Joe Taylor, publisher of the industrial websites waterandwastewater.com and powderandbulk.com, has brought online video sharing to the industrial sector. With its easy upload tool and social tracking tools (such as most viewed, viewer voting and tagging), Taylor's industrial video communities (see here and here) bring a new impetus for equipment marketers to create an entirely different breed of video.

I did a few B2B corporate and marketing videos BTI (before the Internet), and I have to say I'd do them differently today. I'd make them shorter. I'd lose the music soundtrack, and maybe the voiceover narration, too. I'd spend less of my video budget on a single video's production values and more on increasing the number of videos.

Just Show the Machines at Work

I like the simplicity of this machine demo where all kinds of foreign objects, from a rubber glove to a tennis shoe, are dropped into a shredder used to keep sewer lines clear of debris. I also like the ability video gives you to capture action. This demolition of grain silos is from Poland.

Humor also works, though the humor in this conveyor video is more for insiders. For those who missed the joke: the guy with the shovel wouldn't need to be there if the conveyor belt were just a foot longer. If you're really bold, you might even figure a way to make this "happy wastewater guy" into a viral marketing campaign.

This Bulk Solids Pump (BSP) video is a good example of what happens to a traditional marketing video when it's moved to an online video sharing site. Seeing the BSP's unique technology in action works fine, but the soundtrack is a bit out of synch. You can see same video here (bigger Quick Time file, a little better sound and picture). If I were developing this video today with Joe Taylor's new sites in mind, I'd keep it shorter and simpler and just let the machine do the talking.

How Taylor Created His Video Sharing Sites

To create his industrial video sites, Joe Taylor says he started with the free open source Mplayer (also see the Wikipedia article) and the closely related MEncoder that enables visitors to upload their own videos and convert them on the fly to a small Flash file. Taylor did his own customizing and says he spent about $2,000 on outside programming help.

Getting Around the Corporate Barriers

Forget about trying to go to YouTube from inside most corporate networks. Like many organizations, my company's IT department has setup barriers to block employee access to potential bandwidth hogs, such as music downloads and streaming video sites. Taylor's sites haven't been immune to these barriers. Sometimes marketing people can persuade IT to loosen the rules for business-oriented sites (my request to allow Taylor's sites was promptly acted on by our IT manager).

But rather than leave it to chance, Taylor has experimented with different naming conventions that might keep the barriers from ever being raised. He found that a URL like http://video.powderandbulk.com was a certain invitation for blockades to rise, where www.powderandbulk.com/videos didn't set off nearly as many alarms. With the growing migration of business into the social networks with their music and video and 3-D reality, this issue is going to become an increasing headache for IT managers.

I've had a policy since September 2005 of tracking and talking about what's going on in New Orleans every place I make a public appearance - even at my events on Internet marketing.

In fact, I put on a special marketing workshop this past November in New Orleans for some of my clients as a fund raiser. Part of the workshop involved briefing my clients on current conditions there.

Since this is a video discussion, let's consider this question:

What would have happened to the people of New Orleans had there no been video and live video news?

I think it's safe to say the death toll would have been many, many times than what it was.

The vicious idiots in charge of FEMA, Homeland Security and other government agencies responsible for rescue and relief efforts would have gone on patting each other on the back for the "heck of a job" they were doing until the corpses piled as high as the Superdome.

So I say "thank God" for video. Video, and Internet video,  can still play a roll  in helping get the word out about this and other travesties.

(Maybe if video had existed in the 1940s and someone had been able to sneak footage out of the concentration camps, some of those victims might have been saved too.  Who knows?)

Anyway, what has happened in the last year plus since this government-induced disaster?

Some numbers:

* 102,000 families are still living in FEMA trailers (which by the way were sold to US taxpayers at THREE TIMES their retail value.) And that doesn't count the hundreds of thousands of people who are living in other cities and states, unable to return to their homes.

* As of November 1, of the $10.4 billion granted by the federal government to rebuild Louisiana, only 18 - yes 18! - of the 77,000 homeowners who have applied for rebuilding aid have received any.

* Many New Orleans public schools still do not have drinking water for the children - this in a tropical climate - and private contract security guards outnumber teachers in many schools.

From a 12/6/06 article in the New York Times:

"People are being left to fend for themselves, while being hampered if not prevented, from fending for themselves." Raymond A. Jetson, the Louisiana Family Recovery Corps."

What does all this have to do with Internet marketing?

Thoreau once asked: "What's the use of a house if you don't have a tolerable planet to put it on?"

I ask what kind of a country are we if we throw our own injured citizens to the dogs when we have all the resources needed to help them back on their feet.

What can you do:

1. Educate yourself  -  Don't buy the party line that New Orleans brought its problems on itself. If that's true, do we intend to leave people in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami and other places subject to catastrophe in the rubble if they suffer a reversal too?

