I’ve blogged in the past about linking offline TV campaigns with online search, there have been some success and some failures. The last week I’ve noticed a campaign by Stella Artois (Mother London the agency behind the ads) who’ve used a slightly different slant on the ‘search online’ technique.

Rather than asking viewers to search online, Stella Artois asked them to search on YouTube. Different to the easier ‘search online’ used in the past but an idea that could deliver a better conversion with less chance of the user ending up at the wrong result.

Visibility

To gain visibility Stella have a PPC and a number one ranking on the natural SERP for ‘recyclage de luxe’, the PPC also shows for related searches such as ‘stella advert’.

At the bottom of the 1st page is the video from YouTube. That should rank in the main SERP’s soon.

On YouTube they have a the number one spot for “recyclage de luxe”.

Execution of Natural SERP

So it seems like a well executed plan. Why? – the page was published before the TV ads started to run.

The web page appears to be first indexed on 09/08/09. Find to find this out search for the page with the option dates set between 09/08/09 and 09/08/09.

Having the page up early gives it time to achieve the ranking. In this case the search term in question ‘recyclage de luxe’ had no previous competition but getting the page up early ensures the number 1 position. It’s hard to tell if this was planned by Mother London.

The video was placed online later, November 22, 2009, so just before the TV ads started. Ranking on YouTube is slightly different to the natural SERP’s you don’t need to have the video live for long to get it ranking in the search results. It helps but as there is no competition on YouTube for ‘recyclage de luxe’ putting it on late worked.

The Results

Nothing so far on Google insights, there should be a spike in searches for ‘recyclage de luxe’.

On YouTube the main video has 3,164 views, a 4.5 out of 5 rating from a total of 26 ratings. From the 25 comments so far 10 are positive, 5 neutral and 10 negative, so split down the middle.

However one comment did sum up my first reaction to the campaign;

“got told about this but it was real hard to find. Its very cool”

Which may be due to having to remember ‘recyclage de luxe’ which is a French phrase. The ‘search online’ query needs to be something memorable and easy to spell. Past campaigns such as the Orange ‘I am’ or the Monsters V Aliens ‘MVA’ failed on too generic phrases but this campaign may fail due to the complexity of the ‘search online’ query.

Learning points to take from this campaign.

1. - Nice idea for search YouTube, this could diversify to Vimeo, Facebook, twitter etc
2. - Having the SEO page up early helps to get the ranking
3. - Use a range of key phrases for your PPC campaign, not just the ‘search online’ query
4. - Don’t ask the viewer to search for something too complicated e.g. a phrase in a foreign Language

It’s great to see in the past two weeks channel four have updated their catch up service from using windows DRM to using flash. Which means it now works on my mac which is great. Channel four being the nice fellows that they are even have a intro video saying sorry for the on demand service being delayed for mac users.

All I need now is Chrome, this year maybe?

It seems more and more tv commercials are now using the “Search for……” rather than giving out websites address. The latest is the 3D movie from Dreamwork’s Monsters Vs Aliens, I went to see the movie yesterday and have to say it was really good, especially with the 3D glasses.

Anyway, the TV advert this afternoon promoting the movie this afternoon ask the viewer to search for “MVA” which is quite precise. It’s working according to the stats from Google insight with a recent surge in traffic.

Amazingly this is the SERP you see searching for MVA.

So you get one PPC advert about the Monsters Vs Alien’s movie and the top organic spot is taken by www.mvaconsultancy.com. Nothing in the top ten is related to the movie. This type of campaign must be costing a fair amount of money for Dreamworks and maybe bringing a fair amount of traffic to www.mvaconsultancy.com.