Yo, Beijing: please make it easier for us to love you, and easier for us to share the love.

Finally, I found the video of the tremendous Beijing '08 Olympics theme song "You and Me," sung in Chinese and English by Liu Huan and Sarah Brightman...'twas the song they sang atop that beautiful globe at the opening ceremonies.

Even more wonderful, Brightman and Huan sing in each others' languages at the song's end so it's truly worth watching the entire piece that features terrific people and images as well. (video below)

First, KUDOS on a great theme song. And now a few action points for our glorious Olympic Host...

Yo, Beijing: if you're going to spend $40 billion, you need to spend a few more. Give the song away as a free download. (remember, you're a marketer now). Thus, "share" and "free" are both key (this applies to all marketers in all lands these days, btw).

Especially during this mission-critical 14 days. And especially when you're promoting a moving song that speaks of the world being a family. We all need to live (and market) by our words be they spoken, sung or written.

I'm giving you a lotta love on this little blog, but I'm about over how tough you and NBC are making it for me to access and share content (I can't even find a way to buy this song). Here's how to remedy such things:

1. First, make the mp3 available at your official site--and make it much easier to find once there.
2. Concurrently, make it available at iTunes.
3. And make it a "free download" no matter where users grab it from.
4. Voila!
5. Oh, and for the remaining 90% of the U.S., make it available at WalMart (it would be a great, free bag-stuffer actually)

Net net: Let us love you by giving the world more reasons to love you (enter the games)--and then make it very, very easy for us to share and spread that love for you (enter technology).

Technology is friend, not foe...I know this is a tough one, but the Fortune 500 is grappling with it, too, and they're coming to the same conclusion. Folks, if anyone else found the mp3 available, please let me know as I searched in several places to no avail and just gave up.

Update: Thanks galore (!) to Ed Rowan Lee--who turned the video into a very clear audio file for me, you can now download the mp3 version right here (just "right click" and "save as"). I hope it's not asked to be removed, as that would not be in the Olympic Spirit. Again, just go here.

And here is the 4-minute video; email and RSS readers, just click through to view the beauty. This song and, basically, all things "world coming together" make me tear-up. Alas, in a wonderfully changing world, some things will never change ;-).

My other Olympics-inspired posts are here and here.

Comments

[Ed]

Great suggestion you have made there and I certainly stand behind it.

I have read a lot from all over, from how organizations are adopting such tools to boost their activities. Among it, were talks of how effective viral videos can be. Somehow, I feel that they have neglected the "quality" aspect of it.

Noticed how the video/audio quality degrades due to compression/conversion in general video sites like Youtube? Hosting the file on their own website can eradicate the problem, and allows better quality content.

[zmlee]

Hi...
actually you can download the Music Video version from YouTube using this programme from:
http://youtubedownload.altervista.org/

If you want more programmes which can be used to download YouTube content, try googling up "YouTube downloader" and several sites will pop up in the search list.

-skynode-

[CK]

Hi Skynode: Thanks so much--here is a link to a clear mp3 that Ed made for us, too...enjoy!: http://www.communplug.com/misc/YouAndMe.mp3

[zmlee]

woot! thanks for the link.

[sohbet]

thanks a lot