How Kim Kardashian Got Hired to Shill for Diclegis by "Auditioning" in a Nutraceutical Ad

You may recall that the FDA sent a letter to Duchesnay Inc. because an Instagram post by Kim Kardashian promoting the company's morning sickness drug Diclegis violated the law (read "Kim Kardashian's Diclegis Instagram Post Raises Issues").

Some time afterward, Alex Peterson, SVP, Health Practice Director at Makovsky -- the agency that hired Kim to do the Diclegis Instagram social media campaign - claimed that Makovsky, through social monitoring, knew that Kardashian was struggling with nausea during her first pregnancy. She’d been talking about morning sickness for weeks (read this account).

No doubt Makovsky also knew that Kardashian promoted nutraceuticals years earlier in 2010. As reported by STAT, in a video ad for QuickTrim (see end of this post), "Khloe Kardashian rolls languorously in a tangle of white sheets and asks, 'Do you feel sexy? Do you have the body you’ve always dreamed of?' The shot switches to her sister Kim, shimmying out of a pool and commanding viewers to 'Create the body you deserve'" (read "Celebrity selfies, lax regulations drive booming supplement industry").

Makovsky claimed they reached out to tell Kim about Diclegis and found out that she was already taking the drug -- her doctor had just prescribed it.

But could Kim have been talking about her morning sickness as a prelude to working with Makovsky so that the above account by Peterson would sound perfectly plausible?

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In-Video Drug Ads on YouTube: Should They be "Non-Skippable?"

Yesterday, I wanted to cook stuffed artichokes for dinner. So, I searched Google for a video and found this on YouTube: "ITALIAN STUFFED ARTICHOKES - SICILIAN STYLE - EASTER DINER RECIPE."

Before the cooking lesson started, there was an in-video ad for an Rx drug, the name of which I can't recall right now. No matter. After 15 seconds or so I realized I could click on "Skip Ad" and not hear any more of the side effects, aka FDA-required Important Safety Information (ISI), "major statement," and "Fair Balance" stuff that is usually crammed into Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) TV ads after about 20 or 30 seconds.

Ruth Day of Duke University once said of print and TV DTC drug ads (here): “Risk information is physically present but functionally absent.” This accurately describes what's happening in skippable in-video DTC ads on Youtube.

According to YouTube Help, there are two versions of in-video ads: (1) skippable ads like the one I saw, and (2) non-skippable ads.

It seems that pharma uses only the former, not the latter. Is this acceptable?

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4 Tips to Strengthen your YouTube Presence

Each year YouTube seems to grow in terms of number of videos posted as well as pervasiveness across the web.  This year is no exception.  As content and content development becomes more important in the age of post hummingbird Google updates, optimizing your YouTube channel and videos is absolutely essential.  Here are some tips for improving your YouTube results.

1.               Remember the Branding of your Channel

Get into the mindset of thinking of your YouTube channel as a profile for your brand, or as an extension of your website. You want it to look as sleek and professional as possible, suited to your niche and interests. You need to convince browsers that your content is worth checking and your channel worth subscribing. You always want to optimize your channels SEO. Give your Internet videos titles, tags, closed captions, descriptions etc with rich keywords and phrases for the best chance of turning up on the Page 1 search results of Google and YouTube. 

2.               Interact With the YouTube Community

Whereas Twitter & Facebook lend themselves instantly to communication, most people seem to forget about YouTube’s social features, yet it is one of the easiest ways of establishing a solid presence on the site. These users are just like any other social media user, they enjoy engagement and activity. Comment and Like/Dislike other users content and where possible Friend and Subscriber to their Internet videos. If you have the means to create Video Responses frequently then use that facility to your advantage too. Never underestimate how being an engaged YouTuber can benefit your channel.

3.               Know your Friends

YouTube novices beware: A friend and subscriber are two different things! An overly common pitfall is confusing the two.  A ‘Friend’ is a user who likes you as a contact, someone who enjoys social engagements with you and follows your on site activity. A ‘Friend’ will not want to get inundated with your latest content. A ‘Subscriber’ on the other hand is a user who enjoys just your online video content and have opted to find out about when you have new video content available. Remember to SOCIALISE with friends and to SHARE with your subscribers to ensure a strong YouTube presence in the eyes of both sections of users.

