Speaking at the Streaming Media West conference in San Jose last month, Adobe’s Bob Donlon offers his thoughts on of the power of online video for corporations for internal and external communications.
Web Video – a powerful way to make a point
December 1, 2009 By 1 Comment
“If I put the real price I don’t get any customer.” Ha! Ouch.
Wind Mobile is in the process (pending CRTC approval) of launching a new mobile service in Canada. One of their key differentiators will be not locking people into ridiculously long service contracts. (I believe the good people at Bell, Rogers and Telus have currently all agreed to handcuff users for three year terms.)
Wind is pre-launching with promotions that go after the ‘mobile services indignation niche’ – that’s a big market in Canada.
Here is what Wind didn’t do:
1.They didn’t hire some Windbag to get in front of the camera and try to convince you that Wind will have the “best combination of mobile features in the country”.
2. They didn’t associate themselves with cute or exotic animals.
3. They didn’t clutter up their promotion with excessive information or complexity.
What they did do is present a single scenario that everyone can relate to and they associate that scenario with the frustration and absurdity of the current moderately competitive (at best) mobile landscape that we all have come to accept as the status quo.
Simply telling your audience that things are out of whack and that Wind has a better way would have had limited value. Showing your audience your key differentiator by means of a simple, but powerful example is a far more effective method of soliciting a visceral reaction (and also a great way to highlight the key benefit of using the new Wind service.)
The video also benefits from being fun to watch. A great example of ’show me, don’t tell me.’
Are corporate websites dead? No, but some may require life support.
October 29, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Websites don’t matter. The content on them and the content that gets consumed and shared (wherever) is what matters.
I recently responded to a blog article that posed the question “are corporate websites dead?” My take was that the purpose and function of corporate websites is changing – they will still serve as a repository for corporate information but the days of websites being a ‘destination’ for information about the things you do are long gone. An Example:
Recent changes to driving laws where I live now make it illegal to hold/use a cell phone while driving. I needed to pick up a good quality Bluetooth headset. While scanning some recent tweets I noticed a comment about a new Plantronics Bluetooth headset. I followed the link to a YouTube video. It sounded interesting but I wasn’t convinced. I then viewed a number of related reviews on YouTube that seemed more credible and decided that this was indeed the device that suited my needs. I Googled to find the best price and ordered the product online. I never went to the Plantronics website – there was no reason to. I know the company and have purchased products from them before so there were no credibility issues to investigate.
The user generated videos I viewed provided good general information but ultimately the more professionally created videos sold me. The whole process took ten minutes and at the end of it I felt very informed and very comfortable making a purchase decision. Would I have been as confident if I just went to the Plantronics site and consumed their literature? No way. Would I have been as comfortable if I went to my local electronics store and waited to listen to an inexperienced sales clerk sell me on equipment he may or may not have a lot of real experience with? No.
We are moving from the ‘text web’ to the ‘next web’ ( or ‘web something dot something’) and many companies still don’t see it coming. I’d rather watch a video review or video product demo than read product literature because video and other rich media content show me things that a document cannot. It’s also easier to make value judgments about the presenter and the content.
There is huge value in showing your product/service being used, showing people talking about their experiences with the product and showing how it clearly benefits the potential buyer.
It’s the content (and where that content is seen) that matters, not the website and the implications of this reach far beyond simple consumer products. All companies have to take into account how social media, rich media, mobile engagement, word of mouth, and especially the creation of truly valuable content is going to affect their brand and their business. Even companies with long sales cycles that involve complex buying decisions need to consider how they are going to engage the ‘next web.’