Fact: Katrina didn't damage New Orleans, the collapse of the federal levees did. The levees weren't even breached by flood waters. They crumbled because of poor construction by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Fireman from the high vantage point of an office building filmed what actually happened to the levees - and when - and were ordered not to show the video to anyone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwMvC5QU194&mode=related&search=

2. Talk about it - The average person thinks New Orleans and the Gulf are back to normal and everything's fine. It's not. It's an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe and who's suffering the most? The young. The elderly. The handicapped.  Working people at the bottom of the economic ladder. It's a national disgrace.

(I don't have the space to go into it here, but Big Oil is culpable as well. They've wreaked tremendous ecological damage on the bayous that used to modify the effect of storms on the region. They've also skillfully managed to keep there role in the catastrophe out of the news media.)

3. Visit New Orleans - The core area of interest to visitors with its incomparable food and music is back online. Go, enjoy yourself, spend and tip lavishly - especially in locally owned businesses of which there are many.

The people who are back in New Orleans are the ones who want to be back there. They are bloodied but not bowed.  They're brave, resourceful folks who love their city and are dedicated to restoring it.  Make no mistake,  the city is a traumatized place, but it's also the home to a positive and creative energy the kind of which you'd be hard pressed to find anywhere else in our mall and suburbia-based nation.

Bottom line: New Orleans is an important American city - historically, culturally, economically - and for the rest of us morally.

"Am I not a man? Am I not a brother?"

This slogan appeared during the movement to abolish slavery. We need revive it as it applies to New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf.

When you make your trip to New Orleans to see for yourself...

For music: Frenchman Street. Half a dozen smoking music clubs on one block. No cover charge. Just throw something meaningful in when they pass the hat.

For food: It's hard to go wrong.  Ask the locals for their secret spots. They'll tell you with pride.  The web's a good place to start researching.

By the way, the IAOC's own Steve O'Keefe is a peerless resource on the wonders of the city.

Question: How long should an online video be?

Answer: As long as it needs to be.

If your goal is to go "viral," then shorter is better. If you look at the viral hits on Google and YouTube, many are under one minute long. 

Why?

Is it because modern living has reduced people's attention spans to fruit fly proportions? No. It's because the shorter the video, the higher the odds that  viewers will watch to the end and push the "share" button.  It's the pushing of the "share" button that makes a video viral. That's the whole game. Of course, the video has to be a "wow!" to large numbers of viewers to stimulate this response.

But before we shout "hallelujeh" for viral videos, let's take a look at some of today's winners on Google Video
and their suitability as advertising vehicles:

1. "White and Nerdy" - a professionally produced music video
2. "Sex Accident" - less than zero
3. "PS3 vs. Wii" -  a professionally produced ad
4. "Octopus escaping through one inch hole" - dubious at best
5. "Fitness" - less than zero
6. "The Birth" - a comedy skit - dubious at best
7. "Guy pwned by girl" - less than zero
8. "Best penalty ever" - weak maybe
9. "Stars are Blind" - zero
10. "Quarters" - a professionally produced ad

Three of the winners came from professionals and were made to promote a specific product.

Four have no advertising value and at all and three of them would send any sane advertiser running in horror. One is a very weak maybe and the other two are of dubious value at best.

YouTube et. al. could theoretically run an ad before or after the three winners, but that would be strange because they are already advertisements for something.

The remaining seven range from incredibly weak advertising vehicles to postively radioactive in their unsuitability.

So tell me again why we as advertisers are so excited about viral videos?

Back to the question that started all this: How long should your online videos should be?

As long as it takes to tell your action-motivating story to your targeted prospect. If someone is interested (i.e. a potential customer) they will take in all the relevant information you have to offer. Within my own sphere of interest, I have no qualms about watching a 20, 30, even 60+ minute video online, but if something's not suitable for me, 7 seconds is too long and I'm not going to push the "share" button.

I'm Steve O'Keefe, co-host of "This Week on IAOCblog.com" and this week I dropped the ball!

I failed to introduce our topic and guest in a timely manner. So please forgive me and, more importantly, please join me in welcoming Internet marketing pioneer Ken McCarthy to our blog!

Ken McCarthy organized the first conference ever on Internet marketing -- in 1994 in San Francisco.  One of his students from that era, Rick Boyce, played an instrumental role in popularizing the banner ad at Hotwired. Ken also was very early to the pay-per-clik game, recognizing PPC not only as a source of traffic, but also as a superb testing and marketing research tool. Today, Ken is director of The System Seminar -- an online marketing training program -- and runs the "Looking at Video on the Web" blog at <http://www.systemvideoblog.com/>. Ken will be discussing such subject's as Google's purchase of YouTube and what it means for online marketers.

Ken McCarthy -- welcome to IAOCblog.com!

I thought I would point you to some "new media" usage in the context of a sports event; Wimbledon.

As you might know, IBM has been the technology partner of Wimbledon for more than 10 years now. Both the Wimbledon official site and the IBM page dedicated to this classic tennis tournament have some great examples of online communications using the latest techniques.

