Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Jim Ackerman, Founder of Ackermania Creative (Part 1)

A good marketing campaign is essential to the success of any business. Whether you’re selling a product or a service, if you don’t market it properly, it could go completely unnoticed. Veteran marketer, Jim Ackerman, founder of Ackermania Creative, sat down to talk with me about how he used his skills and experience and the popularity of YouTube to generate buzz about one of the sexiest products on the market today: a tongue cleaner.

Sramana Mitra: Hi, Jim. Let’s start with a little bit of background about what you do in your marketing agency.

Jim Ackerman: I’ve worked in the marketing business for about 27 years, in a variety of capacities. Our company, Ackermania Creative, was formed about a year and a half ago after some extraordinary success on YouTube to put together marketing campaigns that are a combination of awareness and direct response. That’s the best way to put it. The idea is to use YouTube to promote products and services for companies all over the country. We’ve had remarkable success in doing that. The most visible and noteworthy is that of Orabrush, which is a little $5 tongue cleaner that was invented by a fellow in the Greater Salt Lake City area in a town called Provo. He had no revenue and no real money to speak of. Using YouTube alone, he’s built a multimillion dollar company and is now selling his product in Walmart and CVS pharmacies and in about 40 countries around the world.

SM: Interesting. How did you connect with Orabrush? Tell us the story of how this relationship started. How did you convince him that this was the way to go?

JA: It was one of those fateful and provident experiences, I suppose. The man who had invented the Orabrush had tried for years to market it. He had put it in stores and had tried to market it online with no success whatsoever. Finally, in a last desperate attempt to promote this product, he took it to a marketing class as Brigham Young University and said, “Will people buy this product online?” The class came back and said, “Probably not. Only 8% of people would be interested in buying this kind of product online.” One of the students in the class, who is now the marketing director for Orabrush, stood up and said, “Eight percent is still a lot of people.” The inventor said, “I like your attitude.”

They started having discussions and Jeff Harmon, the guy who’s now the marketing director for Orabrush, said, “Let’s put it on YouTube.” He contacted my son Joel, who was a film student at BYU at the time. He asked, “Can we put together a video for these guys?” They did, on a very tight budget. But the thing started to go crazy for them and took off like wildfire. And that was the genesis of the whole thing.

SM: Let me stop you right there. You are a very experienced YouTube marketer. So, let me just dig deeper. Things don’t just go viral.

JA: I’m glad you said that.

SM: Tell me, in great detail, what you did to make this thing go viral.

JA: You are exactly right. Things do go viral, but not business things. Products don’t go viral. Nobody’s out there looking on YouTube for a tongue cleaner, and suddenly, everybody’s passing this funny video along to everybody on the planet, saying, “Hey, you’ve got to see this.” You’re exactly right. The whole virality issue is smoke and mirrors to a large degree. Now, that doesn’t mean you don’t pick up extra views virally. And the more entertaining your YouTube videos are, the more likely they are to get a high virality factor if that’s what you want to call it.

The place to start is there has to be something about your video that is interesting and entertaining to people. The secret to the original video that Joel was able to do was that it was, in fact, quite entertaining and amusing. It made people laugh, but at the same time, still conveyed the message. And this is one of the things about YouTube that I’m so intrigued by and so excited by, by comparison, for example, to email or Facebook or Twitter, where there is no barrier to entry whatsoever. Everybody can send an email and mass email. Everybody can post to Facebook. And while everybody can post to YouTube, not everybody can do it well. So, there is an element of skill that comes into play if you want a lot of views in YouTube.

That was the starting point and only the starting point. It is a meaningful barrier to entry that I believe keeps YouTube a viable marketing medium, whereas mass email is very ineffective. Facebook and Twitter as marketing mechanisms have failed to prove themselves consistently over time.

This segment is part 1 in the series : Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Jim Ackerman, Founder of Ackermania Creative
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