21st Century video, part 1

I’ve been quiet. Went on vacation, got geocache #1000, been plugging away at my new website. But when the blog is quiet, I seem to generate interesting emails. Here’s one:

“Have you ever dealt with the 21st Century Business, where General Haig and others sell your Company? They produce a video for 4 minutes on TV, advertising in airplanes, etc.”

Turns out that 21st Century Business (previously World Business Review) makes these videos into a paid-programming show on CNBC, plus distribution on some airlines video systems. The client gets the video for additional collateral usage, of course, as well as bragging rights for being associated with Alexander Haig (that being a 10 second intro).

Guess how much?? $24K.

Now maybe for some clients the exposure and validation is needed, or the cost is just a drop in the budget, but for smaller industrial marketers like myself (and the submitter), I think its money best spent elsewhere.

The bigger problem is that despite the 21st century moniker, the approach is 20th century. The video is stuffy, boring, and like a lot of CEO interviews, full of good sounding talk that don’t amount to much. Here’s a sample of one:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdgaTXbMhuk]

I talked about video for B2B earlier this year, in my post: B2B Content 2.0: Video, where I say “Video is easy now, but getting it right is hard.”. Please reread that, then we’ll get to part 2 of this post.