PR and The good, the bad and the ugly

What is YouTube?

• Popular free videosharing website

• Anyone can post videos

• Anyone can view videos

A little history

• Founded in 2005 by Chad Hurley and Steve Chen

• Purchased by Google in 2006 ($1.65 billion US)

• 1 billion views a day

• Demographic 18-55, even male/female split

What’s it used for?

• For fun – cat tricks

• Videos for friends

• Entertainment

• Education

• Online soapbox

• PR: promoting a brand, product, getting a message out

Famous examples

• RCMP tasering Robert Dziekanski

• Susan Boyle: record 100 million hits in 9 days

• Obama campaign, including YouTube/CNN debates

• All new movies post trailers

PR nightmare?

• Canadian songwriter David Carroll gets even with United Airlines

• 7.8 million views

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

Domino’s Pizza

• What can happen when a couple of employees pull off a silly prank and post the results to YouTube

• http://www.break.com/usercontent/2009/4/Gross-Dominos-Pizza-704482.html

Domino’s Pizza

• Domino’s Pizza responds to the crisis

• President of the U.S. company posts apology to YouTube

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dem6eA7-A2I

Domino’s Pizza

• What are the lessons here?• Companies should monitor YouTube

and similar video-posting sites• Companies need to know what is

being posted about them• Fighting fire with fire: companies

should respond using the same format

• Be prepared to do own YouTube video

PR benefits

Many firms use YouTube for:

• Recruitment

• Advertisements

• Contests

• Commercials/PSA’s

• Awareness Campaigns

• Can monitor views