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RSSOnline video has certainly been the topic du jour this year, as major media companies respond to consumer demand for anytime, anywhere access to their favorite programs. But Web video's real potential is not in watching "Lost" or "The Office" online or even downloading those shows to your cell phone or iPod. It's about giving consumers what they want in the most engaging medium available.
We are still in the early stages of this shift from static text and graphics to a more dynamic, visually compelling medium, but we are approaching a tipping point. Video is no longer an afterthought or an add-on for Web-savvy businesses -- but the primary content featured on their Web sites.
Online user expectations have changed dramatically in the past decade, and businesses that don't evolve their Web strategies to accommodate this change are about to get a painful wake-up call.
The Preferred Medium
It's well-documented that people prefer a visually dynamic medium when it comes to being entertained or getting information. Radio was once the primary source of news, music and other entertainment for a large part of the population. Then came TV, followed by VCRs, TiVo and iPods. Video is having the same dramatic impact on the Web. The Solutions Research Group predicts that total hours spent with video-based entertainment will average eight hours per day by early 2013 -- the equivalent of an entire night's sleep -- and a majority of those hours will belong to online video.
Most fascinating about the emergence of the video-centric Web is that it is not being driven by news and entertainment providers. The vast majority of businesses riding the video wave are non-media organizations, ranging from small neighborhood retailers and restaurants to powerhouse brands like Nike and Apple. These businesses all share an intense desire to deliver a strong brand impression, create an engaging experience and instill customer loyalty. The Web is now the primary customer touch point and commerce channel for many organizations, and video is the Holy Grail for driving compelling Web experiences that can educate, entertain and keep customers coming back.
The Video-Centric Enterprise
Video's importance transcends the customer experience. It can transform every aspect of an organization, from sales, marketing and communications to investor relations, employee training and education.
Externally, companies can better engage customers, partners and prospects with product demonstrations, presentations and how-to videos. Apple recently rolled out a 30-minute video-part guide, part advertisement-to accompany its new iPhone. Blendtec, the aforementioned household appliance maker, attributes a 700% increase in revenue to its popular "Will it Blend?" webisodes.
Beyond the marketing examples, investors will be able to access corporate data in video form, whether it is an annual meeting, a message from the CEO or a video news release. Video archives will likely play a vital role in meeting federal compliance requirements.
Internally, video will become a primary form of communication. Think of a broadcast greeting embedded in a personal email or executive video memos -- the latter of which is already being done by early video adopters such as British Telecom. Video libraries will usher in a new phase of knowledge sharing and best practices, as employees access huge repositories of education and training videos.
The most sophisticated online video practitioners will become a de facto corporate broadcast network constantly issuing its news and information to customers, employees and partners.
This future is much closer than you probably think.
RSS FEEDS
Lisa Scales www.talentonview.com
Joe Stephens www.stratDV.com
"Internally, video will become a primary form of communication. Think of a broadcast greeting embedded in a personal email or executive video memos — the latter of which is already being done by early video adopters such as British Telecom"
The above is true - we have a broadcast module on our app which enables you to record a quick video and send the broadcast to all your employees / clients at one touch of a button - great tool
We launched video on the Listasaurus.com website over a year ago, even in our Business Directory (before Yellowbook or Yellowpages even had it). We were one of the first to offer video classifeds and now we're the first to offer video auctions, but people still don't necessarily want to take the time to incorporate it.
And as far as corporate videos having been around a long time, I agree...but the cost associated with that is much less. And the world has opened up for businesses to promote themselves with video via the Internet--which wasn't so accessible previously.
I truly believe its the way of the future...it's starting to take off and will continue to become more the norm. But it will take time for more businesses to embrace it. Hopefully sooner rather than later!
Melanie Heywood www.Listasaurus.com
Nice post. As others have stated above, I am in agreement with your thesis.
"Video is no longer an afterthought or an add-on for Web-savvy businesses – but the primary content featured on their Web sites."
What intrigues me about this statement is at the core of the issue I think. Video on the web is ubiquitous. But once you put a video on your site, what do you do with it. Yes it needs to be intriguing, but the video itself is only half the answer. Allowing for interactivity on top of the video itself creates an entirely new paradigm for engagement with the video. Making video clickable, allowing for anything in the video to be clicked on to gain more information, adding dynamic links, including, FLVs, MP3s, images and icons, directly into the video in a non intrusive and relevant fashion can clock up anyone's video experience.
Video gets you to the dance but interactive video gets you dancing.
Ed Lee Veeple www.veeple.com
1. Injects emotion. 2. Solicits an emmediate response.
The bulk of text on the web will innevitively give way to a more media-centric environment. There is also one powerful driver that will help speed that transition-the inherent laziness of the human being! The most commercial innovations on the planet so far are the ones that have in some way enabled human beings to be lazier. The cotton gin revolutionized that market by removing labor. The remote control did the same for television. And ultimately, video have the same impact wherever communication needs to occur on the web, either for selling...or for learning or influencing. People don't want to read...they want to watch and listen. Aside from reading done for pure pleasure, there will be little of it going on in the future. It will be replaced by the act of viewing video.
The downside of video replacing reading...is that it takes us one more step away from true interaction on a human level. What happens when ALL interaction can be executed via video, instead of in person? Do we all grow to be desensitized robots?
I feel silly now. I should have just uploaded a YouTube video and provided the link!
There's a corporate communications professional association celebrating its 40th year of existence this year - MCA-I (www.mca-i.org) Media Communications Association-International - formerly known as ITVA - International Television Association. We have a group here on MediaPost that I started a few months ago to get the word out to the reader's of these publications. Not very many people have found it, but we also have a Facebook group and a LinkedIn group. Check'em it out.
The need to tell compelling stories will never go away. The distribution mediums will continue to evolve.
Great post and I couldn't agree more. Video provides a dynamic and engaging medium. You can see TV declining, the move online increasing and people are seeing value-added experiences from brands. This will only increase in the future. The video needs to be experiential, be engaging and preferably tell a story. The brands and companies that recognize this and focus on customer experience in all mediums will benefit the most.
www.theinteractivemarketer.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmwtE0uAtIE
Yes, but there's more.
The most, most sophisticated online video practitioners will engage in video **dialogue** with customers, employees and partners. This is about employees making videos as much as it is about employers.
For more information, please email: josh@baroptic.com