See What’s Out There

As part of our preparation for the NTC in New Orleans in March we have decided to give up to 6 organizations some free consultation with See3 Executive Producer Danny Alpert. Danny is a producer, director and editor whose films have aired on PBS, HBO and A&E and have been nominated for an Academy Award and national Emmy Awards. Here are the details:
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Free Online Video Consultation at Nonprofit Technology Conference

Not sure how to use video to its highest potential in telling your organization’s story and begin incorporating video into your messaging? Sign up for a free one-on-one storytelling strategy session. Sit with Danny Alpert, See3 Executive Producer and Award Winning Documentary filmmaker and brainstorm on new video stories, approaches and styles, explore how to repurpose your existing audio-visual assets and how to distribute your media to the widest and most effective audiences. This is one of the most fun-and maybe the most productive-30 minutes you can spend for your nonprofit’s communications.

Only 6 people will be selected so reply today to info[at]see3.net and tell us how you might use video (for example, do you have a campaign coming up, are you redesigning your website and want to include video, and so on). We will work with you to set up a convenient time during the conference.

Do people see themselves as you see them? This is an important question for anyone trying to market a product or idea or organization. Do you see people as old or young or religious or rich? They might not see themselves that way.

On the IdeaDrivenMarketing.com blog there is a post about a social networking/content sites for Baby Boomers called Eons.com. This site is a failure due to a basic misunderstanding how their target market sees themselves.

What went wrong with their strategy? Let me enumerate the ways:

* The LAST THING Boomers want is to be labeled as such. We don’t want to be viewed as “old.” Ever!
* And neither do so-called “seniors.” (unless they really are seniors, which to me is 75 or 80 plus…John McCain is 72!).
* Creating an age restricted, velvet rope around a label no Boomer wanted in the first place was the dumbest thing a web company could ever do.
* Just as many Boomers don’t welcome that label, you should not assume that a “Millennial” wants to be characterized as such. Nor an African-American, Gay consumer, Hispanic, Gen X’er, etc.
* In fact, forget the labels. Big mistake in marketing.

The last point is the most salient:

Remember, the Toyota Scion and Honda Element were both similarly designed for and marketed to twenty somethings…young people. Guess who bought a ton of them? Boomers in their 40s and 50s! There is a big strategic lesson here for marketers. People are fundamentally aspirational in their buying decisions, and their lives in general (which is one reason why Barack Obama is having such stunning success in his campaign, and not just for the legions of young people who flock to his speeches and his website.) You’ve go to appeal to individuals’ hopes and dreams, not simply the reality of who they are now.

People are fundamentally aspiration in their decisions. Who does your target market aspire to be? Is your organization or campaign helping them become that person?

Thanks to Karen Taggart for the link.

Marc Andreessen has a blog post called “ABC thinks you’re an idiot.” What this post is about specifically is ABC’s launch of on demand programming as a way to get people to stop using DVR (digital video recorders, like TiVo.) The ABC people say, if we give you all of our shows on demand, then you want need the DVR. And on their on demand programming, you can’t skip the commercials.

Quoting Bill Carter from the NY Times

“This does counter the DVR,” said Anne Sweeney, the president of the Disney-ABC television group. “You don’t need TiVo if you have fast-forward-disabled video on demand…”

Ray Cole, president of Citadel Communications, which owns three local ABC stations, who is also the chairman of the board of affiliated ABC stations, was even more direct about the goal of the new service.

“As network and affiliates, we both have an interest in slowing down the explosive growth of DVRs,” Mr. Cole said. “This is about combating DVRs. As we developed this at every stage, there was an agreement that however we put this together, disabling the fast-forward function was key.”

Ha. ABC thinks we’re idiots. And this is the bigger point I want to make. Do you, in your work, project your goals onto your audience in unrealistic ways. ABC’s efforts will fail. It is a joke really. They want to believe so badly that they can stop the world from changing that they don’t tell themselves the truth. The truth at ABC is that people will watch what they want when they want, period. You can’t make them do anything. You better come up with other revenue sources, product placements, in-programming sponsorships, and the like, because the world you knew is gone.

When you think about your work and your goals and you think about the changes the internet has brought, are you telling yourself the truth?

Among video folks all of the YouTube content and user-generated content has made the professionals wonder… Do production values matter anymore? Sure they do, but so does an engaging story. I was thinking about this when I saw this video, Pancake Man. Using stop motion technique more common with animation, it is a nice way to get people to pay attention to something pretty mundane. So, don’t stress about production quality as much as think about story and how you will get the views to engage with your story. Be creative!

Here’s a news item from ABC News’ The Blotter. It shows that it’s not just nonprofits who are getting into the online video game, but also government. It is really making fun of this investment in video and while certainly they can’t compete on YouTube views, I think there is very good reason for our government to extend their PR work to web video. So I can’t say much for their efforts so far, but lets give them something for trying. The biggest problem I can see right away is that they are not letting us embed the videos.

I Got a Crush. . . on Condoleezza

February 07, 2008 3:40 PM

Justin Rood Reports:

The State Department is defeating terrorism one “strong, engaging” online video at a time.

While many agencies in Washington expect their budgets to be cut, the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy is looking for an extra $36 million in 2009, according to new administration budget documents. That would boost the office’s budget above $400 million. (It’s spent roughly $350 million a year in 2007 and 2008.)

What will they spend the money on? The administration showcases the office’s Video Production Team, “which creates strong, engaging web-based video that communicates key U.S. values and counters terrorist ideologies,” in documents provided to Congress.

