MAD Perspectives Blog

It's April and that means its time to talk video.  For the next few weeks, my blogs will focus on video.  We are bombarded by moving images every day.  We share these images, we create content and we tell stories. Broadcasters incorporate YouTube videos into their newscasts.  We create videos for our personal and professional lives.  Businesses use video to explain, educate and inform their customers.  But, secretly, every content creator wants to create the viral video that rages like wildfire across the internet.

I was talking to Glenn Zimmerman of Mad Bear Productions (yes, we "mad" companies must stick together!) about every advertisers dream of creating the Old Spice Guy type commercial.  I asked him for tips on how to make a viral video.  His initial response was what is "viral"?  Is it about getting millions of hits or is it about five hundred views by the right people who are ready to take action?  His second comment referenced three attributes which may cause a video to go viral.  They are:  fuzzy animals, a baby or doing something completely insane on camera.  If your video includes any of these three, it has a slightly greater chance of becoming viral.

However, do any of these three elements support your overall strategy for creating the video in the first place? Video is not and should not be pursued in isolation from your marketing strategy.  It should reinforce and align with your goals.  If you have concerns about your brand and what it means, don't jump into creating a video. The video should reinforce your brand, represent your voice and tell a story that your audience wants to hear.  

When creating the video, pay attention to what outcome you are seeking.  What action do you want your customers to take? Do you want them to simply talk about your brand? Or, do you want them buy something, attend a conference or webinar or schedule a meeting? Be clear in your communication and make it easy of your customers to take action. At the same time, have fun in relaying your content.  Video is about a creative process.  

In the coming weeks, I'll share further tips from Mad Bear Productions, provide thoughts on what "social video" means, and reflect on what the professionals are talking about at this year's NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) conference.  Video is now an intrinsic part of our lives thanks firstly to TV, but also the internet and increasingly smartphones and tablets. Video is memorable storytelling.  How will you tell your story?

What's your perspective?

All it takes is a little twist to shift the picture in a kaleidoscope. Your digital media strategy is like a kaleidoscope with a variety of targets, participants, content and platforms. The challenge is in how to adapt to the shifts. Sharon Salzberg said "Life is like an ever shifting kaleidoscope. A slight change and all patterns alter." Social media is influencing the shape of new patterns everywhere.

Think about a kaleidoscope. If one crystal shifts, the whole pattern changes.  Each pattern is beautiful in its own way, yet we prefer some of them more than others. But, we can never get back to that one special pattern. Social media has the same impact. Each statement we make, each comment we receive shifts market perception. Sometimes these shifts are minor while other times these shifts are dramatic!  Fear of a changing pattern has inhibited many companies from embracing social media in a meaningful way. I would argue that a different perspective, is not necessarily a bad perspective. We can learn from our customers, takes lessons from disappointments and adapt to new perspectives.

The plethora of established (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) and emerging (Pinterest) social platforms can create confusion as to which networks can best help businesses achieve their goals. As always, it's about alignment of objectives. Shifting markets, expectations and technologies force a shift in the use of content and technology. However, the constant is in defining a strategy that is reviewed on a regular basis. Any strategy can be tweaked based on its success or failure. This tweaking can be considered the twisting of the kaleidoscope.  

Your aim is to find the right mix of traditional communication tools, online video, social media or other solutions to share your valuable content. My kaleidoscope shifts a little bit every day as I try different communication methods, learn from my clients, listen to their customers and adapt their stories to achieve results. I have followed new tweets, unlinked contacts, liked and unliked Facebook pages and adapted my blog to bring insight and value. I still work with clients developing traditional content such as data sheets, powerpoint and white papers. Their audiences demand it. What does your customers need from you? How does your kaleidoscope shift?

What's your perspective?

Every company has a story to tell.  There is the story about its creation and growth.  There are stories about its products and solutions.  There are insights about its impact on society, markets and individuals.  These stories are told through a wide variety of communication platforms. Social Media 101 would recommend defining a plan aligned with your strategy, then using the most popular social media platforms (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogging) to fulfill that plan. As we enter 2012, lets look at some additional tools that will expand the audience for your business stories!

1. Slideshare - As the name indicates, share your presentations.  Not only can companies post presentations and whitepapers, they can create audio to complement the information in the presentations. Slideshare is great outlet for establishing your position in the market, sharing insights in a visual manner, promoting new products, providing "how to" content, and more.  Tell stories through graphics, pictures and key highlights.

2. LinkedIn Groups - Every LinkedIn pundit promotes the benefits of a good profile, increasing connections and gathering recommendations. They also encourage involvement in groups, yet many of the individuals that I talk to don't realize the value of groups. There is a group for just about any industry, technology, profession or interest.  Your company can create groups specific to product categories or market needs. It provides an alternative channel to promote your company's value. Groups allow members to ask and answer questions between themselves or the group moderator. Stories evolve through these interactions.

