Super Bowl Sunday Vid Picks: In-House Advertising

There’s one sure way to get paid producing online videos — advertising. Jason Calacanis, in explaining “Mahalo Daily,” has promised that “In the future every company will have a video show, not just a blog.” While to some that might sound like a free-market media dystopia, to a hungry filmmaker it sounds like a job. As more and more brands are producing video segments in-house, and with this particular Sunday being the high holy day of advertising, I figured it was time to take a look at shows produced by and for companies shilling their wares.

Love or hate the provocative ads, American Apparel has certainly done well. Not content with their virtual presence in Second Life, the company kicked off a YouTube channel this week. While the girl wearing nothing but her skivvies is leading in views (natch), I’ll highlight instead the indirect abstraction represented by this clip of Three seconds in Israel — because there’s something about ad campaigns that make no sense which appeals to me.

How much fun are the kids at Etsy having? A lot, if the year in review video is any indication. The Brooklyn, N.Y.-based online retailer earlier this week scored more funding from Union Square ventures and added Bre Pettis to the team to spearhead their home video production campaign. Granted, he didn’t have far to move, as previous employeer Make magazine has an office in the same Red Hook building. On Madison Avenue, that’s called synergy.

And no in-house online video advertising roundup would be complete without a shout-out to one of the most popular pioneers in the field — the zany crew over at Blendtec. In destroying a $400 iPhone, the company scored nearly 1.5 million views on Revver, where the revenue-sharing should more than make up for the production cost (and they sold the blended iPhone on eBay). Who would have thought that a blender manufacturer would be on the bleeding edge of a marketing trend?