Video in the Workplace Needs an IT Hero

by Steve Smith, Jul 14, 2011, 12:02 PM

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I have to admit I have a soft spot in my heart for otherwise dweeby and staid b2b categories getting a little funky and genuinely entertaining with their marketing efforts. Growing up as the son of an ad man, I got to see a ton of crappy creative and crushingly boring b2b campaigns. To this day I still recall the inventive promotions sent regularly by some paper company whose name I will never remember. The materials often had nothing to do with the paper industry. They often were wildly inventive celebrations of great art, of the circus or any offbeat and esoteric topic. They simply were engaging, and they happened to be printed on and made possible by incredible paper stock. The campaigns succeeded in showing, not telling, but they led by grabbing us with sheer imaginative energy.

The new video clip from enterprise video platform provider Qumu is not quite up to those memorable paper company campaigns but it is a fun bit of business that elaborates on that IT-guy as superhero theme we have seen elsewhere. It was designed by video game artist Jerry O'Flaherty and has the rich production values of a decent sci-fi adventure. Our IT guy is rushing to the rescue, with what looks like a computer rack in hand. I will let you make your own way to the kicker.

At the same time, Qumu is releasing the results of a Harris interactive survey of 5,510 Americans about their video viewing habits in the workplace. Only 17% of people say they watch company video at work. But 25% watch news videos and 15% view viral videos.  According to Qumu the introduction of mobile devices into the workplace gives employees another venue off of the desktop for engaging with content but perhaps still on the employer's bandwidth dime (via WiFi I guess). According to the Harris-conducted poll, 74% of Americans believe people are doing things in the workplace with their mobile devices they ordinarily would not do on their business computer, including looking for another job, going to dating sites, etc.

A clear majority (63%) of those asked feel that people are sneaking a peek at their mobile devices during work meetings, with the favorite subterfuges being hiding the device under the table (47%) and bathroom breaks (42%). 

Content is addictive, I guess, and as mobile media puts a DVR in every pocket, IT may need a dweeby hero to handle it all.  

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