The YouTube Generation Hits Jackpot

All you young-and-fabulous are in agreement that YouTube is fantastic, right? Owned by Google, it has 20 million users in Britain, making the BBC’s 6.5 million viewers seem small-fry in comparison.

For a handful of young entrepreneurs-turned-tycoons, YouTube just got a lot better. The latest craze to sweep America is headed for our shores. The ‘haul video’, also known as ‘vlogging’ (video-blogging) involves young girls showing off the results of their shopping sprees and uploading the videos to the site. The craze soon took off; as it stands there are 110,000 haul videos on the Tube, some with tens of millions of hits. How are they cashing-in from the phenomenon? Because brands are falling over one another to offer the girls with the most followers sponsorship offers, product deals and magazine spreads.

The vlogging-frenzy was started by sisters Blair and Elle Fowler, from Tennessee. They have achieved celeb-status in the video-haul world, and their videos have been viewed over 75 million times. It must help that Blair is particularly stunning; your stereotypical all-American teen. On her blog Blair describes herself as “just a girl who loves anything makeup, fashion, beauty, pink, or juicy!” It is easy to judge the sisters for their bimbo-esque qualities and their obscenely materialistic attitudes, but they are certainly no fools. At age 16 and 21 they have earned enough through their haul videos to feed a small country. Their popularity is increased by their claim that they genuinely purchase the haul items themselves, without being compensated by brands for promoting their products.



Some of these vloggers, such as Blair, are ‘successful’ enough in their hits that they are approached to join the YouTube Partner Program: Shihir Mehrotra, director of Product Management at YouTube, trawls the site in search of those who have cultivated a particularly high number of followers. Once they become partner they are paid to make their haul videos and receive a percentage of the revenue brought in by the advertisements. Mehrota reveals that “several…are making six figures” annually from the Partner Program. He also states that “some haul videos…compare to major cable channels in views”, which reveals the scale of this new craze.

Not everyone is impressed by the latest YouTube phenomenon. Those old enough to be breathing when Elvis was still alive complain that they cannot keep up with the changing face of social media. In the words of my own father (age 53), “I find Facebook cringe, and what do you call it? TwitTube? It’s even worse”. However, it is those who are whole-heartedly jumping on the social media bandwagon that are cashing in.

Hold on tight, older generations, you’re in for one hell of a ride…

by Christy Thatcher

New Exciting Year

Right now we are touring the country for our new client Brylcreem, check us out at key shopping centres around the country from this Saturday.

We're international with Mates in the UK, Poland and Hungry.

...and we are wrapping up our fab work with A&L, check out our latest mcfly video on YouTube:)

Hard workers get a wee treat, if you can call it that

The team have being doing the most amazing job. As a bit of a thank you we took them off to have their heads cut off, be hung and generally have the fear of wax work rippers and flickering light fires put into them.

Rocking the house

Yesterday saw us presenting at the Haymarket Youth Conference with our lovely client Marian from A&L. It was so much better than the frankly rubbish Haymarket Student Conference.

We chatted about our A&L campaign and give some top tips on how to really get under the skin of young people.

We've had a little visit from a Bullet Babe

The power of You Tube

Load's of video posts on YouTube for our recent Lynx Fever activity, I wonder why.... I just found this one on You Tube.

Moon - simply go and see it

Go to see it at Curzon Soho

Fresh Fruit Revitalises Team

I've just had the most marvelous plate of fresh fruit. It's transformed my afternoon!

James

mysterious hands....

Have you seen these????

What are they for, who is behind them? What can we they mean?

Get yourself down to SE1 and see for yourself.

James

A-hum

By God after Ashley's recent post regarding the i-Tunes festival I felt compelled to attend one for myself. So Ashley and I ventured out to A-ha. Now whilst not quite as new to the music scene as Mumford & Sons you'd hope that old faithfuls A-ha would titillate the audience of 30-35 year olds with solid hits.

