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:

1. Individuals will use YouTube as a benchmark to compare your site
2. 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.

Sometimes you need to firmly press your tongue against your cheek and give it your all. That’s the theory behind the VH1 Critic’s Choice Awards commercial featuring a spoof of the ridiculously famous Twilight Saga entry, New Moon. Below, as the YouTube video puts it, Kristen [sic] Chenoweth Kicks New Moon Wolf Pack Butt.

What can we learn from this, though? As businesses, we need to answer three distinct questions:

• What do I WANT to say?
• What will my customers THINK?
• Do I WANT my customers to think this way?

How does this video succeed?

• Addressing every niche market
• Using pop culture references
• Using low-stress humor

Think you’re ready to try your hand at online advertising with video? Check out our free trial.

Jimm Fox published a list of ways to use video to grow your business (reposted by Mark Robertson on OneMarket Media). His list takes 42 methods and breaks them down into nine categories (Customer reference, Product and Service Promotion, Corporate based, Training and Support, Internal Comms, Marketing and Advertising, Public Relations (PR), Events and a miscellaneous category). Here are some of the highest in Growth Potential and Popularity.

• Video Customer testimonials (Moderate popularity, high growth potential): While this type of video is a staple of Microsoft’s Windows 7 material (who can resist the cute kid making it look so easy?), ideally, it should be real customers in their own settings. As authentically “normal” and “in the customer’s perspective” it is, the better. Depending on what you’re trying to do, authenticity and “rough-around-the-edges” a video is, is worth more gold than the money spent for a polished look. Would we have given the same credit to the dancing “Numa Numa” guy if it looked like it was shot from a studio? A spinoff of this is the Video success stories, where a customer recounts a problem that they had, and how said product helped them.

• Man in the street interviews (Moderate popularity, high growth potential): A known tactic in the Jay Leno Show (“Jaywalking”), news stations and sometimes on the Jimmy Kimmel Show (”Kids Voice out on what they know about Tiger Woods”), these movies find individuals and show them answering questions or reactions from the host. Again, authenticity is a big thing here. The more “fake” it looks, the worse it is. (Conversely, if you are a student of “The Dirty Little Secrets of Buzz“, making it looks ridiculous may cause enough buzz that you can disregard any consequences.)

• Product Presentations, demonstrations, reviews (Moderate popularity, high growth potential): While these are self explanatory, the perspective changes in each. Presentations should be from the customer’s perspective, demonstrations should be from the parent company and detail the benefits (If you are a student of Meerman’s “The New Rules of Marketing and PR“, avoid such terms as, “New and Improved”, “Ground-breaking” and other typical “fluff”. A good exercise from Meerman is as such: take the script from your movie, remove all direct references of your company and product. If you can’t tell who the company is or what the product is, your script is too convoluted with “fluff”.) Reviews should be from “trusted third parties”. Try to find reviews that you didn’t sponsor (who trusts a study saying that cigarettes are no more dangerous than automobiles when the study was funded by a tobacco company?).

• Visual stories (Moderate popularity, high growth potential): Tap into the cornerstones of marketing: Cute sells. Why are such stories as Where the Wild Things Are and If you Give a Mouse a Cookie such evergreen children’s books? Because they are visual stories (clever wordplay never hurts, either).

• Corporate Overview: (High popularity, moderate growth potential): Who is “XYZ Company”, and why do only Accounting and Economic professors reference it? They obviously don’t have a corporate overview video. Take into account what your company is and what you’d like to show. If you look at any product review from ThinkGeek.com, you’ll get a large sense of how the company works. Also pay attention to what is more attention getting.

• Training (High, High), Webinars, Just in Time (JIT) learning Videos (Low, High): Why clog up your forums, tech support lines and other forms of communication when you can show how to fix common problems? Video, as stated by Fox, is, “a cost effective substitute for in-class training”.

• Tackling tough-to-explain issues (such as legal matters, health and safety, [Low, High]: A funny example of such is Jon Stewart’s video of Ted Stevens’ explanation of the internet. Using audio and visual ties connects to more senses than plain text, and has the ability to provide compact and cheap primers.

• Content Marketing (Low, Huge): You have a business, obviously are experts in your area, spread some goodwill! Fox gives an example of Home Depot doing a Do-it-yourself series; another example is Best Buy doing a primer on High Definition or Blu-Ray. Barnes & Noble does this to a bit with their “Tagged” series, in which authors talk about their latest books (Link).

