Dec 15 08
Corporate Video
By Renn Vara
Cisco recently announced new products to help companies deliver video to their customers and stakeholders. They believe that 90% of Internet traffic will be video in the next few years. That’s a lot of corporate video. Scary.
This got me thinking about an interesting conversation last week with a senior executive from a top security software firm. His team had conducted an internal survey to determine what employees and sales people wanted from their intranet. Most of the usual stuff came up, like refreshing the content, having a good search tool, better categories, and in general making it more user-friendly.
One of the questions asked was whether they’d like to have audio and video content on the site. Only 1 in 5 said they would. This was considerably lower than most any other category. So my customer said his team is now questioning whether to use video for communicating or for product training at all. It got me thinking.
Why would employees say they don’t want audio or video? The hit rate for a video on their company site is 5 and 10 times more than any written document. And these same people watch an inordinate amount of television, cruise the net watching video far and above reading articles, constantly listen to radio, and assuming they are like the rest of us, read less and less in their personal lives. So what are they really saying?
Maybe there’s more to this than what the data is telling my customer, which is often true with data-only surveys. Maybe they are saying
>> “We don’t want to waste resources on you hacks and PR people making videos.”
>> “Most corporate videos are so carefully produced that they don’t reveal anything important to my work, and frankly, I don’t have time to wade through your crap.”
>> “I have a real job, and I’ll be damned if I want you guys to have fun hobnobbing with executives shooting video or recording radio shows.”
>> “And finally, “If I say I want audio or video, you’ll do it worse than my teenage son, who happens to be pretty damn good at it.”
You see, those of use who produce corporate video have so succumbed to years and years of corporate pressure to be pretty and safe, that the average corporate video is worse than public access television from a content perspective.
So what needs to change? Here’s my list:
>> Stop with the large video crews. Use one good HD camera, steal light from the outside, and study YouTube until you get what the kids are doing so successfully.
>> Take the scripts away, use outlines, and make your leaders talk from their hearts and heads versus from your carefully sculpted messaging. Make the content real.
>> And finally, stop over thinking it. Video works. Use it, and insist that your leaders use it too. But keep it short, knowing that most people can’t watch more than two minutes of anything unless it’s . . . well, you know.
Let me know what you think.
