NYTimes discovers Happy Joel
My Water Cooler Loves to Dance All Night by happyjoel.
Congratulations to Joel Moss Levinson (Happy Joel) for the slightly odd yet glowing profile in the NYTimes: Finding a Gold Mine in Digital Ditties. Joel, if you haven’t met his videos, is a one-man wrecking crew of video contests. He sings. He wins.
Joel Moss Levinson always knew he had a calling in life. But it took cheap video cameras, YouTube and some desperate corporations to show him what it was.
Among Mr. Levinson’s entries were YouTube videos about how much he loved Israel, above, and his water cooler.
Mr. Levinson’s skill is turning out homemade corporate commercials — what advertisers call a form of “user-generated content.” Companies, frantic to connect with younger consumers, sponsor contests seeking these commercials to find new ways to advertise their products, often attracting hundreds of entries and lots of attention.
See the ‘slightly odd’ part? “Desperate corporations.” “…frantic to connect with younger consumers,…” The tone of the article feels like it’s from the point of view of an observer who has dropped in on another planet and, returning home, is trying to find some way to explain the strange life observed.
Hey, NYTimes: It’s the end of 2008! More people watch videos on YouTube in an hour than visit your website in a day.
“User-generated content” is no longer a novelty act playing in the big leagues; the little brother of real content, just filling in until its older brother can come out and play.
It’s for real. It’s here to stay.
Tags:
Advertising, Contests, Happy Joel, Joel Moss Levinson, new york times, nytimes, user generated content, water cooler, youtube
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