Use of Video Fell in 2009?

Brian Solis 1^st blog of the year was really rich fodder for me. Not only did I get the “Every Company Participates” post from it, but I also want to draw off something else he cited…the Center for Marketing Research’s Finding that use of video by the Inc. 500 actually fell from 45% penetration to 36% penetration in 2009. Some other categories also fell. For example, podcasting went from 21% to 12% (seriously, who listens to podcasts? I tried. Once. What a ridiculous idea), but that video would fall so dramatically was definitely breathtaking. What does it mean? Especially what does it mean when I know that we (EXPO) had a great year and I know that other video companies also had great years.

What it means is that video is hard. As in non-trivial. As in “can’t wake up this morning and decide that we’ll do video and be done by nightfall” hard. As Jeremy Allaire said in AllThingsD and then repeated in VideoNuze, one of the themes of online video has been the thought and desire of companies to do it themselves versus partnering with the Brightcoves or EXPOs of the world. The good news (as a vendor) is that people eventually realize just how hard it is, the hard part is that it takes a while to come to that realization.

Note also the sample they analyzed: the Inc. 500 are the fastest growing private companies in the US. Do I believe that the challenges of doing great video got to be too much for 10% of that group to take on during the nuclear winter of 2009? Heck yes. Does that say much about the Fortune 500? Or even the Inc. 500 in a more longitudinal sense? No, I don’t think it says much.

Which gets us to the punchline. Which is that video isn’t going away (unlike podcasting). Seeing is believing. It isn’t a question of whether media shifts toward video, it’s merely a question of how much and what forms and formats ultimately make the most sense.

Kardashian Lawsuit: Peeing in the Twitter Punch Bowl

Good article in MediaPost this morning about a lawsuit between a "cookie diet" doctor and Kim Kardashian. In short, the good doctor is suing because Kardashian said he was lying about her being on his diet and that his diet is unhealthy. Meanwhile its not clear at all that he said she was on his diet...apparently all he did was link to an article that claimed as such. And why does she even care? Because she's getting paid to tweet about another diet that she is on.

On the one hand, I think: 'congratulations! great pr for all of you. everybody wins. how many tweets will this generate? how many people will start on both the cookie diet and kardashian's other diet today?'

On the other hand, though, is this what we've come to? This is pitiful. Celebrities are now renting out their thoughts & lawsuits are being fired back and forth in defense of shortcut diets that ethically stable doctors would reject in a heartbeat.

Twitter's great. Social media's great. But none of it means anything if there aren't standards and guidelines. I've got my libertarian streak but maybe its time to recognize that just like a free-for-all in the financial markets ended badly, so could it end badly in the "information marketplace." Consumer trust is already a preciously fleeting commodity...its time for more people to stand up and call BS on practices like paid tweeets.

Every Company Participates in Social Media

Prolific blogger and public relations guru Brian Solis kicked off 2010 yesterday with a post on "The Evolution of Social Media and Business." One of the great things about Brian is is his obsession with dragging the PR industry toward utilizing social media tactics as job #1. It's one of those things that's obvious to outsiders but that doesn't mean that it is easy to do...and Brian is one of the key insiders making it happen.

But, I'm in a snarky mood this morning and so I'm going to channel my inner Amanda Chapel and take issue with something Brian says in his post: "Today, there are businesses that engage in social media and those that do not." Seriously? No, every company engages in social media. Some companies may not use the shiniest new tactics of the day, but if a company has a website....if a company has a customer service department that you can send a letter to....they are participating in social media.

Why is this an important distinction? Because it's time to stop pushing social media tactics out as completely disconnected from the rest of the marketing and advertising activities that companies partake in. The desire to wall social media off from other activities is part of what is giving rise to the push for social media to prove its ROI in 2010. That's good and that's healthy. But you better believe that that ROI is going to depend on social media's impact and interplay with the rest of the organization...in other words, it will be derived from cost savings in customer service, new insights for the research department and other 'surprising' value pots....not because a Facebook Brand Page drives a bunch of new sales (and the corollary is that a decision to not invest heavily in a Facebook brand page does not mean that a brand manager is an anti-social media neanderthal).

I'm a huge believer in social media...because I see how it is an evolution of the best practices of marketing, customer service and market research. Without those historical precedents, its nothing.