A thought occurred to me while working for another client who wanted to reinvigorate the video experience for anyone who comes to their site.
Essentially, the company wants to, as seamlessly as possible, incorporate social media, chatting, video channels, archives and the corporate message du jour all in one subsection of his Web page.
Most days I listen to a comedy podcast that sometimes talks about the happenings of the day or week. Because of the Olympic fever coming to a slow boil (if that) the podcasters and hosts have frequently commented on NBC’s coverage of the events.
Both of these events has got me thinking:
Can you do too much in video?
The short answer, is yes. Creating an appeal video is a balancing act of sorts, where you must mix message and “color” (color, in the marketing and advertising world, is slang for “catch phrases” or “hooks” that draw people in. A commonly used one is “New and Improved”), style and substance and the final call to action (CTA).
The company that wants their site redesigned, in my opinion, is trying too hard to do everything, and has lost the point of what video is. Let me draw it out mathematically:
Video = (Pictures * Motion) + audio
Therefore videos are motion pictures with sound. The old saying goes “a picture is worth a thousand words”, if your video is shot at 32 pictures per second, then your entertainment value can go up exponentially.
But if you try to add in video, and sound, and chatting, and commenting, and live features, and a search engine, you start getting into the realm of YouTube, which can be a potentially bad thing as:
- Individuals will use YouTube as a benchmark to compare your site
- You may be directly competing with Hulu, Viddler and YouTube (This is probably why Facebook has incorporated YouTube into their system, as opposed to making their own video system.).
The podcasters complained that the commentators on NBC talked too much, and didn’t let the coverage “explain itself”. If you’re covering a sport, and have enough cameras in the right angles, technically, you don’t need any commentators or commentary. In fact, ESPN has their own play-by-play chart for football that marks exactly where each team is, bypassing both audio and video.
In summary, keeping your videos and your purpose simple will make things better in the long run.
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