I’m back on MarketingProfs’ DailyFix blog with my new post – “When YouTube met Corporate America…”. The following is a recap with minor modifications:
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Many of you may have noticed a recent blog conversation initiated by Scoble last week, regarding video demos. Scoble cites many powerful reasons for corporate marketers to be paying attention to the power of multi-media. In his own words:
1. Cost: The investment needed here is so small it isn’t even funny.
2. Target Audience: Sizeable? In a pool as large as Microsoft has? I don’t think so. The audience sizes here are too small to make that claim directly. But I saw my videos get quoted in newspapers and on TV shows which went to millions of poeple. So, who knows?
3. Success Rate: Well, remember that Adobe Acrobat 8 video demo I put up last week? Turns out it had 50% more visits than our other podcasts last week.
4. Effectiveness: By the way, when I was in London, England, I met a company that changed its entire development methodology because of one of my video demos. So, anecdotally, at least, video is a pretty persuasive way to convince people that your new product or service rocks.
(Source: Scoble’s post and related comments)
Dave McClure, Master of 500 Hats chimes in, regarding a similar success:
We just uploaded the oDesk product demo to YouTube a few weeks ago, and almost instantly it was in the top 10 results on Yahoo for oDesk. darn impressive.
Over the past week, you may have also noticed a trend with the launch of web-based media shows such as Rev3 and the ScobleShow. It left me wondering how all this is going to impact the corporate marketing machinery (marketing collateral, events, etc…) that most Fortune 500 companies have assembled over time and what changes we may see in the near future.
If startups can leverage the enormous popularity of video collaboration sites like YouTube, surely tech behemoths can emulate their success. A cursory look at a Fortune 500 website throws opens enormous opportunities. Here are some areas multi-media will creep in (w/ appropriate links to samples of early-adopters):
1. Product Demos – Screencasts, Demo videos, Tutorials, Flash Demos
2. Customer Success – Case studies, Customer Videos, Partner Success
3. Investor Relations – ViewPoint
4. Training Videos – RedHat training videos
5. PR – Second Life
6. Events – Mockumentary, TV feed
If I were to pick an example of a company that’s been pretty forward thinking from a multi-media perspective, it’d have to be RedHat. Check out their comprehensive video site here.
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As for Scoble’s suggestion, looks like Google did take him seriously and launched the official 49 second intro for Google Reader. Check it out below.
Interestingly enough, I found a much more descriptive 10 minute Google Reader demo uploaded by a user, reminding us once again of the power of user-created content! Check that out here.
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Mario Sundar's Speakeasy 
[…] Let me preface the rest of the post by saying that the LONG podcasts format will rule when iTv takes over. However, under present listening/streaming conditions, listening to a 2 hour long podcast for the common user may not work out. I’d agree with Leo that for technophile early-adopters, 2 hours may not seem long, but if podcasting is to grow into mainstream media, the content consumption channel has to evolve. Until then, the only way to stir adoption is through one of two methods: […]
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