Video

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Blockbuster is clearing out Flips

Share This!

When I talk about employee-generated video for intranets and the Web, I usually pull out my Flip video camera. Some people have seen it, but most ooh and aah. “How much?” they ask. “Where can I get one?”

About $149, I answer. Best Buy, Target, and the Flip website.

That was the conversation at a talk I gave recently in Phoenix. Shortly afterward, I got an email from Al Shiya, who had remembered seeing the Flip at Costco. He headed to his local store only to learn Costco no longer sells them. An employee, however, told him Blockbuster carried the camera. So Al headed to Blockbuster, where he found the model that stores an hour of AVI video for $100. Blockbuster is clearing them out. “Bought two,” Al said, then added that he thought I might want to pass that along.

Thanks, Al. I just did.

I’m not sure if these are the regular Flip cameras or the Flip Ultras like the one I have, but either way, it’s a bargain.

Friday, March 21, 2008

CGM: Company-Generated Media a solid way for business to participate in social media

Share This!

Every now and then, you chance on an example of a business tapping into social media so naturally and wisely that it just warms your heart. File this one under “corporate social responsibility.”

The tale begins with a philanthropic effort by the lead singer of a band called Five for Fighting (one of the bazillion bands of which I have been unaware). John Ondrasik seems to have a do-good streak, since a lot of his pop-style music is cause-related. Ondrasik launched a website called What Kind of World Do You Want with a unique approach to rasing money for charitable causes.

The site, inspired by a Five for Fighting music video titled “World” invites people to create an upload a video that answers that question, “What kind of world do you want?” The video submission form includes a menu from which to choose one of five charities Ondrasik has designated. Each time any of the 239 videos submitted to the site (the most recent on March 16) are viewed, money is donated to the related charity. The funds are donated by individuals who contribute to the site; their names and pledges are listed on the home page, like this one:

Jo A. Reynolds has pledged $15 for the sites charities. Watch any video and approximately $1 will be raised for the charity associated with that video.

To date, the effort—run solely by Ondrasik without the assistance of any paid staff—has rasied $174,960. Ondrasik notes that all the money raised goes to the charities except for the fees collected by Revver.com, where the videos are hosted, and 1.25% for administrative costs (such as site hosting).

The site came to the attention of TriWest Healthcare Alliance, which administers the TRICARE program for military Service members and their families in the 21-state West Region. The organization produced a video to contribute to the site called ”Freedom Never Cries,” designating contributions to Operation Homefront, a nonprofit started by the wife of a soldier stationed in Iraq. The organization provides emergency assistance to soldiers and their families.

“TriWest worked with John Ondrasic in producing the video,” says Kristen Ward, who works in TriWest’s corporate communications department. (Kristen attended Ragan’s Social Media conference in Las Vegas, and contacted me afterwards to let me know about the effort and ask about how to get an email to go viral in order to get more people to watch the video.) Ondrasik’s vocals serve as the audio track for the video. “TriWest established a relationship with him when he was looking for a corporate sponsor to produce his “For the Troops” CD, a compilation album of 13 artists that was distributed free to troop in America and overseas.”

In addition to producing the video, TriWest has committed to pay $1 to Operation Homefront every time the video is viewed, up to a ceiling of $30,000. “Once $30,000 is reached, we hope other sponsors will pick up where we left off and also contribute to the organization.”

So far, the video has been viewed 7,736 times and has attracted two pages of comments, all of which are summed up by this one: “What a wonderful video. I can’t stop crying because it is so true. And I remind myself how proud I am of my husband and all the men and women who gave the freedom to me.”

That’s not enough views, according to Kristen; TriWest is hoping for 30,000 views in a single month and ultimately get into the millions. The company has devised a three-phased campaign to get to that lofty goal, beginning with the grassroots viral email that will drive people to the video. After that, the company will reach out to local and national civilian and military media; the company is also seeking a sponsor to fund contributions after TriWest’s $30,000 contribution is tapped out. The final phase of the campaign will involve more outreach to national civilian media.

More companies should take a lesson from TriWest which, rather than just write a check, TriWest got engaged through the production of a video to add to those already submitted by consumers and companies, added the money to fund contributions from views of the video, and will continue to contribute time and resources to grow donations beyond their own gift. This is particularly relevant given the American Cancer Society’s failure to capitalize on the efforts of the grassroots ”Frozen Pea Fund,” and that’s just one example of businesses missing the boat on social media.

