Videos and the World of Marketing

I can still remember the days when documents were sent down to the typing pool to be completed. Those days are long gone because the advent of the computer changed business administration forever. Interestingly, in those long gone days typing was seen as a skill and the young executive, manager or business administrator would delegate the tasks to an appropriate person. Today businesses don’t have such luxuries; even the CEOs of many global corporations can be seen using their own laptops to type memos and emails.

I raise this example because I feel that the same thing will happen with video production in the business arena. The World Advertising Research Centre has predicted that online video ad spend growth will hit 52% in the US by the end of 2011: this compares a rise of just 20% for online as a whole. Let us now consider YouTube, their statistics indicate that over 3 billion videos are viewed every day and 48 hours of video are uploaded every minute!

Technology advances now mean the production of videos can be completed by the average lay person. Most PC’s will have the Movie Maker software and Macs the Imovie software. There are also many other reasonably priced packages available on the market including:

Camtasia
CyberLink PowerDirector
Corel VideoStudio Pro X4
MAGIX Movie Edit Pro
Roxio Creator
VideoPad
Pinnacle Studio HD

Alternatively you could go for the high spec end of Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut. The more innovative producer may even consider animation, again you no longer have to be an expert: with products like Crazytalk from Reallusion you can produce professionally looking animated video in minutes.

So how does this fit in the business arena? Clearly the world of marketing and communications is best placed to embrace it. Videos can be created to support the promotion of a brand or educate the user, these can sit on websites or social media channels. Alternatively they can be produced in DVD format or on one of the many mass storage devises. Videos are also an ideal way to communicate messages. These can be embed into electronic news letters, produced as video blogs, stored on company websites or social media channels.

Clearly there is a massive opportunity, one which many businesses have failed to utilise. The growth of the mobile market means that cellular phones and tablet devices are being used more to surf the web. These suited the video format, again going back to YouTube’s statistics: their mobile hit rate has trebling this year and it accounts for 13% of the daily views.

My last words are simple, why not have a go at doing some editing yourself: you will see how simple it is. You should then consider re-evaluating the job descriptions of your marketing and/or communication assistants. They will be the ideal people to build the capabilities within the business.

Credits:

The lead picture is an adaption of the work by Idea go:

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=809

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Alan Shaw

Director & Senior Lecturer at Strategic Planet & Leeds Beckett University

Dr Alan Shaw is a Senior Lecturer and Marketing consultant focusing on a range of sectors. His main interests are in strategy development, social marketing, digital marketing, advertising, consumer behaviour and marketing application.