Strong? Judge for yourself: here’s the Office of Public Diplomacy’s video report on Obama Girl and the “Hillary 1984” ad.

Engaging? a handful of videos created by the team and posted to YouTube have been viewed about 200 times.

By comparison, Obama Girl’s music video, “I Got a Crush. . . on Obama,” has been viewed an estimated 100 million times. And it cost $2,000 to make, according to its creator, Ben Relles.

We are in the middle of the DoGooderTV Nonprofit Video Awards. These are annual awards sponsored by See3 and NTEN to showcase the video work of nonprofits in the US and around the world. The winner will get an expense paid trip to the Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco next year.

I am just in awe of the work people are doing out there. Not every video is great, but the work is so important and often so moving. Some of the videos are thoughtful and emotional. And some are funny. You can see for yourself at the home page of the DoGooderTV Nonprofit Video Awards and click on the Watch button to see the videos.

Here’s a funny entry from Greenpeace International.

Once again Beth Kanter and her friends at the Sharing Foundation won the latest philanthropy competition. (If you didn’t help Beth win, you can still give $10 or more to the Sharing Foundation online and help kids in Cambodia.)

The whole giving competition thing is complicated and I am not sure it’s healthy. There is a mad scramble to get donations in a certain time period. Organizations push on their network, “Give now!” “We need you!” “We want to win.” But unless you are an expert like Beth, you don’t usually have much of a chance.

Beth has written about her win and here is the response I left for her. You can read more about it on Beth’s blog.

Beth, you are really great at this. Mazal Tov yet again on a job well done.

This whole competition thing has been a good model for your strengths, and I have given to this worthy cause every time you asked.

But I wonder about all the orgs who went down this road because of the publicity but were so less equipped than you to be successful. I saw lots of questions about this on the PX list and elsewhere and thought to myself, these poor suckers, they are going to spend lots of time putting this together, will get little response, and people like Beth — with big and active networks — will eat their lunch. They don’t have a chance.

I also wonder if this whole competition thing is sustainable. How many of these could you do before you create fatigue in your network? And, is there a way to get the folks who gave with the urgency of this campaign to have a deeper engagement with the Sharing Foundation?

Would love your thoughts on all of this in another post.

Michael

We get asked a lot about the best format to upload video to YouTube and about size/length limits. Here’s what YouTube says about these issues:

How long/large can my video be?

There are two ways to upload your video: by using our Single File Uploader and the YouTube
Uploader. Depending on which upload method you choose, your videos can be up to 100MB or up to 1GB.

Videos uploaded through YouTube’s Single File Uploader have to be under the 100MB file size limit. The longer the video is, the more compression will be required to fit it into that size. For that reason, most videos on YouTube are under five minutes long and there is a 10-minute length limit for all videos.

You can compress your video using movie editors, like Windows MovieMaker or Apple iMovie. Programs like these allow you to edit your videos, add soundtracks, and compress file sizes.

If you choose to use the YouTube Uploader, your video can be up to 1GB in size. Learn how to use the YouTube Uploader to upload large or multiple files here.

What’s the best format to upload for high quality? + Video

We recommend the following settings:

MPEG4 (Divx, Xvid) format
640×480 resolution (* most updated recommendation)
MP3 audio
30 frames per second
Resizing your video to these specifications before uploading will help your videos look better on YouTube.

Continuing the move to user generated content and political involvement, a new site launched where people can upload videos saying farewell to President Bush. Farewell Mr. President is a basic video sharing site designed for a little catharsis in the count down to having a new president.

You can see a little complication video they did here.

The web is changing fast as is our relationship to the software we use. I am a big believer in”cloud computing” or “software as a service” or whatever you want to call it. This is the concept that most of what we do on the computer will be done online, using the computing power of remote servers off in some server farm (probably owned by Google). Salesforce.com is a pioneer in this concept, selling even large companies on the idea of putting their data in an online system. The advantages are clear — nothing to install, no worries about backup, hardware, etc. always available online from anywhere you are.

This new world is a threat to Microsoft who still prints money by selling us their Office suite for hundreds of dollars and Windows for hundreds more. And so Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo! because, as David Pogue wrote yesterday, “Has it come to this? Is Microsoft’s innovation engine so dead that the only way it can grow is to buy other companies?” Mostly, yes.

The smartest nonprofits right now are turning to Google for pretty much everything. On Google you can run your email and replace your Microsoft office suite. It’s a huge savings in dollars (up front and for maintenance) and an even bigger savings in headaches. (Google gives away to nonprofit what they charge everyone else $50 per user per year for. So, being free, it’s really a great deal.) We just bought a Mac at home and my daughter said she needed Microsoft Office to be able to write her documents. Nope. Try Google Docs. When I explained to her that she didn’t have to use her thumb drive to transfer the file from one computer to her school computer — she just had to login to Google — she loved it. Nothing lost again, thank you very much.

Yahoo! doesn’t want to be bought by Microsoft. Who can blame them. Microsoft is the old school now and Yahoo! used to be the very essence of the internet. I am hopeful that Yahoo! can find a way out of it, but I don’t think they will. Microsoft is offering too much cash. In their negotiations, Yahoo!’s Jerry Yang would be wise to listen to Shpigler. He’s an Israeli — and I can tell you from my 5 years living in Israel that Israelis know something about negotiating. So, listen to what Shpigler has to say and maybe you can also learn something about negotiating too.