Should you be inclined to support the effort, you can just watch the video, or you can forward along the email to your friends and family. The text of the email follows:

Support our Troops and their families by watching this powerful and important video on the Five For Fighting charity website.  Just Click Here: http://tinyurl.com/2u5zea

Through a $30,000 contribution from TriWest Healthcare Alliance, the site will donate about $1.00 per view to Operation Homefront for the first 30,000 views.

Operation Homefront is an organization that provides emergency assistance to our troops and the families they leave behind, and was started by a wife who’s husband is currently stationed in Iraq.

Let’s get to 30,000 and more. Please forward this e-mail to anyone you know who appreciates freedom, and let’s help those who protect us.

By the way, Kristen didn’t ask me to write about this. I was just impressed enough with the effort to share it and see if I could help.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Overlay.TV: A new spin on interactive video

Share This!

Overlay.TV is another new web offering about which I have been remiss in writing—considering that the company’s CEO gave me a personal guided tour. Hill & Knowlton’s David Jones set up the online demo for my podcast co-host, Neville Hobson (who already wrote about it) and me.

In a nutshell, Overlay lets you add text, images, and hyperlinks to video. These elements overlay the video and can be turned on and off.

You don’t have to link from an overlay element; you can just add an image, as one person did with a video that puts thought balloons over animals ("Don’t come any closer,” a cat tells a pack of puppies). But linking is the key. In ”How to Create a Smoky Eye Effect,” the training video provides a link to each makeup implement used, such as pencils. The link opens a popup window that offers more information and another link to the product webpage. The popup also provides links to the points in the video where the product is used, letting you jump to that spot in the video. Along the right-hand side of the video are “targets,” links to the point in the video where each product appears.

The target feature reminds me a bit of Click.tv, which let you create points in a video and add comments to it; you could also enable the video so anyone watching could add a comment. (The service, on which I worked as a commumnications consultant, was sold and has not reemerged.) The Overlay feature would allow you to add your own information at specified spots in the video, but isn’t open to community comment beyond the YouTube-like comment field beneath the video.

As with most video-sharing sites these days, you can use the embed code to put the video on your own site, rate it, and comment on it.

One smart move the folks at Overlay have made is ensuring its system is compatible with videos from other services, including YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo! Video, Veoh, Google and even JibJab.

Overlay has inked deals with some 600 merchants; if you sign up as an affiliate and link to their products, you stand to make a bit of change.

I suspect many of the uses to which Overlay will be put have yet to emerge, but it certainly adds fuel to the Internet video surge and provides yet another spin on how video can be more interactive when it’s online.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

ooVoo has big potential

Share This!

It’s been a while since I participated in a videoconference hosted by Mitch Joel, part of the My ooVoo Day initiative designed to get people talking about the service. (Sorry about the delay—life has been hectic; I’m hoping to catch up on several posts I’ve been wanting to write over the next few days.) You can still sign up to participate in these scheduled My ooVoo Day conversations through February 22.

The ooVoo service—which I hadn’t used before—was impressive, as many others reporting on their experiences have noted. There were six of us on the call and I could hear and see everybody just fine (except for one person, which I attribute to his broadband connection, considering everybody else was coming through loud and clear). The interface is as slick as they come, making Skype’s look like a relic from an earlier time. In addition to the video conferences, ooVoo handles Skype-like calls; right now, all calls to phones in the US and Canada are free, but after the introductory period, they’ll charge for calls, presumably using a model similar to Skype’s SkypeOut service. I haven’t been able to find any reference to a SkypeIn-like service that would assign a phone number to your ooVoo account, allowing you to receive calls from people who aren’t on ooVoo.

ooVoo also does instant messaging, just as Skype does, but also makes recording of the video conversations a breeze. According to one post I read it’s just as easy to record phone conversations, which requires jumping through hoops to accomplish with Skype. You can also record video messages to send via email.

Pretty impressive work from the ooVoo folks who could, conceivably, give Skype a run for their money. Neville and I may even try recording an episode of FIR over ooVoo one of these days, just to see how it goes. (Still, I’m not planning to dump Skype any time soon—my SkypeIn number, after all, has become my only business line; I no longer have a land line for the office.)