• Mobile Videos (Low, Huge): While half the world is running to have the “biggest-and-bestest”, the other half wants the same things, only much smaller. Even some Japanese researchers have done studies on screen size and retention rates (As expected, there isn’t a “best size”, but a range depending on the topic). The future, according to Fox, will hyper-target individuals based on geo-and-demographic traits, as well as very small niche audiences.

• “Viral” videos (High, High): The old standby. Everyone can name at least one viral video. There are a few challenges with this. First, you can call anything viral (even the most boring of commercials), but it isn’t viral until it becomes so completely desirable that it makes people want to share it. Secondly, viral videos usually aren’t about the product at all ( Sunsilk’s [hair care company] viral video depicted an extremely nervous bride, chopping her hair off before the big day. There was no mention of the product or company, and the movie was shot with a regular camera in a hotel room, prone to dark screens and unbalanced volume).

As always, think about these things when creating a video:

1. What do I want to say?
2. What do I want to show?

Then…

1. What does my video actually show?
2. Will my video keep attention?
3. If I do Meerman’s trick, and take out all references to my company and specific product, will the viewer know who I am and what I’m selling?

Happy Middle-December from ShopWatchBuy!

(Full Disclosure: Mitch, the writer of this post, is an internet junkie, moonlights at Barnes & Noble, and has as much fun with his coworkers as Maddie and David do.)

Okay, obviously I’m biased about the power of online video, but this weekend was such a nice jolt for me.

I think a start-up is a bit like having a young child.  You want your kid to grow to be strong and healthy, and as a parent you often wonder if you’re even doing the right thing half the time!

But then, every so often, you get glimpse of something special.  Something that your child does or shows you that reveals their potential.  Funny thing is, it probably doesn’t have anything to do with you!  It’s just something innate in their DNA, their dreams and aspirations.  When it happens, you just want to jump out of your own skin and burst with the excitement of possibilities for your baby!

Well, I had such an experience this weekend for our Start-Up child ShopWatchBuy.com.  It was a glimpse of its potential along with the power and promise of online video.

We attended a local craft fair.  It was something fun to do with the family along with the chance to talk to people about ShopWatchBuy.  Now granted, as I chatted with people some didn’t “get it”, but a quite a few did.  And some were even great sports and we did a video right there on the spot!

Like this one by John of Galactic Images.  He has so much knowledge and passion for what he does it unbelievable.  You just can’t get that from static images and text.

Notice also how the “Go To Store” button in the video widget takes the viewer right to the product page on his website.  It so powerful because we’re so flexible with that link it can be any URL or PayPal address the Seller chooses!

Here’s another great example.  Mark at d’marie is a MASTER at working the crowd at these shows and this video captures it.

It’s also proves something else.  While a professional video may be nice, it’s NOT necessary to capture the essence of a Seller’s personality and expertise!  I did these vides off the cuff with my little Flip Video camera. Sure, the video’s short and there’s a bit of background noise, but it’s so authentic!

This is the power of online video.

Well, we’ve been hard at work on getting ShopWatchBuy.com up and running, so I’m a little behind on my Blog posts (I always was late turning in my homework ☺)

We’re a couple weeks behind schedule, but have made great progress overall!

The site is looking good, but we just need to work out a few kinks.  One of our criteria is making it cross browser (IE, Firefox and Safari) compatible.  It’s amazing how many little issues this can create.  And here I thought the browser wars were over!

Last week we did some shooting and editing with our friends at Creative Liquid.  We made a few “internal” videos for the ShopWatchBuy site.  In fact, here’s a sneak peek to the 60 Spot we did – hope you like it!

ShopWatchBuy.com 60 Second Commercial

We also did videos for Kinder Haus Toys, Icon Jewelry and Everett Hills Studio at the Torpedo Factory Art Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia.  I can’t wait to get these videos up on SWB!

We also got our Terms of Service finalized, a Press Release and some articles related to Online Video ready to go.  Being a start up the judicious use of outsourcing sure comes in handy!

On top of all this, I’ve been working on a little side project – a game for the iPhone App Store!  Believe it or not, I had a game I invented as a kid that’s perfect for the iPhone.  It should be out by the end of October, so stay tuned for more info on that!