Alec

McNayr

It’s super cheesy, but laser-focused online content. I love it.

I have to respect The Bauer School of Business at the University of Houston for choosing a spokes-student and going with it.

Their “online series” That Bauer Girl may not be a viral hit (the first video has about 3,000 views), but they only need it to serve as one piece of media among the hundreds any potential will be looking at. It feels fresh, honest, and authentic. Rather than another boring fluff piece, it gives prospects something to talk about.

PS — the millions of searches for Jack Bauer can only help this project…

I bought my first computer in 1996. I was getting ready for college and I bought it with money I had received from my grandparents for my high school graduation.

The computer had a whopping 16MB of RAM and a giant 15-inch monitor. It barely ran Windows 95. Get this: it had a 500MB hard drive. There was barely enough room to load Microsoft Office, much less all the documents I had to create for class. What did I pay for this beauty? $1100.

Cut to today: I just bought an 8GB USB flash drive for $30. Sixteen times the memory for 3% of the cost.

Here’s what that means to me (and to you). I think nothing of storing and managing hundreds of gigabytes of photos, videos, music, and media. And because I have lots of photos, I expect others to have the same. There is no excuse for a brand (organization, product, service, etc.) to not have a lot of great multimedia to engage me.

What does your organization offer the casual web surfer? Videos? Hi-res photos for download? No? You are risking missing your customers’ expectations.

Case in point: look at charity:water. It’s a non-profit that sells $20 bottles of water to raise funds to build water wells around the world. And then they deliver videos, photos, and a full experience back to their donors. The instant feedback loop draws you in, doesn’t it? It’s easy to see that your donation makes a direct difference in someone’s life.

Does your brand generate enough media to fill an 8GB flash drive?

Are you worried if it doesn’t?

Don’t hide your brand experience behind the walls of your computer. Give it away as a gift to loyal customers who are excited about you.

Yesterday I was walking around the Best Buy on Pico and saw a small corner devoted to set-top digital boxes, made to deliver Internet video to your home television.

“Surely, none of them can expect to compete with AppleTV, right?”

I was right. None of those brandless products will compete with Apple on style, function, or content. But today, Netflix revealed its plan to roll out a device to auto-deliver movies and TV episodes. Much like Tivo box owners guarantees the company a long run of subscription revenue, I’m sure Netflix is hoping that this device will lock down users for years.

For creators, this means that Netflix offers yet another opportunity for distribution of low-budget and independent fare. Something to be aware of as they start to sell them. Netflix could turn the corner and reinvent itself as a vertical content channel.

Double Your Video Exposure With Social Media:
UNICEF did it and now so can YOU

Stephen Cassidy began posting the videos to UNICEF’s own MySpace page and then to other video-sharing websites — all for free. In less than a year, the number of views on the video-sharing sites exceeded views on UNICEF’s homepage — doubling the exposure at no additional cost. more

Financial News Sites Bank on Video
Big financial news sites cue up Web-beats-cable sell

Yahoo Finance recently launched Tech Ticker, a tech-stock-centric blog that produces daily, bicoastal video segments. Yahoo claims TechTicker is pulling in 150,000 to 230,000 unique viewers per day, and sometimes close to 500,000 when featuring a big, news-making guest. Forbes.com took a major plunge into video in 2002 and now averages 2.5 million total viewers per week, per internal data. more

Colleges Putting Their Own Spin on YouTube

Frostburg, like a growing number of schools, is trying to elbow its own messages onto such sites as YouTube to promote themselves, create a virtual community and drown out embarrassing clips. more

My alma mater Pepperdine (who uses “alma mater” in real life, anyway?) finally nabbed a proper YouTube account and started putting videos online.

My favorite? The video of last month’s graduation in Malibu, where the seniors were given custom Dodgers hats to put on when longtime announcer Vin Scully took the stage.

Totally unfair, if you ask me. When I graduated in 2000, Tom Selleck gave us his advice, but we didn’t get little Magnum PI moustaches!

Regardless of your leanings, you have to agree that American politics has been taking it on the chin of late; we’ve seen politicians more out of touch with the needs of “everyday people” than ever.

Enter the 2008 Presidential race, which has been chock-full of punditry, viral videos, crying, arguing, dark horses, and videos made to connect the candidate with the audience. The media coverage is endless, and it takes all kinds of tactics to stand out.

The Obama campaign recently uploaded a video of him playing a game of pickup basketball. Of course his highlights are edited together, but it’s a nice little moment.

“Hey, he plays basketball just like me!” No, junior. Did you see that pass? He’s better than you.

A great video stop-action version of Nokia’s popular Snake game, only done with people. Viral gold.

PS — Check the behind the scenes vid.

Video Clix unveiled its on-screen clickable ads last week on an episode of Digg Nation (screen capture below). It made the otherwise too-talky video interesting for me, as I was clicking on everything from the host’s grey hooded sweatshirt to the website they were talking about.

Adding clickable areas immediately made sense to me as an additional layer of interactivity, where, yes, you can increase the ad inventory, but can also add supplemental content for actively interested viewers.

A related company, Overlay, has a similar technology that allows users to add their own flash layers on top of existing videos. I took two seconds and created a series of links on top of the #1 most-watched video on YouTube, Evolution of Dance. What resulted was an unfinished video with links to buy the CDs (on Amazon) corresponding to his various dances. If something like this took off, it could create opportunities for affiliate marketers.

Kobe Bryant stirred up internet chatter with this seemingly real Nike commercial of him jumping an Aston Martin.

Is it his car? Certainly, it doesn’t belong to his partner in crime, Ronny Turiaf, who likely makes league minimum.

The commercial follows on the heels of last year’s video of Lebron James hitting cross-court jump shots (equally amazing).

Of course, neither video is real. The Kobe one is probably close to real: I think they locked the camera down and filmed Kobe jumping in one take and the car zooming past in another and stitched them together in post.

In either case, it did its job: making buzz for new Nike shoes.

Jennifer Connelly and Hotel Rwanda director Terry George donated their time (along with 75 other people) to produce this 60-second PSA for non-profit charity:water.

The spot will air on American Idol tonight on their Idol Gives Back episode. The producer himself donated the air time (at a price tag of $1 million).

Sometimes, universal forces conspire for good.