As a professional who depends on equipment for a living, you simply cannot afford to check in your gear as regular luggage (although I do advice you to use normal suitcases rather than flight cases, as the latter only acts as an invitation to thieves and thugs). If you arrive at your destination and have no equipment, you may as well turn around – no gear, no job, it’s as simple as that. Of course, it all depends on how much you bring along. However, I always carry-on a trolley with the equipment that will enable me to shoot no matter what – even if the other luggage gets delayed, damaged or lost. For this, I use a ThinkTank Photo Airport International, which meets all the maximum specs for carry-on luggage, is sturdy like hell and safely protects the gear inside.This is a topic that is not easy to find out, although Philip Bloom has devoted a living post to it on his blog.

In June of this year, I travelled to Mallorca for the DSLR Masterclass. I flew with Transavia, a subsidiary airline from KLM Air France. I had flown to several destinations with KLM before and bringing my cameras on-board as carry on luggage was never really much of a problem. However, being a low-cost carrier, Transavia has much more strict policies in regards to carry-on luggage, although they did recently relax limits on carry-on. As I could not find anything on their website about a special arrangement for media and their call center only referred to existing policies, I ended up writing a complaint through their website.

Days before my flight, I received a phone call from Transavia indicating that they would make special arrangements for me – great news. Although they did have to check their system at the check-in counter at Schiphol Airport, the flight went without a glitch.

Today, this was followed-up by a phone call from Transavia to inform me how the procedure for media works. It comes down to the following – you can check-in your equipment with insurance at a premium or bring it as carry-on at reasonable costs (Eur 40 per extra carry-on bag, which has to fit in the compartment and not be top-heavy).

This is the procedure at Transavia: what you need to do when you booked your flight, is use their contact form on their website to request an SSR, or Special Service Request. If you only book a few days in advance, it’s best policy to call their service desk and ask for permission. Transavia uses the same policy as KLM, although I have not figured out how to make arrangements beforehand.

To be continued.

InterbrandFirst, let’s look at the financial institutions:

Rank
2009	2008	Brand		% change
22	15		American Express	-32
32	27		HSBC	-20
36	19		Citi Bank	-49
37	37		JP Morgan	-11
38	38		Goldman Sachs	-10
53	55		Axa	-7
57	42		Morgan Stanley	-26
72	41		UBS	-50
81	82		Allianz	-5
94	100		Visa	-5

Financial Services: integrity as brand differentiator

Never before has the value of brands eroded as fast as it did in 2008-2009. “As a group, financial services brands have lost a third of their value in a matter of months”, writes Interbrand. As can be concluded from the above ranking, UBS (-31 positions), Citi Bank (-17) and Morgan Stanley (-15) suffered the most in Interbrand’s Top 100.

Brands are all about trust, which is was the factor shaken the most as a result of the financial crisis. So what are brands in the financial sector to do to regain consumer trust? “Future financial leaders will still provide the same types of service, but deliver them in a more consistent and thoughtful manner – and always with integrity. This, in the new world, will be the real differentiator”, concludes Interbrand.

Automotive in decline

Along with the financial institutions, the automotive sector is confronted with changing consumer perception – and, ultimately consumer demand. New demand for cars can be summed up as: smaller, greener and more efficient. The days of the gasoline-gulping V8s and V10s are gone, never to return. As the world approaches peak oil, the need for alternative energy sources will continue to grow. Automotive brands have to respond to that new reality – or suffer the consequences. One of those clear victims is Harley Davidson, which saw its brand value plunge by 43%. As a not-so-environmental-friendly brand that relies heavily on its strong heritage, it’s not easy to re-invent. Brands who have established a more innovative image over the years, suffer the least: Hyundai (-5%), Honda (-7%) and Toyota (-8%). Also in ts report, Interbrand included an interesting picture of the demise of the Ford brand since 2000, which indicates that Ford saw its brand value decline from $35 billion to $7 billion.

Media warning: here comes Google

In record time, Google has risen to the top of the Interbrand chart. In 2009, Google now commands a number 7 position, with a brand value increase of 25%. “The common theme is low price and high functionality with added transparency,” Interbrand writes. These should be dire lessons for media companies. Content still is king, but the source of information is rapidly shifting from being centralised (the media) to being decentralised (with the help of all the technology and services Google provides).

Interbrand states: “The media sector landscape is being redefined by non-traditional players, and is facing pressure from all sides. Technology companies such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook are entering the conten creation and delivery arenas and giving users the power to dictate their means of media formation and consumption, threatening to render the old media brands obsolete.”

Source: Interbrand site & magazine

Before I begin this post, perhaps it is necessary to explain the difference between YouTube branded versus partner channels. The key difference is the way Google makes money on them. Partner channels have a rev-share between Google and the content owner on advertising placed in and around the content. Only media companies and users with original and popular content are eligible to become part of YouTube’s partner program. Branded channels, on the other hand, are paid-for positions listed under the section sponsors.

Currently, brands can set up a branded channel (or brand channel, as Google calls it) on YouTube in return for a certain commitment in ad spend: in most European markets the minimum is 25k for a brand channel with default templates and 60k for a contest channel. This commitment means that the advertiser gets an identical budget in AdWords (YouTube + Google content network) or buys at rate card (YouTube only). Underlying links in the display ads are required to link back to the channel. For more detail, read my previous post on branded versus partner channels.

