Five questions for Matthew Yeomans, Co-Editor of YouTube Brandwatch Blog

Matthew Yeomans and Bernhard Warner, directors of Custom Communication, are the engines behind YouTube Brandwatch, a bookmark-worthy blog about how companies use YouTube and the effects those videos -- and the conversations surrounding them -- have on brands.

1. Why did you create the blog?

The blog grew out of a feature that we created for Social Media Influence, the conference and site we run. [Slate's] The Big Money liked the concept and invited us to turn the feature into a weekly blog/column.

2. What is Brandwatch's mission?

Brands spend millions each year managing their reputations and promoting their products using traditional media -- advertising and PR. However, the majority of major brands remain tone-deaf to the power and influence of a medium like YouTube despite the fact that it has a community of millions that interacts with it on a daily basis. The irony is that brands are having great difficulty getting consumers to sit through their 30-second spots on television while on YouTube vibrant communities have formed to discuss every creative detail that goes into the making of these ads. Advertisers ignore this feedback at their peril.

3. What generalizations can you make about the impact of online video on brands?

Online video about brands and the commentary that accompanies it is visceral and insightful into real people's perception of a brand (even if you have to wade through a lot of inane comments to get there). For the brands themselves, there's this very recent sensation that YouTube has become too important to ignore...never mind the the lack of control they have over how customers refer to them. From the poll results, it's evident that the public wants brands to be as sophisticated as they are. In other words, brands should be more daring and more creative with their advertising messages, and they should spare us the obvious gags.

4. What is the best use of online video by a brand to date, in your opinion?

Different brands use YouTube to great effect. For a small company like Blendtec, YouTube offered this amazing opportunity to tell an "extreme" narrative through video content. For a huge brand like T-Mobile, the "Dance" series of videos (which were accompanied by a TV advert and an advertising campaign on YouTube) offered an opportunity to show the online public that it understood how people like to share and celebrate common experiences. That said, we still have a soft spot for the "Where the Hell Is Matt?" videos...enabled by Cadbury's Stride Gum. We also like the brilliant editing in a longish, but much beloved video produced for the niche brand, Inspired Bicycles, that has amassed over 9 million viewers since April.

5. What do you think marketers don't get right often enough when it comes to using YouTube?

The marketers that use YouTube to the greatest effect are the ones who build it into their marketing strategy beforehand. It's exceedingly difficult to convey a compelling, entertaining, informative message in 30 seconds for a TV public with a limited attention span. On YouTube, marketers are now uploading the extended versions of their TV spots to provide the fuller story and to invite the public into a discourse. In effect, they want to know, "tell us what you think." That said, many marketers are still missing a big trick with this medium. They are putting the videos up, but providing so little detail about how it's made, who's in it, what's that music playing in the background. For now, the YouTube community is going in and filling in these holes in the detail, but we rarely hear from the marketers again after they post the ad. In effect, they are abandoning their most attentive followers. With our YouTube Brandwatch column, we're aiming to remind brands that we can have this conversation with or without your input.