See What’s Out There

If there isn’t already enough evidence of the decline of mainstream media, this week’s announcement by John Edwards is further proof. Edwards announced that he is running for President of the United States, again. But he didn’t make his announcement on TV, he did it on YouTube.

In Edward’s video you see what can be done with not much — a backdrop of kids and an engaging speaker. Are you producing videos to get people to hear your pitch and see your good works? Not everything you do has to be highly produced. Thoughtful, yes. Big budget, not always. At See3 we are working with more and more organizations on video production training. There is only so much professional production that an organization can afford. With a few trained staff members, you can create more material, more frequently. You might still use us or other professionals to help you put pieces together in the editing room, but if you can get most of your own footage you will save a bundle. More than that, you will develop an internal culture that values documentation. It is through documenting your activities that you can narrow the gap between what you do everyday and what you can share with your stakeholders.

The other take-away here is about distribution. As much as we work on production, we think about how to get people to see your materials. The best video in the world is useless without the strategy behind it to get it out in the world. You can see here how they have integrated this video into a wider PR and web campaign with a text messaging component as well.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 28th, 2006 at 6:08 pm and is filed under Video, Nonprofits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.