Equally impressive, I must admit, is the My ooVoo Day promotion. Congrats to crayon for coming up with the idea and executing it so well. I’d be curious to see the metrics crayon produces from the effort, but I’ve seen plenty of buzz online following the introduction of the campaign. Nice work.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Dems unveil “Real State of the Union” CGM contest

Share This!

I’m on the mailing lists of both the Republican and Democratic parties. I got there by having been registered to vote at one point as a member of each party. (I won’t get into why I was registered with each party; I try to not take sides in the context of this blog, slamming or praising either party when they do something wrong or right from a communications perspective.)

The email I just received from the Democratic Party was intriguing enough to prompt a quick post. The Democrats have launched a CGM campaign inviting people to submit videos, the winners of which will be featured in TV ads. The email, from Brian Wolff, director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, says the videos will offer an alternative view to President Bush’s State of the Union:

Let’s respond with energy, imagination—and maybe even a little sense of humor—to George W. Bush’s last attempt to lie, scare, and mislead America into adopting his disastrous policies.

The winning videos in our contest will be part of a larger DCCC Real State of the Union initiative. Using mobile text messages, videos, and an online lie detector, we intend to make sure that the truth speaks louder than George Bush’s spin.

The Real State of the Union video contest involves uploading productions of up to two minutes to YouTube. The panel of judges includes movie director Jerry Zucker, Goo Goo Dolls singer John Rzeznik, political blogger Arianna Huffington, Florida Congressman Kendrick Meek, Everclear singer Art Alexikas, and party strategist James Carville.

The contest web page asks for videos on gas prices, the middle class squeeze, college affordability, health care, Iraq and topics of your choice.

Undoubtedly, I’ll get some comments here from the other side that are partisan in nature. Partisanship aside, it’s another interesting way to get voters involved on behalf of their party, just as Coors is using a similar approach to deal with the fact that Budweiser has shut the company out of advertising on the SUper Bowl.

Frankly, I’ve been bored and unimpressed with most of the social media efforts on display so far from Democrats and the party. It’s nice to see something interesting crop up.

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Three signs of change

Share This!

The end of the year brings three profound examples of the mainstreaming of social media.

First, there’s the Frozen Pea Fund and all related conversation around Susan Reynolds’ battle with breast cancer. Thousands of dollars have been raised through ad hoc campaign that cost essentially nothing, based on a connection made with people who had never met Susan personally. The grass roots campaign involved blogs, Twitter, Flickr, Seesmic and heaven knows how many other social media channels. Absent so far: mainstream media. (Chris Brogan has written great summary of the whole effort, which Neville and I will cover on Monday’s FIR.

Next, Buckhgham Palace announced the launch of a Royal Channel on YouTube. Queen Elizabeth will use the channel to distribute her annual Christmas message. It’s worth noting that Dwight Eisenhouser was president of the United States when the Queen issued her first Christmas message. At that time, the usefulness of television was still an open discussion topic. Now, Elizabeth has moved beyond TV, reaching directly to the people using a medium that may well get more attention than a traditional TV message might. (The BBC has this story. Neville will add his thoughts on Monday’s FIR.)

And speaking of YouTube, it has also become a preferred channel for everything from mea culpas to public responses. All-Star pitcher Roger Clemens has taken to YouTube to issue a denial that he used steroids (he was listed in the Mitchell Report). As recently as a year or two ago, Clemens would have made his statement on TV, probably in an interview (he’s still planning an interview with Mike Wallace on “60 Minutes").

That’s the thread the connects each of these stories. Clemens, in order to reach his fans, would have had to seek out an interview or issue a formal statement to the press; Queen Elizabeth would have had to go on TV and hope people would watch the live address; and the backers of the Frozen Pea effort would have had to spend a fortune on promotional materials to get the word out. Today, they can reach their audiences directly and effectively. In 2008, expect more mainstream figures and organizations to communicate directly through these channels as a supplement to or instead of traditional media.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Seasoned FIR reporter Dan York in action

Share This!

Have you ever wondered how the fearless band of For Immediate Release podcast reporters actually records their contributions to the twice-weekly show?

Wonder no more as Dan York, FIR’s correspondent in Burlington, Vermont, USA, shows how it’s done.

The report Dan’s recording in this seesmic video is included in FIR #303.

Nice work, Dan!

[Later] Dan’s also posted about his video recording experience.