Jackie Huba, from Church
of the Customer Blog, made a great point about online video sharing today. She was marveling at how Fritz Grobe and
Stephen Voltz, the creators of the Diet Coke and Mentos videos, were upset that
their revenue has been reduced because of unauthorized copies.

“YouTube, Google
Video, Revver
and other video sharing sites act as fast-moving distribution networks world
wide for advertising… Videos on them are the new 30-second ads.”
(Emphasis added)

The video was simply a
tool to distinguish themselves from everyone else in the crowd. The fact that it made the authors $25K is
really beside the point. The victory, as
Jackie put it, was “defeat[ing] the biggest villain of them all: obscurity”.  

The question they need to
ask themselves now is what are they going to do with their fame before it
dissipates?

Until they build on this
in some way, the only real winners are Diet Coke and Mentos!

(Side note:  If YouTube can make it so easy that even I can embed a video in a post – watch out – the sky’s the limit for them!)

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