Here we are about to start another year of FIRST. FLL begins in a month or so and FTC right after that. Then a few months later we have FRC back in our lives again. So I have a very very serious question on my mind that I think someone out there needs to be paid to think of the right solution.
“How can we make FIRST viral?”
You know we are still the world’s most unknown competition and organization that inspires kids to achieve great things.
Take a look at YouTube for a second…type in FIRST Robotics and search by editing your search settings to sort by view count. What do you see? I see that our only high view count video is the i.am.FIRST campaign…which still only has a little over 200,000 views. What else do you see…oh yeah… A DARPA video that has been on the net less than a month that has well over 2 million views. Tell me…why haven’t we got a video that even approaches that kind of view count. I watched that Darpa video…It’s amazing stuff, but I can honestly say I was more entertained by the Robonauts reveal video than I was of that Darpa video and that video only has 63,000 views.
This is a legitimate problem. I’d much rather see FIRST videos on VINE than videos of people doing the freaking Gas Pedal dance.
Goal for 2014. Get me one FIRST related video over 1,000,000 views. Then we have accomplished something. Which will only be the beginning of the journey.
My thoughts may not make the most sense but I think most of you will understand.
What FIRST needs the most is more recognition. The problem is that nobody will go on youtube and search “high school robot competition”. In order to have people searching for FIRST, they need to have heard of it. In my opinion, the championship needs to end up on TV again, like on ESPN like it used to be. Then, people would get interested in it, and look it up on the internet.
Then how does the DARPA video have 2,000,000 views. It’s got to be possible somehow. A view count like that doesn’t just fall out of the sky. How did it happen?
Television networks aren’t going to want to televise an event that can’t even hold it’s own in a YouTube channel. Television networks are really only concerned with high quality content so they they get a high viewer count so that you can watch the advertisements that companies pay the television company to put in-between content segments. You want FIRST back on TV? Solve this problem first.
Because the DARPA video is self-explanitory, government-related, and an impressive feat of technology. 118’s unveil video is only the last of those three. Random Joe not knowing what FIRST is or what Ultimate Ascent is would think that video is cool, but wouldn’t really understand what was going on. They didn’t have to design and build a robot to play this game in under 6 weeks, so they don’t appreciate the amazing engineering behind Apex as most of us FIRSTers would. Just by watching the DARPA video you can tell it’s about a robot moving in a life-like way, and any random Joe and their grandmas can see that and understand it. Also, DARPA being a government sector raises popularity amongst American civilians who are interested in what our government is doing.
tl;dr: The DARPA video is more popular than the Robonauts’ unveil video because people understand it better. The minute we can get a video about FIRST that’s self-explanitory and interesting, the minute we get a video shared and enjoyed by random Joe and his grandma.
I think you just said something right there that should be highlighted. That’s a completely accurate statement. What can teams do to help solve this problem. Most robot reveals follow the same formula as Team 118’s video. What can we do to change that formula to make the video more universally non-FIRSTer friendly? Not to take away from the awe that “here’s my awesome robot” videos tend to bring to CD and the FRC community but create something that we can use to springboard FIRST into the mass culture.
The problem is simply the fact that FIRST is not something that the vast majority of people can relate to. It’s kinda like looking at the Teen Fiction section of any bookstore nowadays: FIRST is that lonely science-fiction epic amidst the sea of vampires, sparkly vampires, vampire werewolves, vampire fairies, werewolf fallen angels wearing tutus… and zombies. Some people will pick up that lone little volume, but most of those who will are people who already enjoy the science-fiction genre.
When I think of YouTube, the first two things that come to my mind are music videos and The Annoying Orange. That basically sums up what most viewers are looking for: Popular culture and comedy. The original Annoying Orange video has 137,578,367 views… And just what is it? Some basic animation/video manipulation skills, and mindless humor. It’s that simple to get people’s attention.
We need to find ways to make FIRST relatable to the general population. We need to breathe some humor into it, we need to incorporate things people will recognize (like current world events, urban legends, internet memes, etc.), and we need to hype up just how epic robotics can be (yes, this means both “epic wins” AND “epic fails.” Sometimes the fails are more appealing than the wins. ) Then, once FIRST has a following on YouTube, teams can start getting more serious all over again.
What we really need is to put all the fluff about its not just about the robots and this is inspiring kids to go on to do great things, and just show off robots built by high schoolers doing what robots do. (I’m not saying that the other stuff is unimportant, I’m saying that its not what is going to catch the interest of the public). Get some video of robots doing stuff that is exciting (some things that come to mind are 4334 pushing 148 across the field at 2012 IRI, 987 toppling a robot, the 254 climb in the svr finals where they mess up and are hanging by 1 arm, etc). This is our best shot at creating a viral video.
So far I see three different way of approaching the problem from a video marketing standpoint.
1.) Get a video about FIRST that’s self-explanitory and interesting
2.) Use more bits of internet/pop-culture in our content…i.e Memes, Music, Dancing, randomness…
3.) Show more “action” scenes from when the real heat of the moment stuff happens…ie. buzzer beater shots, robots toppling, nail-biting moments, breaking records like 254’s sub-however many second climb…
I found some pretty cool season highlight videos from a while ago (05/06), where there was a compilation of all the best moments like incredible scoring, weird and cool robot designs, the most exciting/high scoring matches, robots falling and breaking, and other really cool stuff edited together with awesome music. Through resources like TBA and soap, we have so much awesome video (254’s climb, 71 in 2001, 111 in 2004 with their neat drive, 1114 in 2008 with their awesome accuracy/consistency, 469 in 2010, and the best FIRST Robotics video of all time 190’s epic move in 04 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5nnGGRi-94). These videos would make a really really cool commercial for FIRST if it was put together nicely.
I honestly never saw that video before today. That is the greatest thing I have ever witnessed.
Besides last season in FTC when a robot accidentally deployed it’s ramp in auton and a robot from the other alliance drop up onto it without falling off.
See my problem with creating season/Championship highlight videos is when you have so many competitions and so many different fields it’s almost impossible to catch all of the really excellent moments that happen at an FRC competition. Granted this won’t stop me from trying to do so when I have the proper equipment at my disposal, but still. With a lack of HIGH DEFINITION quality video from competitions at field level…creating highlights videos is somewhat difficult.
I have heard that Intuit is sponsoring a contest for a 30 second commercial in the Super Bowl. If FIRST was to win that, I think it would be pretty good for introducing FIRST to most of the world.
Well this sounds stupid, but what if we made the game like a zombie or end of the world game… like try to reach a goal before the world ends? It’s something that is kind of trending now so it could be something that would help…
And I think we need a viral video or something so funny that it ends up on Tosh.0 as a web redemption
Looking through today’s Geek Week videos I really think we missed out on an opportunity here…there were tons of robot videos that were getting high view counts today.
) Then, once FIRST has a following on YouTube, teams can start getting more serious all over again.