Posted on by Dave J.

21st Century video, part 2

I’m bullish on video for B2B (online) marketing. If it’s done right, anyway.

Like when we started building websites 10 years ago, it was easy to get it wrong. Some thought they could just repurpose their paper brochures into a website. Some got caught up in the stuff paper can’t do, like animated GIFs and hideous backgrounds.

Video online is different than standard corporate videos of old, or recent, vintage. My tastes in video have changed over the last year, as YouTube has gone from a toy to a staple. In my mind, YouTube is to video as blogs are to press releases.

So, all we need to do is apply the YouTube mentality to our videos, right? Except we’ve never done video before, and especially never done YouTube stuff. As I said yesterday, “Video is easy now, but getting it right is hard.”

Unlike all the bloggers who tried to become blog-consultants, I don’t hear YouTubers becoming video consultants. Probably aren’t enough of them to go around anyway. But I think for many companies like mine, video has much more possibility than blogs do, so where’s the help?

One agency stepping up to the opportunity is The Mothers of Invention, led by Robert Rosenthal (check out his frank blog, Freaking Marketing). They are giving away a free video production, and promoting it with, what else, a video in mini-site Web Liberation Army. See Robert’s post for all the links and details, as well as his commentary.

Robert’s a upright guy, and I see no problem in entering his contest. The worst that could happen is that you would be ahead of the learning curve.

Can you do it yourself, or do you need an agency? Robert’s advice to me, offline, was this: “start with the idea.” So, go start thinking!

7 Replies to “21st Century video, part 2”

  1. A somewhat related video trend that we are noticing at LabX which falls into the commerce side of marketing is our B2B vendors using videos to sell instrumentation (typically used equipment). One customer has been successfully using product videos to satisfy their buyers by demonstrating the working unit just prior to shipping. In a virtual shopping world, B2B buyers are eating this up! Hitechtrader.com is the company; you can see one of their items online, or a direct link to the video below. < HREF="http://www.hitechtrader.com/detail.cfm?autonumber=61987" REL="nofollow">http://www.hitechtrader.com/detail.cfm?autonumber=61987<>< HREF="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3870731801354256613" REL="nofollow">http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3870731801354256613<>

  2. Thanks for the immensely kind words, Dave. The only person who ever said nicer things about me was my mother.

  3. Thanks for the immensely kind words, Dave. The only person who ever said nicer things about me was my mother.

  4. Ken–Thanks for the example. So simple and very effective. Robert–Your welcome. Your mother, huh? The mother, of, um, invention? Hee.

  5. Ken–Thanks for the example. So simple and very effective. Robert–Your welcome. Your mother, huh? The mother, of, um, invention? Hee.

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