Ramco is a Real Company and So Are Their Products

You know about pre-roll videos, right? For consumers, pre-roll videos are the annoying online commercials that play before news clips or music videos. For advertisers, they’re great marketing tools that force numerous impressions on target audiences.

While recently scanning the depths of YouTube for interesting and relevant videos to share on my employer’s social media outlets, the first glorious seconds of the following Ramco sales video pre-rolled one of the videos I selected to watch:

Like most pre-roll videos on YouTube, I had the opportunity to skip this ad after the first five seconds passed. But I couldn't turn away. Here are the thoughts that ran through my mind as I watched this video:

• Yes! A new parody video featuring grainy film from the 90’s!
• Wait…what’s the joke here?
• This is running really long to be a viral video.
• I’m going to give it a few more minutes – this reveal is going to be AWESOME!
• This is totally a trailer for the next Terminator movie.  Arnold Schwarzenegger will be on screen in 3…2…1…
• Hmm…Maybe I should search “Ramco” just to see if this is a real company.

Yup!  Ramco is indeed a real company and they make arguably the finest parts washers in the business. I say ‘arguably’ because I don’t want to unjustly overlook any other parts washer manufacturers that may exist. I didn't know Ramco existed before seeing this video. But if Ramco is flexing this much marketing muscle, I take that as a good indication that the parts washing industry is much bigger than I ever fathomed. Like…it exists.

Let’s not look past this video’s finer features. It’s a well-produced video and it is certainly very informative. But the video quality makes you wonder if Ramco just converted one of their decades-old promotional videos from VHS to a digital format and uploaded it to YouTube. I mean, even the clothing worn by Ramco employees in some of the still shots says “1993 Ramco Company Picnic”.

Knowing that pre-roll videos are tied to cookies and search history (and other elements that a real marketing guru could explain), I wondered why this particular video pre-rolled for me. My only guess is that this video was selected for me because I searched for and viewed a video that featured massive tire-shredding equipment a few days earlier. At the time, I didn’t remember that video and the Ramco video really caught me off guard.

I've poked a lot of fun at the good people at Ramco in this post but I want to close by tipping my hat to their marketing people.  Ramco has all the bases covered: website, Twitter, Facebook,YouTube and even LinkedIn. Ladies and gentlemen, it is your own fault if you find your knowledge of parts washers to be lacking.

Seriously – GREAT JOB RAMCO! Your marketing got my attention for sure!