Along with amateur hip-hop, Super Bowl ad highlights and the simply adorable cat flushing the toilet with its paw, YouTube viewers might run across something unexpected: an advertising campaign by Western Union.
Corporate America is discovering YouTube and other “social media” as prime venues for reaching digitally aware prospective customers.
Douglas County-based Western Union is one of the latest entrants, recently unveiling a YouTube video campaign as part of its new marketing push.
“We asked ourselves how we could generate buzz and awareness of our brand through nontraditional methods,” said Gail Galuppo, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Western Union.
The answer was YouTube.
Analysts say using the video-sharing website and other social media such as MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn helps companies connect with tech-savvy consumers who have money to spend.
While the majority of YouTube’s content is posted and viewed for entertainment, commercial videos are on the rise, said media analyst Allen Weiner of Gartner Inc.
“The balance certainly tilts to consumer videos, but it’s been shifting in recent years from the low single digits to the high single digits for commercial uses,” Weiner said.
Dozens of companies have posted YouTube videos, including Bank of America, General Motors, Nike, Pepsi, Sony and Whole Foods.
Like anybody uploading a video of a practical joke or a family vacation, Western Union did so at no cost — choosing the free approach instead of buying a YouTube-branded channel that offers higher visibility and marketing-oriented features.
“It was remarkably affordable to produce and distribute the video” through YouTube, Galuppo said.
Western Union declined to disclose the cost of the video campaign but said it represented a fraction of 1 percent of its overall advertising and marketing budget.
The videos profile workers across the globe who have left their home countries to find better jobs and who use Western Union to send earnings back home.
Corporate presence in social media is not limited to commercial messages.
Newmont Mining recently partnered in the YouTube launch of an anti-corruption video under the auspices of the World Economic Forum’s Partnering Against Corruption Initiative.
Newmont chief executive Richard O’Brien was one of four corporate executives who appeared on the video to solicit ideas on ways to fight corruption.
YouTube, which was acquired in 2006 by Google for $1.7 billion, recently unveiled an auction- based advertising system, similar to Google’s, that promotes advertisers’ video clips alongside results from YouTube’s search engine.
Steve Raabe: 303-954-1948 or sraabe@denverpost.com
