It’s been a few weeks since our last edition of the Overflow podcast, partly due to vacations but also because of attending the NASFT 2009 Fancy Food Show in NYC, on behalf of our client Wicked Jack’s Tavern. This is the third year that we have attended, and each time we get even more excited about the opportunities that we can present to this brand.
As usual we get great accolades for the work that we have done in developing the graphics and brand platform, so that is of great encouragement to us. It’s even greater to receive the compliments face to face with actual food industry professionals.
However, this year we really felt that the key message that we wanted to deliver to this audience was how to use social media to attract attention and to build an audience. We used search of twitter to connect with others at this massive event (last year we attempted and there was very little activity), and following up on our own advice regarding the “Offline Ask” we placed business cards with a request to join the Wicked Jacks Facebook Fan Page all around the booth.
What turned out to be the best promotion we did revolved around something that we continually stress, the development of quality content and the tool that we used to create that content was the Flip Camera.
We documented the show from the perspective of The Wicked Jacks Tavern booth, with the help of Kristen Lewis we presented the three days of activity plus some added elements to keep the viewer involved.
It is important to note that the use of a Flip camera lends itself to getting spontaneous shots and not the storyboarded productions that most big companies are used to getting. Since this is an affordable way to get high quality footage, it will allow for an honest representation of whatever your brand message is, no matter what size of a budget you have.
On a nightly basis we would return to the hotel to edit down the parts that were inconsequential and to make it more appealing from an entertainment perspective, then we would post it to YouTube and to the Wicked Jacks Tavern blog. With a Tweet in the morning we would attract attention to the video as well as the trade show booth.
Kristen was even astute enough to pick up on an odd behavior from the people who were sampling rum cake, and so it was documented on the day two video. This is actually how it happened!
Did you catch the scene where Cameron goes in pursuit of the Baconnaise booth? The entire concept of using new media and social media to launch a brand is where we are intending on taking the folks at Wicked Jacks.
You can also see the art elements that Cameron integrates into the videos which are so necessary for keeping a viewer interested. The building itself was visually interesting and you might also notice some of the long shots contained motion and closeups of extraordinary quality, even though the camera is as small as a cell phone!
Note that we encountered a booth issue that we believe hurt our traffic flow, so in the spirit of a totally transparent Fancy Food Show experience, we document our displeasure and we ended up moving the booth.
Day three is always interesting because it becomes the “grab every sample you can!” day which you can see documented quite nicely by Kristen and Cameron.
It is interesting to see people respond to the site of a Flip camera. Some don’t actually realize that it is a video, however as more and more of these devices and iPhone video cameras become ubiquitous, everyone will understand when they are being captured in digital bits. Storytelling and documentary will never be the same.
Finally, these videos are now online, tagged accordingly, getting indexed and will become evergreen content that will become part of the search results for future exhibitors and attendees at the show. It will be great to hear from folks next year that they have seen our videos.
We should also point out that on this podcast we also briefly touch upon the results that our client Cathinka Chandler has seen from a product video going viral on YouTube. The details can be found in this post on The Kush Report.
Have you produced any videos? What types of content are you finding compelling? Let us know in the comments what you are doing these days.
The opening and closing theme for the Overflow Podcast is called The Information Age, by Anthony Fiumano and you can find it at the Podsafe Music Network.
You can subscribe to The Overflow Podcast directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.
