More than text or still imagery, video has the power to summon visceral emotion. These feelings can be inspiring and uplifting, affirmations of our better selves, or they can be base and degrading screeds, as delivered by those wedge-driving Russian trollbots.
That emotional backdrop makes this video created by Dan Margulis, an advertising Group Creative Director at Doner, very intriguing…
Dan worked with content production company Atlas Industries to shoot this video last Sunday during Detroit’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade. It anchors “No Irish Pub”: a website Dan built as part of his project, which he describes this way: “This social experiment hopes to foster thought and dialog around immigration in America.” The Detroit Free Press wrote a nice account of peoples’ reactions during the event.
God love him. If it makes people think and talk instead of post and shout, he’ll have accomplished a grand thing. And either way, good on him for trying.
You see it again and again on corporate YouTube channels: a random smattering of videos, often with different tones and themes, none with any significant number of views. That’s usually because their channels function as a parking lot for whatever video content they have on hand. Hey, it’s free, what’s there to lose?
Opportunity for starters. As the world’s second largest search engine with a reported three billion searches per month, YouTube may be a ridiculously crowded platform, but it’s the premiere destination for anyone looking for video-based communication. And companies should be there because people are looking…
But companies shouldn’t be there simply with recycled broadcast spots. Digital video works 180º differently than broadcast; instead of being intentionally general to reach 500,000 people, digital video narrowcasts to reach the right 5,000 people. The point is to target an ideal audience (or audiences), customize our story messages to engage them, and communicate as specifically and singularly as we can, hoping to earn their attention by speaking directly to their wants, needs, and interests.
Audiences are selfish.
If you grew up in the broadcast era, that’s a hard pill to swallow, but it’s definitely reality. The digital environment empowers everyone to select programming they want to watch and avoid whatever they don’t. As a result, we each create our own networks around our own interests. This doesn’t mean there’s no place for corporate messages, it simply means we must adapt them to fit the environment. The more we find ways to align our corporate wants and needs with the wants and needs of a specific audience, the more our messages resonate. And the more our audience will share that content with like-minded people across their own networks, expanding our ideal audience for us. Simply put, the more we embrace narrowcast, the more success we’ll have with our digital video content.
And the less likely we’ll be to have meager view counts on our YouTube channels.
Twenty-two pages of facts, links, and thinking on the many ways video has evolved from a selling platform to the preferred communications platform.
Our world has changed. Smart companies have commissioned research to learn exactly how so I’ve been reading what they shared, sifting through the hyperbole and exaggeration endemic to the blogging world, all to catalogue the best thinking on how to leverage online video.
I want to share this thinking with anyone and everyone who may be interested. Download it, share it, use it however it may help; I simply ask that if you have feedback or input on how to make it better, share your thoughts. Our digital world is iterative which makes constant improvement a real possibility.
As I post this, we stand halfway between the end of Hanukkah and Christmas day; consider this my ecumenical Holiday gift to you. Read it in good health. And all the best for the New Year.
So yesterday, I was lucky enough to present for the West Michigan Content Strategy Meetup’s first-ever lunch and learn webinar.
Of course, being that it was ‘first ever’ and involved warring Apple and Google technology platforms, it was a bit of a car wreck; dropped signals, video blackouts, etc. But happily, like all things digital and video, you can fix it in post. So we did.
My thanks to my old friend Scott Smith and the charming and redoubtable Laura Bergells for making this a terrific experience, technical difficulties and all.
You don’t need to caption everything, but you should always consider it. Because people don’t watch online video the same way they watch television. Or at least, in the same places. And context changes everything…
