Tag Archives: video

Can’t Ever Be Too Prepared

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The panel discussion went well today at IACP.  I was pretty nervous leading up to it, primarily because I didn’t feel like I was prepared.  One of my college professors, the late, great Larry Hovis (from Hogan’s Heroes) lived by the mantra:  Be on time, Be prepared, and Be sober.  Simple, right?  It’s good.  Pretty much covers the bases.  It’s interesting to see how many people you come into contact with during a day can’t meet these criteria.

So the lack of preparation was with me.  I was up late last night trying to finish my presentation and practice.  I should have been at this stage days ago.  Instead, I felt like I was preparing for a personal BD pitch – pulling things together at the last minute.

But alas – I did finish, of course, and everything came together and when the panel started, all was good.  I was worried that I would be speaking over everyone’s head, talking about social media and social objects and content/context and all they wanted to hear from me was Video 101.  But I think I broke it down well, where it was digestable for everyone in the audience (wide range of audience, in age, digital acumen and focus).  I got some good feedback from some of the attendees, so mission was accomplished.  And now, I have a pretty good POV on content (objects) and context (relationships).

In the spirit of getting better, I’m always looking for feedback, so if you have any, let me know.  Would love to hear your thoughts.

Additional note – I hung out with Pat Hellberg from the Preset Group for a few hours last night and I’ve got to say, I really like those guys.  (Pat ran Nike’s digital signage network for a long time.)  They’ve been really good to me, which I appreciate.  They’re all very smart and it’s always fun to talk to smart people.  They’re also huge advocates of the DOOH space and doing everything they can to help companies navigate in the space.  Pat listened to my POV (which was really my presentation) on content/context and provided a bit of insight (via something kinda unrelated).  In any case, if you’re looking for someone (or a group of guys) to give you the 411 on digital signage/DOOH, look no further than the Preset Group.  They’ll steer you right.

Objects & Relationships – Equally Dependent & Important

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I am off to IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) to speak on a panel about the importance of video in this industry (food/beverage, hospitality, etc..), specifically from the POV of a brand.  We represent many brands and organizations within this industry and I’ll end up showing a few examples.  But my story isn’t necessarily around the videos, per se.  From my perspective, the video (just like any piece of content) is just another social object (which is an idea/term that’s been around for quite awhile).  It’s a thing.  It gets created, consumed, and shared.  It’s measured in quantity (how many people end up seeing the object?)

But that’s only half of the story.  By itself, it can only do so much for the brand (I’m not going to get into the details of “objects” and “nodes.”  In the spirit of keeping it simple, I’m going to talk in generalities re: social objects.)  The other half of the story is the relationship, the engagement, the context.  Where along the brand’s communication stream – relationship path, if you will – is each person seeing these objects?  Brands need many different social objects to develop/sustain/grow relationships with their audience.  These relationships are measured in quantity (how strong are they?)

If each of them – objects (content) or relationship (context) – work independently, your brand leaves a lot on the table.  Separately they might be strong, but in the end, they are still independent. 

Independency is not the world we live in now.  We live in a world that is interconnected (social) and multi-platform (mobile).  Both have a profound effect on how brand’s should approach 1) creating content (in this case, videos) and 2) creating relationships (engaging).  Everyone and everything can be engaged with, consumed, and shared when people want, how they want, and on what device (screen) they want.  The true nirvana for brands is to consistently, more-often-than-not have a bead on where the audience is in the relationship at the time they are consuming the object so you can create more effective objects.

Here, when content and context work together, not only can brands drive reach (eyeballs), they can build stronger relationships.  Strong relationships grow into trust-based relationships.  Trust-based relationships grow into advocacy and evangelism.  And at the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.  

Are you creating independent, 1-off objects?  Or are you working to marry content & context?  Shout if you can.