Online Video Beyond YouTube - Part One

This series will explore how online video has changed our world. This first installment will take a look at just how far online video has come. I can remember a time in the not too distant past where posting video on the Internet was rare indeed. Since then, we’ve seen incredible advancements in compression technologies and dramatic increases in bandwidth available to us all. Today, online video is an everyday deal.

How YouTube has changed the landscape

Yikes! Users now upload 20 hours of video per minute to YouTube. That’s 33 minutes of video every second, or 28,800 hours every day. Comscore has reported that YouTube has reached 100 million viewers. And that’s 14.8 billion videos being watched in January of 2009 alone.

Anyone with a camera, Flip Video, or webcam can be a star on YouTube. The holy grail is to “go viral.” It’s that one video in a thousand that captures the imagination of millions of viewers. Take a look at this hilarious video that scored nearly three quarters of a million views:

Or take a look at this up-and-coming NBA star:

However, a real turning point for YouTube has been its adoption by corporate America. One of the early adopters of viral video as a corporate marketing strategy is BMW. They created an intriguing series of dramas by top directors to promote BMW as a “hip” ride. This one called “Hostage” was directed by John Woo:

Companies are now creating YouTube channels to formally bring laser focus to their online video efforts. A great example of this is Coldwell Banker’s sophisticated On Location YouTube channel.

What exactly is a YouTube video?

A YouTube video can be anything from a silly webcam production by a high school freshman, to a crazy home video, to a start-up business presentation, to a full-blown, high-quality corporate video. Simply put, people are communicating with people. The beauty of it all is it takes the “gatekey” away from the mainstream media and puts it into the hands of you and me. How cool.

The downside? Well, there’s a lot of junk on YouTube. Thankfully, they do their best to strip out the really obscene and outright pornographic. But there’s no filter for stupidity. The wild, wild west of the Internet invites contributions of all stripes. It’s our responsibility to monitor what we want our families and ourselves to view. Not big brother’s.

We’re a nation of free individuals. We’re free to make choices (even bad ones). And that’s where it should reside. No need for government interaction or some goofy form of institutional censorship. This is my point of view and I feel strongly about it. I definitely invite opposing views on this. Feel free to comment (hopefully, in a civil manner).

Lowering the bar: A bad thing

YouTube has inadvertently done something else for the proliferation of online video. They’ve lowered the bar as far as what is acceptable in terms of video production value. So what, you say?

For more than a decade, my business has produced hundreds of videos for major corporate clients. We had relatively large budgets for producing them. It wasn’t uncommon to have six figures to produce a 15 or 20 minute video. Those days are no more. Everyone wants it faster, better, longer and cheaper. It takes a production company with smarts and ingenuity to meet the needs of their clients.

Lowering the bar: A good thing

Anybody can take their camcorder, point it at something and make a video that ends up on YouTube. We’re used to seeing lower quality video with bad audio and really poor editing on the net. I guess we’ve been desensitized. Or you could look at it differently. If the content communicates, the production quality is “good enough.” Think about it. We’ve universally accepted the inferior audio quality of mp3 audio clips. Apple has built an empire around it.

And frankly, I’d rather have 2,000 of my favorite songs on my iPod than the “audiophile” quality of only 14 tracks on my very un-portable vinyl discs. It’s plenty “good enough.”

Stay tuned

In subsequent posts, we’ll explore a wide range of topics on the subject of online video. I invite you to keep an eye on this blog in the next few weeks. Enjoy!

Maximizing your investment in digital assets

Each year, direct-selling companies invest hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in producing and distributing their latest promotional materials to help distributors build their businesses. Traditionally, printed brochures, videos/CDs/DVDs and product sell sheets were the primary vehicles distributors used to sell.  The Internet and out-of-the-box applications like PowerPoint and Keynote have become the norm. While efficient, this fundamental change in the way distributors sell has created a dilemma at the corporate level.  What do they do with all of the digital assets such as photographs, videos and audio files they have produced? As they create new resources each year, what will be the best way to distribute or make these assets readily available in order to maximize their investment and usage in the field? 

Distributors are reluctant to continually invest in replenishing materials as their inventories are depleted. Corporations are discovering that their significant investment in digital assets is being underutilized. This has placed a burden on the parent company as these materials are critical to support new products, events and promotions and get them into the field. 

Embracing the Change

Technology has changed the way we communicate in business.  It’s fast, efficient and provides a variety of options regardless of whether distributors are recruiting, selling product, informing, training or just keeping in touch. Whether solutions are corporate-driven or out-of-the-box products, there are plenty of options in the market for companies and distributors. A host of software tools are readily available—from email-only programs to complete package solutions such as contact management solutions (e.g., Microsoft Outlook) and presentation programs (e.g., PowerPoint). While these options can certainly be used in communicating and selling, they do so without the ability and flexibility to access the extensive repository of assets that the parent company has created.

Single-Source Solution

There are certainly lots of different products that can be used throughout an organization to communicate within the network and to customers, prospects and peers. But what seems to be missing is a single solution that addresses all of the industry’s communications needs.

Through its original work in the production of corporate videos for direct-selling companies over the past ten years, RoqLogic recognized that companies rarely maximized their investments in videos, photography, printed materials and recordings.  As the need for richer media to help build their businesses continues to increase, corporate marketing departments have recognized the need to find a cost-effective communications solution to meet the demands of their distributors and put their investment to work. Meetings with direct-selling organizations and their distributors quickly revealed the need for an integrated solution that would provide:

• Easy access to, and usage of, a corporation’s assets
  
• Flexibility within the network
  
• Better asset management
  
• Overall control over the brand.

A result of direct user input, the RoqLogic Media Center was developed to deliver a myriad of robust offerings to meet the dynamic communications and marketing needs of the worldwide direct-selling industry. It establishes an online media community where video, audio, images and documents are centrally stored and organized. The real power of the Media Center is that it links a company’s robust pool of assets to a building and publishing environment where distributors can create, customize, personalize, email, share and track high-quality online SlideShows and eCards. For the parent company, the Media Center cost-effectively streamlines the distribution of new materials and makes updates seamless and easy.  For the distributor, they now have complete access to a wide range of materials to communicate their story. The result is efficiencies for both the parent company and its distributors. It promotes sales and recruiting, thus sending more profit to the bottom-line.