Here are just 2 of them:

Video Podcasting the IBM team at Wimbledon.

The "On Demand" Scoreboard

If you're attending the IAOC Conference in Valley Forge, plan to arrive early enough to catch a special pre-conference workshop, "Video-Casting: From Camera to Editing to Website and i-Pod" with Steve O'Keefe. The free bonus workshop is in the Quaker Room at the Radisson Valley Forge, from 2:00 to 3:30 PM on Thursday, March 23.

IAOC vice president Steve O'Keefe will demonstrate the entire process of creating video for the web. Join him in his mobile studio to learn all the details, from lighting and sound techniques, to editing and file format considerations. This workshop is free to all IAOC members and guests.

A complete seminar schedule is available here (PDF). 

Don Dunnington

 

I'm going to continue our discussion of producing online video until someone else takes the helm of "This Week on IAOCblog.com." Today, I'd like to talk a little about file sizes, since that is such a huge issue.   more »

We shoot our videos using miniDV tape, then "capture" them using Final Cut Studio. Capturing imports the video onto the hard drive. File sizes for uncompressed video are huge! Our 20-minute interviews are too large to fit onto a DVD. That makes it very difficult to transfer files between camera crews and editing crews.

We edit in Final Cut Studio, then "render" (compress) the video using Cleaner software. When I first saw the pulldown menu in Cleaner for video compression settings, I knew I could never edit film. There are dozens of format choices! We render in one: QuickTime MPEG-4, AAC.

Because we render in only one format, we get complaints from people, especially on older computers, that they can't access the video. Now my tech guru says, "Tough. If they want to watch video online, they need to update their gear. No matter what format we render in, those people will not be happy. No one on a 56K modem is going to like online video."

And he's right. Since we switched from offering video in 7 formats to offering it in 1 format, our connection complaints have stayed roughly the same. Either way, we have the same number of dissatisfied users. To maintain 7 choices, we'd have to stay up on the latest software in five different programs. Our customer service problems have remain unchanged, but our production costs have dropped significantly.

On the other hand, my Production Manager thinks we should offer at least one alternative format specifically optimized for Windows computer users on older systems. That would probably cure at least half of the format complaints we get.

And he's right, too. We really should be producing in two formats: one that works on most PCs and iPods as well, and one that works on older Windows PCs. It's a tough call.

Even tougher calls are ahead. We also produce DVDs from our videos, and there's a whole 'nother kettle of fish. There are two formats fighting it out for the future of DVD. I hope someone chimes into this dicussion who knows more about this than me; I'm trying to keep my head low until victory is declared.

Videos on cell phones, as I've learned, is the least organized of all these markets. There are several different format choices (none very good, I'm told), and numerous different delivery systems, the file sizes are huge, what do you when the connection drops??? Even though our videos easily go into iTunes, it will be a long time before we make a version for phones.

Anyone care to add to this discussion?

Tomorrow I'll talk a little more about the file size problem.

STEVE O'KEEFE
V.P. IAOC
President, AuthorViews, Inc.

An epic battle is being waged, in cyberspace and, more to the point, in my space -- my office -- over what formats to use for online video.

Until last fall, we made our videos available in the following formats:

QuickTime
MPEG-4
MPEG-1
RealMedia (hi res & lo res)
Windows Media (hi res & lo res)

Your consumer looks at that list and goes, "Huh?" How do you know which one to click? So we installed a nifty little applet that would ping a browser's config and -- presto! -- serve up the perfect video for that user. However, many people behind firewalls will not let the applet ping their systems, and so they can't access the video, even though they have the right gear.

This fall, Apple made life easier on us in many ways by introducing the video iPod and making it compatible with only two different file formats. The codec we use is called "QuickTime MPEG-4, AAC". A codec is an algorithm that contains instructions for compressing and decompressing video. The main ratio we look at when choosing a codec is the clarity compared with the file size. The codec we use results in incredibly small file sizes (2 megabytes/minute) with outstanding clarity on an iPod. Every new generation of codec results in a geometrical improvement in quality and reduction in file size. That's what's really powering the online video revolution: Moore's Law.

So last fall, we started rendering our videos in one format instead of seven. The only problem is, you can't see the videos unless you are running QuickTime 6 or higher. Lots of people cannot see our videos now. So should we render videos in Windows Media or RealMedia or some alternative to make it easier on people?

No.

That's what my tech guru says.

Yes.

That's what my video production manager says.

Me? I'm stuck in the middle. Tomorrow, I'll present some arguments pro and con in this debate.

But I'd like to hear what YOU have to say about it. Have you had experience producing online video? What formats do you prefer? Have you been frustrated trying to use video online? Any pet peeves?

Your's for Smaller Files & Greater Clarity,
STEVE O'KEEFE
V.P. IAOC
President, AuthorViews, Inc.