MAD Perspectives Blog

I’ve been thinking a lot about the broadcast industry since my return from IBC2010 in Amsterdam, two weeks ago.  As I talk to companies about their use of online vide, social media and other digital media solutions there are many topics which heavily leverage the experience of the largest content owners, broadcasters.  Broadcasters are in the business of creating, managing and distributing content.  They are telling stories to inform, educate and entertain.

Corporations also have stories to tell and they have an increasing number of channels via which they can tell their stories.  The days of static brochures and websites are gone, or at the very least, rapidly disappearing.  Broadcasters have been forced to adopt ‘new media’ solutions to remain relevant.  These new media solutions include:

-          video-on-demand via their branded websites plus social sites such as YouTube

-          blogging to share another perspective on a story or to invite ongoing discussion

-          tweeting on Twitter and posting on Facebook to increase demographic, geographic or socio-graphic reach

-          distributing content via Internet, 3G/4G networks and Wi-Fi to devices of all types

These communication channels allow broadcasters to reach their customers in a new way, in a more interactive, personal and some would say, authentic, manner.  Do corporations in the manufacturing, financial services, healthcare or high tech industries, for example, need to be sharing content in the same way?  The answer is, YES!   Corporations have many stories to tell.  In addition to information about their products, they have insights on their industry and customers.  They can discuss company vision, history, philanthropy or culture, business challenges. They can train their customers, business partners or employees.  Companies have many stories to tell and many channels through which they can reach their customers.

What can they learn from broadcasters?  They can leverage an understanding of:

-          Who is your target customer or audience?  What kind of content do they want to see or read? Product information, customer support issues, competitive analysis, industry benchmarks are all possible topics.   Understanding the stories that need to be told can help you develop a content strategy addressing the needs of your customers.

-          What format does your content need to be in?  Various types of content such as audio, video, pictures or text will tell the story in different ways.  Often video is the most memorable, but it can also be the most expensive.   Text provides a way to analyze a situation from multiple perspectives and easily distributed and saved.  It is important to consider the content that format that will make the best impact for the target customer.

-          How and where will you distribute your content?    Where are you customers when you tell your story?  Will you need to re-purpose content for different uses?  For example, should an executive video be prepared for distribution to both and mobile?  Is it effective if consumed on a mobile phone?  Or, how about a product training video?  Is it useful for it to be posted on YouTube as well as your corporate website?

-          How will you manage your content?  How and where will you store it and find it when you need to access it?  There are metadata (the information about the content) and taxonomy (the hierarchical classification of content) issues to address early on.  Will you need access to the content on a regular basis or is it possible to store it remotely?

These are just a few questions that broadcasters address every day.  They seek to maximize impact while streamlining and managing costs related to the production and management of their content.  Content IS their business.  As your company considers its use of digital media solutions to communicate, consider the relevance of each channel for reaching your desired audience.   You also want to maximize your impact and differentiate your market offer.  Think like a broadcaster when telling your story and incorporating different types of media.  You’ll soon have a multi-channel strategy that expands your reach and improves interaction with your customers.  How do you tell your corporate story?

What’s your perspective?

I've spent the last 10 years strategizing, defining, developing and enabling IT based digital media solutions for telecommunication, media & entertainment companies.  However, the solutions developed for and utilized by these industries are also relevant for companies in other industry segments, such as manufacturing, financial services, high tech, pharmaceutical, healthcare and more.  The International Broadcasting Conference is a excellent forum for checking out current and emerging solutions enabling creation, management and distribution of digital media.  So, what were the hot topics at IBC that we need to be watching?  It's all about the "3's.

3D - Sure, we've all seen the movies and enjoyed the interactive and immersive feeling that 3D provides.  It's highly entertaining and has certainly helped studio revenues.  But whey is this relevant for the rest of the world.  No, enterprise webcasts aren't going 3D.  However, they have already become more interactive thanks to embedded functionality enabling simultaneous chat streams and backchannels for Twitter and Facebook.  who knows what type of interactivity may follow.  This interactivity personalizes the enterprise, enables customers to communicate more easily with each other and allows the enterprise to get instant feedback (just like the movide producer & director gets to hear the oohs and aughs of their theater audiences).  CAD design requirements for animated features have also benefited engineering design for car parts, buildings and pharmaceutical products.  the investments made by the media industry, open doors, trickle down and facilitate advancements in other industries.  They raise our individual expectations for how we can visualize and develop new products.

3 Screens - Content owners and content distributors have been talking about enabling consumers to access entertainment content on 3 screens, TV, PC and mobile device, for ages.  The visionary demos were fascinating.  However, we have not reached the point of reality where network equipment providers, like Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson, are delivering the solutions to telecommunication providers to simplify the viewing of content on any device.  The process is seamless for the consumer, yet extremely complex for the telecommunications provider. 

Why is this relevant for the enterprise?  Every company wants to achieve as many customer touch points as possible.  Enterprise content needs to be as easily accessible as entertainment content.  The 3 screens may not be the same.  For enterprise we may consider PC, mobile and social networks or apps.  Companies have been managing corporate websites for ages but are now facing the dual challenge of how to share content on social platforms and mobile devices.  Knowing that the telecommunication infrastructure is in place to manage content distribution adresses one critical element of the value chain.

Were you at IBC?  I'd love to understand your take aways and perspectives on the relvance of media centric solution for the enterprise.

What's your perspective?

I recently attended IBC as mentioned in my blog of Sep 8.  I was curious to understand how this event which focuses on the technology surrounding the broadcast and media industries, would reflect the increasing uses of social computing.  I was surprised to find only a limited presence.

As I meandered through the exhibition, I was looking for indications that vendors recognized the value of the conversation that social media enables.  These vendors clearly understand the power of video and have created, developed and enhanced their abilities to create, manage and distribute all kinds of video content.   This industry, like many others, is all about workflow.  There is a sequence of events that must occur and if that sequence is interrupted there is usually an impact on the outcome - video or storytelling in this case.

There are a variety of platforms that enable the intergration of applications for ingest, store, edit, manage or distribute of a media asset.  These platforms simplify how organizations manage their digital workflows.  There are conversations that accompany the various tasks within these workflows.  Today, most of these discussion occur on the phone or via email.  I wonder if there is an opportunity to utilize social networking tools to facilitate the conversation.

Would project teams using tools such as Adobe After Effects or Apple Final Cut Pro be interested in opening the post-production editing disucssion to the usually dispersed team via a social computing tool (with relevant security models in place)?  Would it be relevant to discuss they myriad of post-production processes?  Could it be useful to track and capture this discussion?  Social media is inclusive.  It allows all community participants to follow and engage in the discussion.  It's a perspective I plan to investigate further.

What's your perspective?