4.               Utilise all Your Social Media Profiles

One of the (many) reasons YouTube is the undisputed ruler of online video is down to it’s ability to integrate itself with the other dominant social medias, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. These sites allow you to share your online video content as frequently as you wish and can really benefit your YouTube presence.  Post your content on your Profile, share it on Pages and in Groups that are relevant to your niche and your video content and you and your channel will reap the rewards.

Madeleine Hammond is a marketing executive at Skeleton Productions - one of the UK's leading video production companies.

Optimize Your Videos For YouTube

One of the most popular search engines online today was actually started created by three former PayPal employees back in February 2005.  It’s not Google, Yahoo, or Bing – it’s YouTube.  The site attracts countless viewers every day and is considered to be the largest video based website on the Internet.

Developing and promoting videos is a great way to generate traffic and promote your products, services, and special offers.  The question everyone wants answered is how to get your videos ranked high on YouTube and even appear in organic search results too.  The good news is that by following a few basic optimization principles, you can quickly and easily optimize your videos for YouTube.

Let’s start with some basic YouTube ranking factors. This search engine works differently than other search algorithms.  From my experience, where you appear on the platform and in relation to specific search queries depends on a few factors. 

1. Relevancy. Metadata is exceptionally important on YouTube because of the search algorithm itself as well as the role that related videos play as part of the overall video viewing experience. Your video title, description, keywords, etc. are heavily weighed as part of search queries. 

2. Ratings. YouTube, just like Amazon, puts a lot of weight on user ratings.  The rating and quantity of reviews indicates the viewer’s approval of your video and tells the search algorithm that your video is ideal to promote to the rest of the YouTube universe. 

3. Responses.  YouTube is also very interested in the comments and responses that others are making. When individuals take the time to submit video responses in addition to comments, YouTube gauges the additional interest as a key indicator of popularity, thus moving your video higher and higher in search results.

Optimizing your video is based on four simple, yet powerful steps.  True video optimization begins with the video itself.  It’s then followed by properly formatted titles, tags, and descriptions. 

Video

When you produce your video, keep your video length longer than one and a half minutes but shorter than eight minutes.  Videos that seem to rank well both on YouTube and organically follow this general rule of thumb with regard to length.  Also, be sure to speak clearly when producing your video, using keywords in the first 10 seconds of the video and last 10 seconds of the video.  It’s believed that Google is actually indexing some of your audio. 

Title

Title your video like you would a pay-per-click ad.  You want users to click through on your title to improve interactivity and views.  It's certainly believed that having a strong title and good click-through-rate can boost the rankings of your video.

When creating your title, include your most important keywords at the beginning of the title and keep the title brief.  The shorter the title the more weight you're giving to your keyword phrases.  However, you want the title to be powerful enough to encourage clicks.  Remember to use your keywords first, branding last, and encourage click-throughs. 

Descriptions

When creating your description, again, be sure to use your keywords in the beginning.  You definitely have more room than you did in your title or even on conventional search engines to describe your video.  Keep in mind that you can use the description to include information about your video in general and provide specific info on products or services.

I always like to place a URL to a site I’d like to promote at the very beginning of my YouTube video description. This ensures that the URL is visible and clickable next to your video.  It’s a great way to promote third-party sites, passing authority and link juice of significant proportion. 

Tags

One of the best ways to optimize your tags is to again begin with your chosen keyword phrase.  The second step is to do some research in the channel that your video will likely fit into.  What types of tags are being used by the top ranking videos?  You should integrate some of the same tags into the tags associate with your video to ensure a good ranking among similar videos that have already been posted. 

Just the Beginning

Optimizing just a few features on YouTube such as the video itself, title, description, and video tags is a good starting point for improving the ranking of your videos.  There are a variety of additional techniques to further optimize videos for YouTube that deal more closely with the social aspect of the video site itself.  Views, reviews, etc. are all significant factors designed to manipulate video rankings on YouTube.  I’ll be sure to cover these additional factors in future posts.