Sadly this was not the case. A-ha had the stage presence of a corpse and the rapport of arch enemies. As a result even the now 30 year old women blinded by teen infatuation with lead singer Morton could not "get into" these i-Tunes.

My conclusion, A-ha are shit live. Fact.

Denise Van Outen announced as A&L's second celebrity mentor!

We recently announced Denise Van Outen as Alliance & Leicester's second celebrity mentor for A&L's 'Inspired Choice' campaign.

We are really excited to have Denise working with us and she joins Danny Cipriani's quest to inspire young adults.

The master class will be taking place on 25th September so check out the Premier 21 website to find out more info http://www.prem21.co.uk/

We will also be announcing our very exciting third and final celebrity mentor later in the year.

Lounge Trendspotters

One of our 8,000 peer network was recently featured in the August issue of Bliss.

Danny Cipriani to host A&L Sport Master Class

The last few months have seen The Lounge working extremely hard with Alliance & Leicester in securing some top talent for this years 'Inspired Choice' campaign.

England and Wasps rugby player, Danny Cipriani has been named as the first celebrity mentor for 2009 and he will be holding a sports master class for 21 lucky account holders in July. It's all very exciting and over the past couple of weeks we have been extremely busy filming his podcast, launching the campaign and talking to lots of media....

We'll be announcing the next celebrity mentor very soon so watch this space.

For more information check out http://www.prem21.co.uk/

Marketing To Students in Associate with The Lounge

Yesterday was our Marketing & The Lounge student conference down at The Barbican. We presented A Day In The Life of students.

We'd love to share this with you. So please get in touch if you want to see our lovely presentation in the flesh.

Mouse in da House

I'm proud to say that Kate managed to first entice and then kill a mouse through a sheer mountain of tat under her desk. Miss Thurlwell had the largest collection of bags, shoes, hats, and other items that man has ever seen stuffed under her desk. Luckily Kate's tat and the dead mouse have now been removed.

< half decomposed mouse. Pen lid for scale.

New Stationary Arrives

Clarity is key

We believe that it is much stronger to have one clear single minded thought routed in strategic thinking than 3 creative ideas.

Roll on pitch!

New for 2009

Hello peeps,

We at the Lounge are running a competition for the best art work of my face. So far we have had just one entry but we'd love more.

What's stopping you?

Fresh Business Thinking Article

Our fist thought would be that the economic climate should not genuinely effect how well one medium performs at reaching the right audience versus another. The right medium should be the right medium. What I hope this new economic environment will do is to get marketers to reappraise their “traditional” marketing mix and genuinely question the value of a TV ad or print ad in connecting with their core consumer. The Lounge specialise in connecting with under 35’s and for this audience we are often surprised at just how much money is spend on traditional channels at the expense at more targeted ones.

We believe that out of home, brand experience and outdoor, is significantly more effective at engaging this audience than either print or TV. In absolute terms you may see a lower reach however you will get significantly more engagement and therefore effectiveness from these “non-traditional” routes. These routes when combined with other channels such as digital will get your clients much more bang for their buck.
The key element that is going to effect how well your brand engages with your audience is how well you understand them. Brands that actually invest in smart marketing, marketing that is targeted genuinely to the needs of their consumer, will see a big difference in this economic environment. Non-traditional routes enable more subtlety, and enable a much more tailored solution therefore, if you employing smart marketing then the non-traditional channels will perform better for you. If you are just grinding out the usual parp then best of luck to you.

Overheard New Colloquialism

I was in a funky bar the other day. It was packed, buzzing with people, and as you sometimes do I suddenly honed in on a conversation. Two interesting looking individuals were chatting about things when one remarked "I like the fact it's not too Crunchy in here". Their acquaintance was unfamiliar with the term and asked what they meant by "Crunchy". "Oh, credit crunchy, as in if a place is empty it's Crunchy, this place is packed so not to Crunchy".

Made me think, is this an interesting opportunity for Cadbury? Check it out. Bitesize Credit Crunchies!


Nice.

Merry Christmas