4 Advantages of Adding Video to your Email Marketing
October 27, 2009 By 1 Comment
The good folks at Wistia – a video tracking company decided to, in their words, ‘eat their own dog food’ by using their own online video tracking service to monitor the effectiveness of adding video to their email marketing activities. (I prefer ‘fly your own jets’ as far as marketing metaphors go…)
You can read the results on a recent blog post but here is a quick summary:
1. Click through rates were 3 to 4 times higher with video
2. Visitors spend more time on site with video
3. You can track specific benefits of video content – see where visitors lost interest or chose to engage the company further
4. They also used video engagement as an indication for further lead gen, with measured success.
Admittedly the last two items are associated with the services this company provides but there are hundreds of articles and blog posts that support the idea that adding video to your email can have a significant effect on the effectiveness of that email. Here are a few:
http://www.smartmarketmovie.com/eric/videos-email-marketing-campaign/
http://www.email-marketing-reports.com/iland/2009/08/video-email-when-to-use-it.html
Perhaps bad is the new good for Microsoft. This video is really bad.
September 23, 2009 By 5 Comments
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Microsoft made this video lame on purpose.
What’s the point? To generate buzz? Mission accomplished I suppose, but it’s not the type of buzz a company should be promoting. Microsoft has turned the comment feature off on the YouTube channel it sits on so if they are trying to generate buzz, they don’t want it recorded. So far the comments on various blogs break down roughly between the following:
1. This video being six minutes of your life that you will never get back (I only lost two of those minutes)
2. Criticism of the acting, the film work and just about anything else imaginable about the video
3. Microsoft providing another reason for people to switch to Apple.
I can’t see much value in that buzz. You could start hurling farm animals from the roof of your corporate headquarters and that would generate a buzz as well. It probably wouldn’t move much product however.
Microsoft lost their way with the Seinfeld/Gates ads, which tried to be funny but were not. They then adopted ‘lame’ as the new corporate video standard in their Songsmith music – thing. Now they have circled the wagons around ‘just plain bad’. Maybe bad is the new good but I can’t imagine how this will help the brand.
Of course the other possibility is that Microsoft actually thought this was a good promotion. That would be really bad.
Sears employs online video to supercharge it’s online and in-store retail
September 1, 2009 By 1 Comment
My 14 year old thinks Sears is cool. So does my 82 year old father. Go figure.
Sears launched a major marketing initiative this summer called Arrival Lounge to highlight to it’s younger target audience that you shouldn’t just go back to school – you should ‘arrive’ back to school- suitably attired in Sears back-to-school fashions. Sears hired Disney Channel celebrity Selina Gomez to lead the marketing program which is centered around it’s arrivelounge.com website. The site includes music, celebrities, dancing, backstage passes, coupons, behind-the-scenes features, air-band contests and high quality video production. Sears has done all of the requisite cross-promotions with social media sites like YouTube and Facebook and has also developed tie-in programs with MTV. The program has been a huge success for the company.
What makes this campaign particularly interesting is the company’s use of web-based video. Sears has comfortably broken a couple of web-video barriers (launching music on the site without asking and also playing full screen – albeit lower res - video) and seem to be employing a video first and ‘text as support’ approach which until now has been the other way around. Video has traditionally been used as support for the text that appears on a website.
While it certainly makes sense that retail establishments targeting younger demographics would lead the integration of video marketing into websites this isn’t the beginning of the end, it’s the simply the end of the beginning (it made more sense when Churchill said it…). What we are seeing with sites like this is a glimpse beyond the ‘text web’ – the integration of broadcast media and rich media programming into what until now has been a static content delivery environment. Sears isn’t the first company to take this approach but given their history and positioning in the marketplace it is a significant departure from it’s traditional marketing activities.
The short term consequence will be a surge in rich media web video production – a lot of it quite awful (remember the first websites) and unfortunately will favor those with traditionally larger marketing budgets. That said, the clever use of social media channels could turn out to be the great equalizer between large and smaller companies.
Video marketing and video conferncing to emerge from recession
August 17, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Interestingarticle in TechTarget’s Search CRM portal that looks at the two ‘tecnologies’ that they see emerging from the recession: The use of video conferencing to save travel costs and the use of video in marketingbecause of the lower cost of production and distribution of video combined with the effectiveness of the medium.
The article goes on to forecast that these two technologies will figure more prominently in the CRM suites.