Monetizing YouTube

As we all know, Google is not making money on YouTube, yet. Although things are picking up, there is still much more room for improvement. Therefore, here is a list of suggestions that Google should seriously consider if they want to monetize YouTube:

Brand channels as a separate product

Although the current method of linking brand channels to ad spend is a way of driving traffic to the channel (and selling more ads on YouTube), brand owners do not pay directly for the pleasure of having a brand channel. Being on YouTube for users is like eating a bag of potatoe chips – you can’t just eat one. Given the right video content, there is a lot of value for brands and media owners in having that expanded ‘More from this channel’-box. Value they currently do not pay directly for. Just the ads that drive some traffic. So Google should start by placing value where it is generated – the content and the channel, not merely the required ads. I’ll bet YouTube can get more brands and media owners to commit a lower fixed annual fee (say 5-10k) than having to commit 25 or 60k in ad spend. Once a successful channel exists, brands and media owners tend to integrate it with multiple campaigns.

Brand channels as a conversion tool

Many brands and media owners ask me how much traffic a YouTube channel will generate. Either towards their own site or that of a trade marketing partner. Given the current choice between a partner and a brand channel, neither seems to be a perfect fit for these types of goals. Aside from a direct link inside the video description, there is no method of driving users directly from the video to a next stage in the  sales funnel. That is, from a brand channel. With partner channels, you can buy in-video advertising positions – but not exclusively. Brands want to entice audiences with a great branding message on YouTube first and subsequently persuade them to visit their site.

Example: a video that explains what you can do with your Blackberry, with an overlay ad to buy the phone in Vodafone’s e-shop. Other media owners want to use YouTube for generating views and – exclusively – drive traffic to a set of trade marketing partners. For example, a producer of fitness videos wants to direct traffic to sites of gyms.

Since Google does not place advertising around or on top of brand channel content, enabling these channel owners could generate additional revenue. Channel owners should be allowed to assign ads to specific videos (with DART), or allow a sub-set of specific AdWords users (i.e. their trade marketing partners) to bid on the videos. This way, YouTube becomes more than a way to generate views: a conversion tool.

Global branding, local marketing

Channel names are currently available on a ‘first come, first serve’-basis. Unless as a brand you have not paid attention, it is a good thing to sign up on YouTube with your brand name, even if you are not using it right away. Although Google seems to be respecting trademark laws, it is always better to be safe than lawyer-y. Provided that you have the channel (and signed up correctly, see point x) on YouTube, you cannot use a single channel for local marketing purposes. True, YouTube offers possibilities to put a geo-lock on content, thus making it impossible for users outside certain geographic locations to see both the channel and its videos (see image below).

YouTube Geo-block settings: click for large image

If you have a global brand, say Philips or T-Mobile, you cannot show audiences different versions of your channel and its content. Instead, brands have to come up with silly names for multiple channels, as was the case in the recent ‘Bravia in Motion’-campaign for Sony: aside from the illegible main English channel braviainmotion, Sony created local translations for France (braviainmotionfr), Germany (braviainmotionde), Poland (braviainmotionpo), Russia (braviainmotionru), Spain (braviainmotiones) and The Netherlands (braviainmotionnl). Not much branding going on here. Google could service brands like Sony better by showing people different designs and localised video content based their ‘gl’ and ‘hl’ settings. For example, Youtube.nl/braviainmotion re-directs to http://www.youtube.com/braviainmotion?gl=NL&hl=nl.

Enable name changes

As made clear from the example of braviainmotion, it is important to pay attention to how you register on YouTube. Once registered, you cannot change it. According to research from TubeMogul, properly used metadata form a major part of the success in video marketing. This includes the channel name. If the people behind braviainmotion would have paid attention, they would have registered as BraviaInMotion instead. This improves instant legibility and thus leads to better branding in YouTube search results. Since mistakes are only human, YouTube should allow those who made them to correct them – especially those who pay to have their brands featured on YouTube.

Choose your own thumbnails

With reference to the same ‘secret’ formula from TubeMogul, thumbnails are a big thing in YouTube. By default, YouTube offers a set of three thumbnails. If you’re unlucky neither of them accurately describe what the video is about or they contain heavy movement. Even though their are ways to trick the system by editing in images at specific times in the video, paying customers should be allowed to upload a thumbnail of their own choosing. A number of partner channels are already allowed to do so, so this should be an easy change for YouTube to implement on brand channels.

External design hosting

Upon realising their channel for the first time, brand channel owners can choose to customize their channel with an animated gif as background image or choose from a default set of flash-enabled templates for more advanced channel features and design. For example the LG Channel (ExperienceLG) features a menu structure inside the video player, while T-Mobile’s Lifesforsharing channel includes even more interactive features.

Although the background image may be hosted on external sites, the set of interactive flash-templates are hosted on YouTube’s servers. This makes it difficult for channel owners to customize their brand channel based on current campaigns, unless they have to go through the trouble of setting up a new design with YouTube’s creative partners. Other social networks, such as Hyves, allow advertisers and their agencies to manage their own i-frames from external servers. They simply provide space (or canvas as they call it) to do your creative thing.

Allow special characters in channel names

Further to the point 4, legibility is indeed an issue. For a special category of brands this is even more true than others. For example T-Mobile, Coca-Cola, Mercedes-Benz, M&M’s, Gall & Gall and Johnson & Johnson. Now this is a tricky issue, since special characters are generally used for programming purposes. For example, YouTube uses ‘&’ and ‘+’ frequently inside their search queries. It is unclear whether this is true for the dash sign. Perhaps YouTube could allow for brand owners to register their channel name in a certain way – e.g. CocaCola, but have it presented in search results as being from Coca-Cola.

That’s all, folks. Hopefully someone at YouTube is reading this. By implementing some of these suggestions, Google will be able to lose less and less money on YouTube.