An interesting post on how US local newspapers are adding video capabilities. What is useful is to see how they have scaled back their initial thoughts on costs based upon the output needing only to be 'web quality'.

There are some really interesting ideas for corporates. When I was at Tektronix we had a number of business units in Europe. Each managed by its own VP and self sufficient. The challenge for senior management was there was little or no understanding across the divisions on what the others were doing. This meant any opportunity for cross-selling products was lost. I was in Corporate Communications and so funded a batch of video and still cameras and loaned them out to the divisions to film events and activities. We then took the tapes and made a monthly video news story. This was almost 15 years ago so the video had to be duplicated and sent by tape to each office to use in staff meetings but it did help.

Today with internet connections the opportunity for companies to work with video to help improve internal and external communications is much more powerful and cost effective.

Post by Ogilvy PR on the value of having a company video strategy.

Couldn't agree more...

Technology has moved faster than video production in many ways or at least how companies think about using it. When a corporate video is mentioned most people usually think mass distribution DVDs with extra postage and packing costs.

Internet or mobile phone/PDA delivery is now feasible so it is opening up a whole new world of communications.

Where would I use video in corporate communications?

• Training and education (must make every list list but how about refresher courses or updates and not just the 'set-piece' one off course? With so much health and safety regulations why not create a resource library so people can watch 'on demand'))
• Virtual Open Days for potential employees and graduate recruitment (costs enough to organise so why not make it available 365/24)
• Employee communication (video senior management teams messages to staff to ensure the message cascades through. This is especially true at product launch events. Sales team goes off to get trained but sales admin, customer service and others miss it. Why not capture it and use it for further communication.)
• Customer communication - marketing and technical support (use it as a pre-sales and post-sales tool. Why produce a white paper without a video introduction or presentation. If a picture is worth a 1000 words how much is a 3 - 5 minute video worth?)
• Channel communications (if selling indirect why leave your distribution partners out of it?)

YouTube was by far the most popular web site in the US in January reports PC Advisor.

In January it had 66.2 million unique visitors and 2.6 billion videos were watched.

Other video sources:

                                    # Unique Visitors    # Videos Watched

Fox (My Space)                      19m                   377m

Yahoo                                   22m                   299m

Google Video                          13m                     79m

That is a total of 3.35 billion clips watched by 120 million unique visitors (Note: Unique Visitots maybe shared across platforms)

Some interesting research by Rubber Republic on the use of YouTube for 'viral' videos. As to be expected the 80:20 + 1 metric applies.

20% of videos get 500+ views in the first month

80% get less that (majority will be less than 100 I would guess)

1% get 500,000+

What is not discussed is how this overlays to the campaign objectives. For example if the target was to have the FTSE 250 CxOs watch then a viewing number of 20 or 50 would be considered brilliant (I would of course question if YouTube was the right medium to deliver the video anyway). If your target was all teenagers then such numbers would be a disaster!

Cadbury's CEO Todd Stitzer has said that the monkey ad (see my easrlier posts) has helped lift yearly sales.

One comment that Todd makes is that the viral campaigns have helped engage with a younger audience. I totally agree with that. He also says that TV advertising suits 35+. I would disagree with that. All age groups are now well represented online.

The report in the Times also mentions that they are commissioning another ad from the agency that produced it. My advice. Don't bother. The chances or scoring so well again will be hard. With over 100 'mash-up' versions of the original ad why not take the money being paid to the agency and have them come up with a viral competition. The best ideas are showcased on a Cadbury web site and the winner (chosen by the public) gets to work with the agency to produce it as a TV ad. Now that would really engage people! 

Horowitz Associates' report - Broadband Content and Services, 2007 - shows strong growth in the consumption of video.

Biggest consumption is video news followed by non-professionally produced videos. Video podcasts come in at 10% watching in a week compared to 61% watching all types of video.

Mobile video is growing fast with 27% having access via smartphone, MP3/iPod players or video-enabled PDAs. Over a 1/3rd say they consume video content at least weekly.

(Thanks to Podcasting News for the source of this story)