The Sweet, Sticky Smell of Success

Do you know about Diet Coke and Mentos?

It's not the latest weight-loss craze. It's a Mr. Wizard science experiment gone berserk, and it's currently storming across the Internet video sites.

Here's the basics: Someone with way too much time on their hands discovered that if you drop a Mentos candy — you know, “The Freshmaker” — into a bottle of Diet Coke, you produce a geyser of soda that can shoot 20 or 30 feet into the air. And about 10 seconds after that first “Quest for Fire” discovery, someone else decided that all that pressure release needed an outlet on the Internet. The early pioneers in carbonated combustion were satisfied with still photos of gassy geyser eruptions.

But now there's video. Two guys in Maine have just posted a Web film of an orchestrated performance involving two guys in lab coats and goggles, 101 bottles of Diet Coke and 537 Mentos. In the space of about three minutes, and set to an audio score, these miscreants produce a minty-fresh monsoon that's worthy of the fountain display at Las Vegas' Bellagio.

The original video was posted to the Web site EepyBird.com, which offers code for embedding the video in a Web site but adds an exhortation that viewers please not post its videos to sites like YouTube and Google Video. We'll see how well that works, but two days after the video was released, I'm not giving it very good odds. Google Video contains 10 pages of Mentos-and-Coke footage, including a German entrant of a “Mentos Spritzbombe.” YouTube.com has at least 24 pages. Somebody's going to put this on the major Web channels sometime.

Obviously, we're in a golden age of science education similar to the one that followed the Sputnik launch in the '50s.

I mention all this not to lead you to waste 20 minutes of your time watching giggling teens deplete our stocks of sugar-free soft drinks — although admit it, you want to search for the videos, don't you? — but to make the point that attention must be paid to Web video. There's a river of multimedia content flowing under the surface on the Web, and as a marketer you can choose either to wade in and ride it or ignore it while your market position erodes, slowly and inevitably.

I just attended the Internet Retailer 2006 conference in Chicago, where I heard lots of speakers from multichannel retailers talk about plans and pilot projects to mount video on their sites. Why? Because people engage with it. When they're engaged, they stay on the site longer. Perhaps they add you to their bookmarks or forward you to their friends. And that gives you more opportunities to get your brand name and marketing message across, even to people who haven't been to your Web site yet.

Plumbing-fixture manufacturer Delta Faucet has also added video to its site to demonstrate repair techniques and, in a softer fashion, relate made-up stories of home-repair meltdowns. The idea is to reassure customers who may be researching their first DIY plumbing job that yes, it's scary and challenging, but other humans have swapped out spigots and survived.

Now, admittedly, a lot of these sites are relatively big-budget affairs launched by retailers who tend to be larger and more technically adept than average. For example, at press time QVC.com and HSN.com are testing video on their sites to capture those loyal viewers who don't want to miss a particular beauty product offer or computer sale. As far as I could tell, HSN was recording its video specifically for the Web, while QVC seemed to be repurposing material from its cable channel. Both are aware that consumers want to shift their viewing to suit their hours, not the TV networks' schedules; and both offered online guides to upcoming Web programs.

And what do you want to bet that the videos won't start showing up on Coke's or Mentos' Web sites?

No, you may not be able to pay Amazon.com and get Bill Maher to host a weekly Web show on your site interviewing hot authors. But I'm adamant that there's positively no reason why the Web video phenomenon has to be restricted to the big players. If anything, it's accustomed users to shaky handheld images and rock-bottom production values. All you need are an interesting story to tell and a spark of creativity.

And you can't tell me that droves of small Web marketers lack those two things. After all, one reason e-commerce has reached the heights it has — $211 billion this year, according to the latest estimates from Shop.org — is that it's served to level the playing field so that the little guys with specialty products can thrive in an economy that's becoming more brand-dominated every week.

Madison Avenue technique is much, much less important than knowing how to grab a visitor's interest, and small outfits actually may know more about doing that than their corporate competition. The Web favors the one-off and personal over the mass-mediated and general.

As for what kind of video to mount, well, that'll depend on your category. Stuff blowing up is the action-movie genre of Web video; but remember, documentaries are doing pretty well at the box office too, with herds flocking to see penguins march across the ice. Your customers might be more interested in seeing product demos or live testimonials from loyal purchasers. If you're selling cookware or garden products, go ahead and shoot them in use. The results may not get you posted to YouTube, but then maybe your market base isn't among YouTube's watchers.

Look, I write words for a living, so I hope there'll always be a place for text. But even I can't deny that I've gotten substantial chunks of my information from video in the form of TV. People react differently to movement and sound and some of them learn better. At least offer them their choice of informational medium.

Among Internet users, Web video is already here. It's time online marketers came to the same conclusion.

And now I'm off to buy a case of Pez and a pony keg of Mr. Pibb. It ain't science unless you can recreate the results.