3. HootSuite or TweetDeck - Simplify your monitoring and posting of social commentary. Each platform allows users to establish multiple accounts (i.e., on behalf of clients), receive notifications, schedule updates and view multiple columns of content on a single screen. These tools provide a single destination for managing your posts on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, WordPress, Ping and others. They provide you with instant access to content to keep your story relevant.

4.  Apps - 2011 saw the rise of the app as a means of sharing content on mobile devices.  Given the restrictions of these devices, apps streamline user access and interaction. Without apps, smartphones and tablets would not be enjoying such high levels of success. The challenge for B2B companies is identifying and developing apps to address employee and customer needs. Apple launched its B2B App Store in late 2011, acknowledging the unique needs of this market segment.  Apps simplify how employees or customers can engage with your company while on the go.  Some broad ideas for relevant apps could be customer service FAQs, order management, product highlights and demos, need feeds incorporating corporate, industry and social content.  Apps help you interact in a new way and share your targeted elements of your story.

Coordinating cross channel communication efforts will be the 2012 challenge for sales, marketing and customer support. Creating and adapting content for use across multiple platforms takes time and talent. Companies will face resource challenges to manage content development and distribution. In parallel, social platforms continue to emerge and there are several technologies that all marketing strategists should be addressing. They include the use of mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets), adoption of monitoring and analytics platforms and the importance of location based services.  

Be aware of how any platform can benefit your company's goals as well as increasing awareness and interaction. Use the same methodology you've been using to align and integrate your communications strategy. Define your audiences, the content they need and the best communication channels. Take your strategy to the next level -  testing and analyzing platforms relevant for your business and your customers.

What's your perspective?

i'm currently helping a business consulting business complete a 360º view of their consultants.  Given that their consultants are their key assets, my goal is to make sure that clients understand the value these consultants provide.  We are doing this using LinkedIn. 

As is the case with many happily employed individuals, they probably have a LinkedIn account and profile.  However, they have not taken the time to develop a robust, meaningful view of their capabilities.  Many users of LinkedIn see it simply as a platform for storing contact details or job hunting.  In fact, it is much more.

LinkedIn is your opportunity to share your value with prospective clients, colleagues and employers.  There are few meetings that occur these days where the participants have not checked each other out on LinkedIn.  In fact, a colleague shared a story about his high school age son who is caddying at the local golf course this summer.  His son is checking out the individuals for whom is caddying before he heads out to the course.  This gives him some insight which allows him to introduce conversation of interest to the golfers.  Guess what the end result is?  Bigger tips!

As I work with clients on their profiles, we are seeking ways to amplify their value.  This can be done through development of an interesting summary, calling out key traits and behaviors that differentiate the individual.  In addition, profiles include the ability to reflect links to key pages within corporate websites, online videos, blogs or publications.  Of course, one of the best ways to validate your capabilities is through recommendations.  The best example I've seen is a colleague who invited many of his connections to provide recommendations.  He was shocked by the overwhelming response.  He was able to win recommendations from teammates, managers, colleagues in different organizations, business partners, and most impressively, competitors!  This says a lot about his style of doing business!

In addition, LinkedIn enables you to join groups which show your areas of interest, list specialties or outside interests, which help those searching for key capabilities.  Or, select from a group of apps such as Tripit, Box.net or Amazon to share other aspects of your professional life.  You decide what represents your value.  You decide how to organize it on your profile page.  This is your profile. 

Business is about relationships.  People want to business with people they know and trust.  How about using LinkedIn to speed up the process of getting to know each other?  Share your interests, value and capabitilities.  It is your opportunity to shine!

What's your perspective?

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 recently read an IDC Whitepaper about the 360º Approach to Video.  I've written about companies using a 360º approach to define marketing strategies  and was definitely interested in IDC's opinion on video.  I consider video one of many tools that any company can use to connect and communicate with customers, partner or employees.  Video is memorable and is used for executive communications, customer education, employee training, product demos, customer testimonials and more.  Video is personal and can be consumed live or on-demand in the form of streaming media, webinar or teleconference.

The IDC whitepaper, which is sponsored by Online Video Platfrom vendor Kyte, primarily highlight features of privately funded Kyte.  However, it also touches on some relevants shifts in the market place:

1. Websites have become more interactive.  The days of one-way communication are gone and customers or consumers have an expecation for enticing, visually appealing, interactive sites.

2.  Video is everywhere.  This means video is on your website, on YouTube or Vimeo channels, on Facebook,on mobile devices and many other locations or devices.

