A Vote for Comedy in B2B Social Media

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I had the pleasure of meeting Paul Gillin at the Inbound Marketing Summit this month in Foxboro, MA.   He was interested in a series of YouTube comedy videos  “Mainframe: The Art of the Sale,” and wrote a nice article about them.

A notes from behind the scenes:

The question I get most often about these is “how did you get these approved at a big corporation?’

By starting small.  The first comedy I produced at IBM was at the end of 2004, and it was internal only — for a sales meeting — which kept the risk very low.  I kept the cost low by asking one of my best friends, Scott Teems, a director, to help me for $400.   The video was a hit, I was asked to create a sequel, and was able to pay Scott a nice tip.

Advertising Age: IBM’s Zany Viral Video Chief

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Earlier this week AdAge reported on the case study I discussed on the use of humor in corporate web video.  I showed a few clips including one from our Smarter Planet campaign.  “Mainframe: The Art of the Sale” earned some great press coverage.  The San Francisco Chronicle blog “What are They Drinking in Armonk,” ZDNet compared it favorably against Microsoft’s broadcast ads with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates, industry luminary James Governor blogged “Selling big iron the David Brent way,” and Comedy Central selected it as a finalist in its Test Pilot’s contest.

In Life, There are Two Types of People: Farmers and Ranchers….

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Two years after posting the “Art of the Sale” series on YouTube, it continues to receive coverage. ZDNet compared it favorably to Jerry Seinfeld’s Microsoft ads, and New York Times contributor Geoffrey James wrote,

“These six short videos provide as good an education about how B2B sales is actually practiced in real life as you’d get out of a hundred hours of expensive sales training. Just watch them. Trust me.”

The series was selected as Comedy Central’s “Staff Favorite.”  Watch the first three episodes here: