Marketers going straight-to-Internet

Marketers looking to hawk their goods to young Internet-savvy customers are putting their video clips online. In the past, the companies would put the videos on television or in theaters before putting them up on their Web sites. Samsung Electronics recently filmed a four-part drama series with the popular actor Lee Jun-ki. The company said yesterday that the video clips ― initially shown only online ― had garnered more than 1.5 million hits as of Friday, only 10 days after they were posted on the Web site for Samsung’s Anycall cell phone brand. On major portal sites, popular Web content is considered anything with more than 1 million hits. The 50-second movie clips portray Mr. Lee as a university student using features on his cell phone, such as a portable TV and an MP3 player. to win the heart of a young woman. This was not Samsung’s first video clip. Previously, the firm used music video dramas, also posted on the Internet, to promote its cell phones. “You have to have fun, savvy content that can attract the younger generation to come to your Web site and look at the content. Also, young people use the Internet as their main medium, and so we expect that new content-related marketing will set the trend for promoting products in the future,” said Song Pyeong-gwan, a Samsung spokesman. Samsung is not the only company making use of Web videos as teasers. In “BMW Meets Truth” the singer Rain stars in a music film that included BMW cars. The video clip was made available through a special Web site. Liquor maker Jinro Co. also has a unique online movie clip promoting its soju brand, Chamisul. Although this clip does not feature any famous actors, it is still very popular because it parodies the U.S. television drama series C.S.I., which portrays the scientific investigation of crime scenes. The Chamisul version is titled C.I.S., standing for each syllable of Chamisul. In the video clip, Western actors ― obviously cast for their resemblance to the actors in the real C.S.I. series ― perform “scientific investigations” in order to find out what makes Chamisul so different from the other soju brands. The short clip contains images of the investigators in a bamboo forest, collecting the ingredients that go into Chamisul. Later, they are shown in a lab, concluding with a very non-C.S.I.-like image of having dinner and toasting each other with glasses of soju to congratulate themselves on the success of their investigation. by Wohn Dong-hee