3.  Content comes from many sources.  While companies produce a lot of their own content (i.e., executive communications, product training, ads, customer testimonials, etc.), they also invite customers to submit their own user-generated content

If you are thinking about how to incorporate video into your communications strategy.  Consider the following tips:

1.  Purpose.  What are you communicating with the video?  Are you educating, informing, inviting, or sharing?  These are all different types of stories and each story may be best told using different styles.  For example, if your video is to share your quarterly financial status, this is likely a professionally produced event with a well structured script.  However, if your are sharing information about an upcoming event or new product, you might decide that authenticity and personality are more important.  While you still have a script the style of the video may be more casual.  Alternatively, you may invite customers to share their experiences at an event or training.  They thoughts could be capture live and in person or via video uploads to a defined site.  If you define your goals for using video, it will make it easier to make decisions about what kind of content to create. Tip:  Align purpose and video style.

2.  Customer.  Where and how will your customers consume your video?  Are they in an office, at home or on the go?  Will they access content using their PC or a mobile device?  What operating system, browser, video player or video codecs will these devices use?  Is there an expection for live or social network interaction?  Understanding the answers to these questions, will help define the requirements for any online video solutions that you consider.  Tip:  Undertanding your target audience and their communication needs will drive business and technical requirements.

2. Infrastructure.  How will you handle video content?  Will you produce and manage your video assets on an in-house system or will you leverage an online service?  In either case, consider its features and functionalities (i.e., codecs supported, bitrates, end user interface, ease of use, server requirements, metadata model, social/community features, digital rights management, analytics and reporting, etc.) related to your goals.  In addition, consider how it will integrate with other enterprise applications, impact on corporate network, level of expertise required and support models.  Tip:  Align infrastructure requirements to your goals to identify the relevant solution.

Content is valuable.  Video is memorable.  Create a valuable and memorable online video strategy thinking about who your customers are, where they are and how will you need to be able to share video content with them.  For a list of leading online video platform vendors check out:  www.streamingmedia.com, www.onlinevideo.net ir www.vidcompare.com. 

How are you using video to communicate your story? 

What's your perspective?

Once upon a time...  These are the infamous words that start many a fairy tale.  But, it is also mean we about to hear a story.  George Lucas used similar words to launch a trilogy and then a prequel of stories about a galaxy far far away.  His Star Wars movies are considered some of the best stories of my generation.

We read stories to our kids before bedtime.  We go to the movies to become enthralled with drama, comedy, horror or adventure stories.  We go online to watch webisodes of programs created specifically for Internet consumption. How do you tell your story? The most common methods have been to write product briefs, whitepapers, case studies and press releases.  However, the past few years have shown that customers want to be part of the story.  The ability for customers to comment on products, blogs, facebook or twitter, has give customers a greater share of your public face.

This is good news! Your customers have a unique perspective of your company and it's products or services.  I've learned a lot about how to tell my story, both personal and professional, by listening to my partners and customers.  My customers want me to tell my story in a way that integrates with their PR strategy.  That's ok for me, my services are complimentary to the services offered by most PR firms and, in fact, should help drive incremental revenue for these firms. 

My customers want me to share my background in high tech and in communicating in B2B environments.  By including my background as a core part of my story, they realize that I can relate to the challenges they face.  They want to understand how I made the decision to leave corporate america and pursue independent consulting as this helps them understand my motivations.  They find comfort in understanding that I too, had to figure out how to tell my story, just as I'm helping them figure out what solutions will help them tell their story.

It's also about how to tell your story.  Do you tell you story on your company website?  Via your personal blog or industry analysts or in press releases or webinars or online video?  Depending on how your customer consumes information, your story can be told in many ways...and many times.

Listen to your customers.  They will provide you with great insights on what parts of your story are interesting to them, or not! They will help you prioritize your efforts and perhaps help you reduce some aspects of your marketing budget.  They will let you know who they listen to and perhaps influencers you should also listen to and influence.

Are your customers helping you tell your story?  Share your experiences with me!

What's your perspective?

I went to the NAB show in Las Vegas last week.  My reasons were twofold.  Reason #1 was to see what's new and intriguing in the technology addressing the broadcast and studio markets.  It is always exciting to see what's going on in this industry and as you can imagine, the buzz word was 3D!  In addition, there is a lot of attention being paid to multi-screen content consumption and how to enhance the online viewer experience.  As often happens, sports is the target market for a lot of the enhancements that will soon be available for online video.  ESPN has been a leader in how they incorporate technology into the viewing experience and many small vendors are uniquely focused on making the online experience as interesting and compelling as the living room experience.  Pay attention as local sports comes online.  By local, I mean the town little league teams or soccer/football teams.  It's exciting and accessible!

Why is this relevant for MAD Perspectives?  Well, what happens in the M&E space usually is adapted, in some way, by other industries.  while the demands from M&E are quite high, companies in healthcare, manufacturing, green tech, oil & gas and other industries are using video more frequently in their messaging and communication strategies.  In addition, video or imaging is increasingly a core part of their information gathering or business process.  Understanding where video trends are heading, can help these industries provide enriched services.  Imagine the benefits of 3D medical imagery!

