Ok, we expect the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences not to understand social media, but Mark Cuban?

On Tuesday the Academy asked YouTube to remove all its Oscars videos (the Will Farrell musical number had been viewed a quarter of a million times before its removal). Yesterday YouTube complied.

The YouTube clips didn’t compete with video at Oscars.com, where a single, 5-minute recap clip is posted. Nor did it undermine any commercial plans for the video (because the Academy has none). Instead Ric Robertson, executive administrator for the Academy, yesterday told Variety that the move was designed to help manage the value of our telecast and our brand.

Kudos to Variety’s Scott Kirsner for his skeptical questioning which got Robertson to say that the move is “not really about business opportunity” and that even the video at Oscars.com will eventually come down to “whet people’s appetite for next year’s show.” 

Robertson offered no explanation for how a 5 minute recap vidclip with a short shelf life on the Oscars site would better whet appetites for next years show than a popular gag from the show distributed on the biggest online video channel seen by a million people over the course of a year. I guess the “Dick in a Box” video really damaged the SNL brand and undermined viewer interest in the next episode of the show.

Yesterday Mark Cuban–a long-time YouTube skeptic–chimed in on his blog with a suggestion for how the Academy should have handled YouTube.

Cuban’s idea is typically creative and smart: the Academy should have flooded YouTube with teaser clips followed by ads for Oscars.com and links back:

For this Will Ferrell clip, I would have created a video that showed the first 10 secs of the clip, then had 4 minutes of a billboard that said ” Great videos from the Oscars telecast and exclusive behind the scenes videos are all available at Oscars.com”

Great idea, but Cuban is still locked into old-fashioned thinking about brand marketing:

Youtube proponents want everyone to believe that every impression is a new found impression that can only benefit the brand. Others, myself included believe the opposite. That the last thing you ever want is for another entity, that is completely out of your control, becoming the de facto manager of your brand.

Of course millions of people watching the Will Farrell clip benefits the Oscars brand. Enormously. (Contributory media is part of the Web 2.0 watercooler conversation.) Furthermore it probably helps the Oscars brand reach an audience that is not reached by the TV broadcast. Most importantly the act of posting the clip, tagging the clip, emailing a link to friends, posting the clip to a blog–in short, the stuff of social media–marks an engagement with the Oscars brand that the Academy couldn’t generate if it tried. And, it didn’t even have to try. And it didn’t cost the Academy a dime!

If Cuban is worried about millions of people outside of a company’s control become de facto managers of every company’s brand, he better get out of the Internet business now. Welcome to the new world order.