I made a claim in my last blog post “Stop Babies and Puppies“, that the AICP did not have their video on YouTube. Bad journalism by me – they’ll let anyone blog these days, won’t they‽ Who’s running the Internet anyway? And for that matter, why is Internet capitalized yet my wife is allowed to use it in Scrabble? Where was I? Ah yes. I said they did not have this clever video on YouTube, which is totally wrong. I didn’t actually go look at Youtube before making that claim. That was my bad and was pointed out to me by a very astute employee over at the AICP. I should have checked Youtube first, then I should have said this.

The AICP was smart enough to put the video on YouTube, after all that’s where the second most searches on the Internet are performed. But really it should have been linked on their site. Or am I expected to go hunt down the video if I want to share it? That’s not really how sharing happens on the Internet. For most of us we click a button – share this on ________ (insert FB, Twitter, etc.), and BAM, it’s up. Clearly people are making it to their site, but how? I’d love to know this stat actually. AICP, if you want to e-mail me back with how many hits you’re getting on stopbabiesandpuppies.com and where they’re coming from, that’d be a hoot! There, I said it.

So let me try to make this more understandable. If you go to stopbabiesandpuppies.com you can watch their video. If you then want to share that video with your friends, you have to tweet or Facebook a message that reads something like “Hey, there’s a really funny video over at Stop Babies and Puppies dot com, you should all head over there to watch the funny video that I am talking about – then you should come back to Twitter or Facebook or wherever you are reading this message and post that link to your friends who can then go watch the video over there too!” OR, you could search Youtube like I didn’t do, and see if they have the video and then share it from there. It’s just not reasonable to think that anyone is going to go hunt down a video they just watched on your site – or that someone is going to follow a link away from Facebook to watch a video when they’re watching videos there all day.

If a big site like boingboing or Huffington Post pick this video up then it’s smooth sailing, don’t even worry about traction. But that video needs to be embeddable from everywhere, especially your site.

I want to make something clear. I am in no way putting down the AICP, they are spreading a hilarious campaign. I think it comes down to the site itself. I’ve been told that this site was done in Flex. Yeah, I don’t really know what that is either, but my understanding is that it’s Flex that makes it so the URL up top doesn’t change, thus I can’t send any specific links, including the video.

AICP, a few more notes now that I have your attention:
1) Good job on the Facebook link at the bottom of your site. When I get to your Facebook fan page, I should be able to watch the video. May I suggest that you upload your video to Facebook as well? You have 643 fans who would (probably) gladly share that with all of their friends – that number = big.
2) You have someone very smart working over there on your team. Kristen tracked down my blog, got my contact info and sent me an e-mail. She’s on the ball. She’d be great in customer service, and outreach, and clearly deserves a raise – but needs a Twitter account.
Advertising is not new – advertising online is new and changing rapidly. That’s why this campaign is awesome, but has it’s online hiccups.