What are some of the key things I learned?

-enabling multi-platform content consumption is HUGE (manage, encode, transude, protect, distribute, display)

- encoding bitrates have made big improvements (meaning, less bandwidth required for delivery of MPEG2, SD and HD content)

- telcos are FINALLY enabling CDN services (why let Akamai have all the fun?)

- 3D is super hot (and you shouldn't try to make a project if it wasn't shot that away originally, quality does matter)

- camera prices are decreasing, meaning UGC (user generated content) quality will improve


Reason #2 for heading out to Vegas was to check in with the myriad of vendors with whom I have relationships based on my past life at Hewlett-Packard.  I was interested to see what new products they had to offer but also to understand why they don't leverage digital media more effectively in the way they tell their story online.  These are vendors who live in the digital media market.  Their solutions focus on every nuance of the moving image, yet only a few of them tweet, blog or even use video on their websites.  These companies have interesting and compelling stories about how they have solved problems of encoding, content management, broadcast automation, storage, asset management, content distribution and more.  They understand the power of video.  They understand the importance of personal relationships.  Yet, they haven't "crossed the chasm" to utilize various digital media solutions available to them to make their stories come alive.

I think the challenge for many of these companies is the understanding of how to leverage social media, in particular, in a B2B market.  We all understand social media as a person to person medium and have even seen the benefits in B2C markets.  Yet, B2B lags behind.  This is primarily due to:

- lack of time and resource - many companies have thinned their marketing staffs and are concerned about the time it may take to tweet or blog

- risk management - companies fear employees misrepresenting the company, sharing confidential information, or exposing compone networks to viruses

- traditional marketing mindset - these companies are still in a push marketing mode where they control the message

I believe we will see a shift in B2B adoption of digital media to tell their story as we move through the next couple years.  The economy is slowly turning, as evidenced by the increased attendance at NAB this year vs. 2009.  I think we are also seeing other indicators (i.e., strong earnings reports, flat unemployment, upward movement in the stock market).

Yes, it takes time to define a digital media strategy.  However, your customers are spending more time online researching, learning and comparing solutions.  You need to be memorable and share your story in a meaningful way.  You need to reach out to your customers via the channels that they use (and the "millennials" are visual and social). 

What's your perspective?

MAD Perspectives' charter is to help companies define and plan their digital media strategy.  But, I often am greeted with quizzical looks.  These looks are that individual's request for further definition about my business.  Their primary question is, what is digital media?!  Interestingly, this is a term that has been around for quite some time, but with new buzz words emerging every day, it is no wonder that this term has been lost in the shuffle.  Let me take a few minutes to share my opinion on what digital media is and how it can help you and your business (btw, you use digital media every day!).

Digital Media is an amalgamation of tools that allow us to communicate, electronically, using text, images, audio and video.  These tools include software, hardware and hosted platforms to create, edit, store, manage, deliver, protect and distribute digital content.  These tools allow individuals and companies to connect, collaborate and communicate for fun or for business.  Let's explore a bit more.

The term digital media is the result of the marriage of technology and creative arts.  It is the digitization of compelling content (i.e., pictures, graphics, audio or video) for distribution across a network.   It is assumed that these are not analog radio or tv networks, but IP (or some evolution there of) networks.  As the internet became commonplace and networks became more sophisticated, businesses and consumers alike, eagerly consumed online content.  We looked forward to the old AOL message "You've Got Mail".  We took email a step further and started attaching files, pictures and video.  Digital media made the world seem a little bit smaller.

Websites evolved from static, brochure-like pages of information to interactive destinations that enabled consumers to post opinions, share recommendations and download information.  Depending on the site, we could watch video.  I remember watching clips from the 2003 World Series between my NY Yankees and the Florida Marlins (yeah, the Yankees lost, sigh!) on a PC while I was traveling in Europe.  Performance was sketchy at best, but it was awesome to be able to see at least a little bit of the game.

Technology has advanced.  Forget the arguments over formats, codecs, bitrates, bandwidth, editing suites, platforms, etc. They can all be sorted out.  Now, we take online video for granted.  In some cases we still have high expectations for video quality, but YouTube has taught us that quality may not always be the primary concern.  Many business websites incorporate video, flash or animation to augment their story.  User-generated content is de-rigueur for consumer sites and broadcast television.  Our perspectives, our thoughts and our images are all part of the story, regardless of whether it is entertainment, news, B2B or consumer oriented.  We do this via online video, social media, web conferencing, video conferencing or interactive marketing.  This is digital media.

Digital Media is our ability to share information, images, pictures, presentations, videos, animations about our companies, our products, ourselves while we are online, regardless of network or device.  What's your strategy for using digital media to tell your story?

What's your perspective?