Everywhere you look, there is no shortage of hype about how Web 2.0 is revolutionizing the marketing and promotional world. I’m not a skeptic of the potential of social media, networking, user generated video and blogs, but wonder why there seems to be a disconnect between the Web 2.0 and Web 1.0 worlds.

The real opportunity for capitalizing on the power of this new medium is through the integration of conversation and buzz (Web 2.0) with the traditional role of the web, providing information and marketing prose (Web 1.0).

But when you look at some of the most popular YouTube videos of 2007, some of these companies really blew their chance to take their 2.0 efforts to the next level by not integrating their creativity with conventional 1.0 promotion. And, it appears that the marketing departments of their competitors were also asleep at the wheel.

Here are a couple examples:

1. The Cadbury Gorilla Drummer video has received almost 1 million views. Go toTechnorati and you’ll see many blog entries praising the video. But look over to the right where the Google sponsored links are and you’ll not see a Cadbury ad.Searching for any online press releases related to the Gorilla playing drums again produces no listings. And on the Cadbury site, there’s no mention of the video. Search on “gorilla playing drums” in Google returns the YouTube page, but wouldn’t it be perhaps even more effective if Cadbury had an optimized page that ranked well under that search phrase … or if Cadbury had even bid on the phrase?
   “Buzz” grade: A
   Complete Marketing grade: F
2. The Ray-Ban Catch Sunglasses video has received over 3 million views. Unlike Cadbury, though the Ray-Ban folks carry through the Wow of the video. For instance, at the end of the video, the words “Never hide” are scrawled on a Honda Civic. Go to the Ray-Ban web site, and you”ll see that same slogan prominently displayed. And on their site, you”ll find a series of videos on their site supporting the same theme as the catch sunglasses video. Type in the phrase “catch sunglasses” into Google, though, and you won’t find any PPC ads from Ray-Ban or their dealers. On the other hand, typing in their slogan, “Never hide”, does at least return a link to their corporate site.
   “Buzz” grade: A
   Complete Marketing grade: C
3. The “Blendtec – Will it Blend?” series of videos on YouTube have been particularly popular, with the latest iPhone episode garnering over 3 ½ million views. And kudos to Blendtec – go to their home page, and you’ll see prominently displayed a button that takes the visitor to all of the “Will it Blend?” videos. In addition, they even sell CD’s of the video series on their site. And typing, “Will it blend” into Google produces a sponsored listing to the BlendTec site. They have even purchased the domain willitblend.com, which shows as the number one listing.Finally, they’ve incorporated their name into the title of the video series, so there’s no mistaken who they are. However, why have Blendtec dealers not taken advantage of this great exposure? There are no Blendtec dealers bidding on this keyword phrase.
   “Buzz” grade: A
   Complete Marketing grade: A (if we don’t count the missed opportunities for Blendtec dealers)

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