The soon to be released film 'Australia', directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman has been releasing 'behind the scenes' footage and will continue to do so up until the release date.

Not only does it give some unique insights to the filming and production but it also helps build interest in the film.

Normally a 'directors' mini production would be used to support the film once it went to DVD (an extra DVD in a special version at a higher price) but in this case the content is being used as part of a WOM and online marketing campaign. There is nothing to stop the podcasts being included in an extra DVD with or without additional scenes and comments/interviews.

Looking at the Forum section shows there are many active threads. In total these threads have been read almost 200k people. The numbers of comments made also run into many thousands. That is a good deal on online buzz that will help drive the audience when the film opens later this year.

For other businesses you have only got to look at what Lego has done in engaging with its community to launch pre-release products and create an online buzz to see what would be possible. Many companies will have products and services that during the product life cycle can be opened up to community engagement and conversation.

Looking back at my career every product launch we had to work really hard to get bums on seats on a pan-European seminar and demo roll out tour. It was a massive marketing exercise to promote it via direct marketing, local advertising and channel support and promotion activities. What if we already had an active community that had been engaged as part of the product development and testing phase? As and when we came to run the local events we would have had a core potential audience who we were already in conversation with! By offering them a chance to invite friends and business colleagues we may have been well on the way to getting our audience!

As a business if you have been wondering about the use of webvideo and video podcasts to communicate with employees or your customers here are four bits of information to factor into your decision making process.

• Broadband charges reducing – meaning more people will upgrade top speeds that makes multi-media data use possible (60%+ already on broadband according to the last Ofcom survey)

• BT’s plans for fibre optic connections – increased speed will allow even greater use of on-demand video (but maybe not rural areas with limited demand)

• The BBC’s announcement of hitting 75 millions streams via their iPlayer plus….

• Virgin Media announcing 10 million streams via their TV implementation of the iPlayer – showing downloading and consumption of video is becoming more mainstream with consumers.

As a video production company (putting my Focus hat on) we are always interested in what market researchers say about the growth of video. Hitwise UK is reporting that video searches has increased substantially in the last 12 months from almost 1 in 120 to 1 in 45 of all searches.

Also video website traffic has increased 170%+ in the last 12 months.

At the Unicom conference 'Web 2 and Beyond', Joyce Lewis of the University of Southampton talked about their findings that video content is a powerful way to engage with an audience through emotional depth and colour. The ECS (School of Electronics and Computer Science) are now producing video podcasts for internal and external communication.

The day before Joyce spoke Nielsen released its latest findings on the state of social media in the UK.

They found that YouTube had now displaced Wikipedia as the top social media site visited.

Other highlights:

• 63% of all UK people online visited at least one social media site in 2007
• Friends Reunited dropped out of the Top 10
• Half of the Top 10 Fastest Growing sites are video based

To quote Alex Burmaster, Internet Analyst, Nielsen Online in their press release:

Sometimes it takes something big to shake up installed consumer inertia.

Maybe sometime in the future the US will look at the current writers strike as the moment that endless repeats pushed people to look for new sources of entertainment and they went to online video.

Podcasting News quotes recent Comscore research showing ever greater numbers of people in the US watching video content online.

Some of the highlights from the research:

• U.S. Internet users watched more than 10 billion videos online during December, representing the single heaviest month for online video consumption since comScore initiated its tracking service.
• Google’s video sites saw substantial growth, accounting for nearly one out of every three videos viewed online.
• Google’s video sites captured the largest online video audience with 79 million unique viewers, followed by Fox Interactive Media with 43.9 million and Yahoo! Sites with 38.2 million.
• The average video duration was 2.8 minutes.

With these numbers marketing and PR folks should be considering the use of video podcasts to help get their message across. The problem is that media planners are not really upto speed in this space and do not get a commission as they would from radio and TV.

      Jeff Jarvis                        Shel Israel

It is really interesting to see how video is making inroads into citizen and now professional journalism.

Shel Israel has a thoughful post about how he is using video and his 'wisdom of the crowds' editorial control for article accuracy.

Beet.TV has an interesting article on how Reuters is mobile phone video to help news gathering.

Whenever the studio crew do a location shoot it is a big logistics exercise so the amount of pre-planning is big. They have to worry about people, kit and back-up kit. If working on a countryside shoot they have to take generators as well as lots of pre-charged battery packs (not to mention bacon butties!)

The crew are always checking and double checking they have everything including if they have remembered the checklist and checked everything.

Then comes the big moment of setting off and then setting up. In this case it was filming Iolo Williams, the presenter on Llangorse Lake in Wales.

That’s when you realise that with all brilliant project management skills there is one think we just cannot control....

....the weather....

John Chambers, CEO of CISCO has done a video podcast. Check it out on the Cisco blog.

I have long been an advocate of a CEO and the senior management team using audio and video to help get their message across to internal and external audiences. While there is always a place for the corporate ‘state-of-the-nation’ video with a full crew and studio in use, there is a lot to be said for a straight forward conversation. Look at John in his formal 'suited and booted' picture on the web. Now look at John in the video - just like you would see him in a staff meeting.  

Many years ago I was in Corporate Communications and had to run the monthly and quarterly employee updates. We made extensive use of video to capture senior executives feedback on what was happening. In those days it was a major exercise as everything had to be physically distributed to the local offices on tape. We still had to get all employees into their local office to access a video recorder as not everyone had one at home. To be honest with almost 2000 employees in Europe we just did not have the budget and logistics resources to send tapes to everyone anyway!

Today those logistic worries and costs have reduced to almost zero. Using the internet and broadband video and audio feeds can be delivered to a desktop wherever people are based.