Finally people are starting to demonstrate that they understand the value of video media in online marketing campaigns and are willing to take chances on it to enhance an all encompassing online experience.  

(side: sorry for sounding like such an evangelical twit-litist, but I’m invested in normalizing the use of video as one of the obvious staples of online-offline cross promotion so that I won’t have to do freelance for the rest of my life.)

Kraft’s been trying to get in on the ‘joke’ for the past couple of months; hiring Ted Williams (YouTube’s ‘golden voice’) and trying to replicate a more controlled Old Spice video blitz on TBS a few nights ago.  

The NYT even bolstered it’s new video journalist team on today of all days a few hours ago (I wish the paywall was a joke-is the video content part of the 20 or however many views of their free content before you have to pay?):

@nytimes The New York Times  ”For tweets from journalists in the NYT video unit, follow @annderry@matthew_orr @olsentropy #FF”

April fools is kind of a lame holiday offline (playing pranks at work can lead to office drama), but a couple of good online pranks played well, in my opinion.  The above video from Google and the joke on designers (typing helvetica in the search bar makes the font on the screen comic sans).  It wasn’t that funny if you didn’t have to stare at different fonts all day to figure out which works with what theme or whatever.

The most appropriate of all was the last place that floundering momentary celebrities go before their internet fame flat lines-Funny(Today it was Friday) or Die.  The parenthesis after Funny is just in case the site goes back to normal on the day that comes after today but before Sunday.  

These guys went all out.  The address and search bars have lyrics from Rebecca Blacks single and say straight out that this is a Fools prank, just in case you couldn’t catch it from the parody vids on the home page.

Lohan, Sheen (who both also had innuendos with Kimmel, if you know what I’m saying) and even Tequila turned to comedy to lighten the mood around their own controversy to show that they have a sense of humor about themselves.

At least we all have something to laugh about even if you missed it. Fun … Fun … Fun …

Source: mail.google.com

(While I wait for the White House to put up the video from President Barak OBama’s address over the situation in Libya, I figured I write a few of the posts I have outlined.-I know; lame disclaimer)

This video was posted on YouTube a couple of days ago and I can’t stop watching it.  Ray William Johnson posts the best analysis/review of videos akin to this on his channel.  He is hilarious and he’s been making vids forever.  His channel is the quintessential formula for shows like Tosh.O, The Soup, Web Soup, The Dish, etc.-All basically fleshing out the Ray William Johnson Vlog clip show with sketch comedy so it lasts 30 minutes instead of 5.

This brings me to my point that online media is having an ever increasing influence on legacy media and at times is interchangeable.  And although it is, was and always will be the cheapest most affective form of “do it yourself” promotion; the bigger and more inclusive the brand the harder it is to “do it yourself.”

If you leave it entirely up to your audience than you can loose momentum in booms of interest over controversy (that’s why everybody that was disgusted couldn’t stop talking about Jersey Shore).

Being marketabley socially savvy is the same thing as being an accountant accept you get to go to South by Southwest.  People take for granted that setting up and maintaining a social account takes a few clicks as though it were counting, adding and subtracting.

Metaphor aside the same goes for video.  It is just another tool for tweeps and Tube-heads (just made that up-don’t make fun of me).  Production value and the separation of technique and effectiveness is the issue.

Capturing a three day event for a 3 minute video on a splash page can cost a ridiculous some of money for a nonprofit or small startup.  I just encountered this problem with a freelance client.

The services of the studio I contract through versus a traditional production house was the difference of $40,000, which doesn’t mean a hell of a lot to the local affiliate of a large broadcast company, but can is the entire media production budget for some companies across print, broadcast and digital.  

Production costs are going to have to reflect the changing digital landscape, which is already being discussed on TechCruch and The Atlantic-but original content that “wows” you ain’t free.