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White Paper | The Economics of Video
The Benefits of Video-Enabling Your Virtual Press Room Capitalizing on Digital Media in the Age of Transparency, Social Networking and the 24/x News Cycle YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, blogs and the proliferation of mobile devices have dramatically changed the corporate communications landscape, swiftly transforming the 24-hour news cycle into a 24-second Tweet cycle. Quite simply, news travels fast and carries with it a ripple effect that's both undeniable and unparalleled. As a result, it's no longer a question of whether your company's PR department should get involved, rather a question of how to get involved and what digital media practices will best serve your communications goals. In the wake of this new media paradigm, many corporate communications practitioners have been forced to adapt to new and often uncharted, cross-media strategies. Digital media, and online video in particular, has not only altered the way that news is being consumed, but presents a compelling opportunity for marketing and PR professionals to maximize global coverage and build, protect and promote their brands to online publics with unsurpassed speed, transparency and control. As Fortune 1000, government and media organizations have already discovered in other aspects of their business - such as marketing, advertising and training - online video on your Web site is a measurable and impactful way to deliver updates and other important corporate messages fast and cost-efficiently. This paper discusses the benefits and methods for making online video an essential part of an integrated, cross-media communications strategy going forward, and aims to provide the building blocks 1for making a case to management for investing in online video today. Think Different The video news release, or VNR, is not a new concept to PR pros, but together with b-roll, still represents one of the most significant applications of video in PR today. With the explosive growth of new media, however, communication teams need to be thinking beyond the VNR and third-party news distribution services to apply video more broadly in support of media and consumers. As demonstrated by many leading brands, video can be a powerful vehicle for product introductions, customer testimonials, annual reports, crisis communications, reputation management or simply to seed new 1 Research conducted in late 2008 by Interactive Media Strategies shows that 55 percent of executives at organizations that have deployed online multimedia for a period of five years or more "strongly agree" that Web communications enhance productivity and create efficiencies that boost the return on investment recognized from the deployment of Web video.
1 ideas in the marketplace. The possibilities are endless for how video is used and how it is disseminated. Organizations like semiconductor giant, Intel Corp., for example, have found Web video to do more than revamp the rules of traditional media distribution. It has emerged as an entirely new platform for their CEO and other company executives to speak directly with targeted constituent groups. In addition to YouTube - which we'll cover shortly - a popular method for addressing the use of video in PR has been third-party news video distribution sites, which offer branded Internet TV "channels" with services for audience targeting and media distribution. What corporate communications professionals sacrifice with this approach is a truly integrated strategy that ties together the marketing, advertising and PR initiatives of an organization in more creative and controlled ways - and at significantly lower 2cost. Adding the ability to quickly publish video to your virtual press room, produce live online press conferences or enable media to directly download high-resolution, broadcast-quality video from your site provides greater context and control of your news, as well as measurement in the form of real-time data on traffic, audience, views and downloads. What's more, many of these efforts are seeing considerable ROI. Some have gone completely viral, reaching tens of thousands, if not millions online. The idea of incorporating video or creating an entirely video-based press room may be seen as costly, time-consuming and even intimidating. The reality is that many of the same communication principles as other mediums, such as text and audio, apply to the production ... [download for more]
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