learn has already happened and that your brain, now filled to capacity, was blinking “hard drive full”?  It can happen.  I have experienced it.

One thing that occurs when you are the custodian of a marketing budget is that everyone wants to meet with you.  If you allowed every new vendor to come in for a pitch, you could literally spend every day watching Power Point slides.  To better manage your time you set up protocols and processes–your staff and agencies screen new opportunities and vendors and only highlight those that they feel are right and likely to interest you.  This frees you up to focus on running your marketing programs, driving your business, and managing your time. Continue reading …

In 2009 we saw marketers everywhere seeking out one-to-one connections with their customers. The world of “mass” seemed a far-off reach in a world pressed for ROI, leads and conversion. But what was most interesting to watch in 2009 was the up-rise of technology and new channels, once only used by a small portion of the market, gaining scale and turning consumers from passive brand observers to active participants responsible for shaping brands and extending the marketing dollar. A “new mass” market approach unfolded in a big way that forced even the most traditional brands to take note and take the plunge. Once upon a time, a satisfied or unsatisfied customer would tell their close circle of family and friends if they loved or hated a brand. Now that same customer can tell the whole world in seconds–it’s mass marketing turbocharged. Pretty exciting stuff. Continue reading …

John Battelle shares his insights and offers suggestions on Social Media Marketing.

Related posts:
All Media Is Social. Now What? by Fuel for Thought

John Battelle & The Conversation Economy by C. B. Whittemore

Last week, marketers from all around the tri-state area converged in New Jersey at our Fuel for Thought conference to learn, share experiences and develop ideas to get a handle on social media marketing.  There’s a lot we covered/learned from each session and we’ll be sharing key highlights and materials here on our blog.

We’ll kick-off the first conference recap with John Battelle’s (CEO/Founder, Federated Media) keynote on “All Media is Social.  Now What?”  John’s keynote was brilliantly right-on-topic to get us all kindling new ideas.  Here are four key areas he covered:

1.  The Rise of Conversational Marketing: First we declared our intentions (what we want) through search.  Then we declared our relations (social graph — who we are as defined by how we are connected to other people) on sites like Facebook.  Finally, during the past year we declared our utterances (what we are doing, what we are interested in, etc.) on sites like Twitter.  When you put all these declarations together — intention, relations and utterances, you have an economy of conversations. Continue reading …