The Xerox Channel on YouTube

Did anyone else notice that President Obama used YouTube to address the nation on the economic plan? Or that the Republicans posted their response on YouTube? Obama's video got 800,000 hits as of 9:15 am on Monday. Consider what 800,000 viewers would cost through a regular media buy. Consider what a neat metric how many people choose to view a video.

What a nice way to get the information PR needs without paying a cent.

If it's managed correctly, I bet that we can find some of our "excessed" employees to manage this thing from their homes. With a base comp and an upside based on results measured by number of hits.

So...suppose we did this:

1. Find the 5 most creative people at our agency.
2. Get them to do some very cool 2 minute videos about Xerox, Xeroids, PARC, Dubai, Rochester, MFPs, Igens, etc.etc.
3. Create the Xerox channel at YouTube.
4. Then use the deep connections we've made to creatives to get them to do the same thing.
5. Have a contest for college student designers for videos that tell the story that:

Yesterday, Xerox = Copy. Today, Xerox = Print and Scan. Anywhere.
as in . . . Google it. Find it. Xerox it. Anywhere.

6. And have everyone upload videos to the Xerox Channel on You Tube.

When PC to TV screen finally gets settled, we'll be ready with a massive library of videos. If they are cool enough, people will watch them for fun. And people will start to understand how really cool we are.

Meanwhile stop trying to fight our greatest brand advantage. Forget about the "registered", "copyright", "do not use this name under penalty of blablabla".

It could save us some money and wasted focus for our lawyers. Plus we could probably pay the 5 most creative ad agency folks a fraction of what the Agency costs. It might be a way to get our SG&A down to 16+%, without having to lose so many valuable people.

Plus in the era of Obama, imagine the free press coverage we would get. PR anyone?