Loyalty lessons from Lady Gaga

There's a lot marketers can learn from artist and musician Lady Gaga.

church of the customer, February 23, 2010 — At age 23, Lady Gaga has rocketed to global fame in less than two years. Playing piano at age 4 and New York nightclubs at 14, she recently broke Billboard's record as the first artist to have her first five singles reach number one. She's won two Grammys, and has sold 8 million albums and 15 million singles digitally worldwide. While her performance art-style stage shows and bizarre outfits have garnered much buzz, it's her loyalty marketing that may sustain her for years. Gaga is dedicated to her fans and clearly knows the elements of cultivating a community of evangelistic fans.

Obama to Host YouTube Forum

President Barack Obama will follow up his crucial State of the Union Address by fielding questions directly from the American public—via YouTube.

Mediaweek, January 27, 2010 — The president will sit down for an exclusive interview with YouTube some time next week, announced Google officials. And the questions that Obama will be asked will be derived straight from the YouTube community. During tomorrow’s (Jan. 27) State of the Union Address—which will be streamed live on YouTube’s Citizentube channel—viewers will be able to submit questions for the president.

Kodak Shoots For YouTube Consumer Connection

MediaPost Publications, November 3, 2009 — Many consumers may still think of Kodak as mainly an enabler of still images. But the company is becoming deeply involved in the Web's most popular site for moving pictures: YouTube.

Kodak has launched a branded YouTube channel, ForMom, featuring user-generated testimonials from real moms on topics ranging from parenting and cooking to health, beauty and exercise.

Time.com Looks For Cash In Social Net Real Estate

Time Tests Co-Branded Sponsorships

paidContent.org, August 31, 2009 — Time.com hopes to leverage the popularity of its Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages with advertisers by crafting co-branded sponsorships. Technology and engineering company Siemens is the first advertiser to try out Time.com’s “Stay Connected” program, which includes placement on the company’s social media outposts on those sites. The only social media site Time will be sharing revenue with is YouTube. John Cantarella, GM of Time.com, told paidContent, “The impressions in this campaign are on Time.com and we are only giving the sponsor a presence on TIME’s Facebook and Twitter pages—where it has 72,000 fans and about 1.4 million followers, respectively—as part of the overall campaign.”

Everybody Likes To Watch: 90% Of Young Adults Use Video-Sharing Sites

MediaPost Publications, July 29, 2009 — By mixing brain-eating aliens with the prospect of free network programming, Hulu's marketing efforts appear to be paying off as 35% of Web users now say they have viewed such content online.

By comparison, just 16% of Web users said they had watched or downloaded TV shows or movies in 2007, according to new data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

'United Breaks Guitars': Passenger's revenge video becomes a viral hit

United Airlines says it will meet with Canadian musician Dave Carroll to make restitution

Chicago Tribune, July 9, 2009 — Canadian musician Dave Carroll could have sung the blues after United Airlines workers at O'Hare International Airport smashed his guitar and the carrier refused to pick up the $1,200 cost to repair it.

Instead, he turned the experience into a witty ditty, "United Breaks Guitars," and scored an instant hit on YouTube, his first in a 16-year career. Posted on Monday, the video had been viewed nearly 150,000 times by Wednesday.

Google Tries Viral Campaign to Goose Interest in Chrome†

Pushes Its New Web Browser With 11 YouTube Videos After Low-Key Rollout

Advertising Age, April 29, 2009 — Why would Google take on Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla in the web-browser war and not try to win it? That question has been asked since Google ambled into the Safari-Explorer-Firefox derby last fall with its own entry called Chrome, but took a remarkably low-key approach to marketing it.

Disney’s TV Unit Will Make Short Videos Available on YouTube

New York Times, March 31, 2009 — Walt Disney’s television division became the latest media company to make a distribution deal with YouTube on Monday, saying that it would share short-form content with the world’s largest video Web site.

YouTube Videos Pull In Real Money

New York Times, December 10, 2008 — Making videos for YouTube — for three years a pastime for millions of Web surfers — is now a way to make a living.

One year after YouTube, the online video powerhouse, invited members to become “partners” and added advertising to their videos, the most successful users are earning six-figure incomes from the Web site. For some, like Michael Buckley, the self-taught host of a celebrity chatter show, filming funny videos is now a full-time job

MGM to Post Full Films on YouTube

New York Times, November 10, 2008 — YouTube is by far the world’s biggest stage for online video. But in some ways Hulu is stealing the show. With critical plaudits and advertising dollars flowing to Hulu, the popular online hub for television shows and feature films, YouTube finds itself in the unanticipated position of playing catch-up.