See What’s Out There

Big companies have their perks. I have spent this week in Orlando as an invited guest of SAP to talk about Web 2.0 and its impact on corporate social responsibility. It is very important discussion about how web tools can put pressure on the enterprise to be social responsible AND be a tool used by the business sector to solve problems, in association with all kinds of stakeholders. Stay tuned for more on this.

But last night, we took a break from all that and went to a private concert with Eric Clapton. Yes, a private concert with Eric Clapton. Me and 15,000 other guests went to the Amway Arena (I assume where the Orlando Magic play). We used our conference badges to get in and then once in all food and beer were free. Yup, they went all out.

Clapton totally lived up to his reputation. He was awesome. And he had a pretty great band with him as well, including a left-handed guitar player who wasn’t do bad himself. He played lots of hits and Cocaine — not my favorite song — rocked out. It was hot. He did a one song encore of Crossroads.

I had the pleasure of sitting with Shel Israel, who had joined my group earlier in the day and was part of the broadcast part of our discussion. (I will post a link to the first part of our session once I find it.) Shel said he has seen Clapton 4 times over 40 years. The first show he saw was in 1969 in the summer. Cool.

Of course I took a camera. Here’s some of the video. It’s not great quality (it was actually my daughter’s Kodak EasyShare digital camera), but you can get a hint of what you missed.

Clapton opened with Motherless Children

He played Little Wing!

Some acoustic action as well…

Wonderful Tonight… this one takes me back…

The Obama campaign has already responded to the gas tax issue with a new ad. What’s amazing is how short the cycle for new creative has become. Can your organization produce something new in two days?

Link [Obama Ad on YouTube]

WebsiteOptimization.com has some interesting information about how web pages have grown in size and complexity over the last few years. You can read the whole story here and below is a piece of the story about multimedia that interests us in particular. Of particular interest is how many videos are abandon and how broadband is still catching up to allow for a seamless viewing experience.

The Growth of Multimedia on the Web

The use of streaming media on the Web has increased by more than 100% each year (Li et al. 2005). From 2000 to 2005 the total volume of streaming media files stored on the Web grew by more than 600%. More than 87% of all streaming media is abandoned by users in the first 10 seconds, however, wasting up to 20% of server bandwidth (Guo et al. 2005). [I wonder if that’s still true.] While only 3% of server responses are for videos, they account for over 98.6% of the bytes transferred (Gill et al. 2007). In true Pareto fashion, about 10% of the most popular videos on YouTube account for nearly 80% of the views, making caching an appealing performance enhancement (Cha et al. 2007).

Overall, for videos longer than 30 seconds, about 13% of home and 40% of business users experience quality degradation with their streaming media, caused by re-buffering, stream switching, and video cancellation. For sessions longer than 300 seconds, the results are even worse. As broadband penetration has increased, videos have grown in size, bit rate, and duration (see Figure 5).

In 1997, 90% of videos were under 45 seconds in length (Acharya & Smith 1998). In 2005, the median video was about 120 seconds long (Li et al. 2005). By 2007, the median video was 192.6 seconds in duration (Gill et al. 2007). The median bit rate of web videos grew from 200Kbps in 2005 to 328Kbps on YouTube in 2007. So by late 2007, the median video weighed in at over 63MB in file size. On YouTube, the average video size is 10MB, with over 65,000 new videos added every day.

Our senior writer, Susan Balaban worked for Foote, Cone & Belding/Chicago before coming to work for See3. During her tenure at FCB/Chicago she rose to Vice President/Creative Director, working on nearly every brand and client in the agency. She is most proud of her accomplishments for two of FCB’s pro-bono accounts, Earth Share and The United Way. Both received double-digit donation increases and local and international awards. Her work for Earth Share also garnered the Ad Council’s highest donated television media dollars, and was chosen as one of five print campaigns to run in the New York Times each year.

So it has been with great pleasure that we here at See3 have been able to help out Earth Share and the Ad Council extend their reach online around Earth Day. Over the past few days many green blogs that had never heard of Earth Share wrote about the campaign and their video Promise.

You can learn more about the Ad Council’s environmental work here.

When you hire a video vendor, your contract should state that you own the material the vendor is creating. “Work for hire” is the legal term. And you should specify that you will own the copyright and that your vendor will transfer the ownership to you of anything created in the project.

What happens if you don’t do that? Well… If you are Wal-Mart, you get really screwed.

Check this out, from the Kansas City Star:

Wal-Mart’s internal meetings are on display in three decades worth of videos made by a Kansas production company scrambling to stay in business after Wal-Mart stopped using the firm.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. dropped longtime contractor Flagler Productions in 2006. In response to losing its biggest customer, the small company has opened its archive, for a fee, to researchers who include plaintiffs’ lawyers and union critics seeking clips of unguarded moments at the world’s largest retailer.

Those moments never meant for public display include a scene of male managers parading in drag at an executive meeting, a clip used by union-backed critics at Wal-Mart Watch for a recent advertisement castigating the retailer’s attitude toward female employees.

“The videos provide insight into the company’s real corporate culture when they’re not in the public eye,” Wal-Mart Watch spokeswoman Stacie Lock Temple said Tuesday.

Much of the interest in the candid videos is coming from plaintiff lawyers pursuing cases against Wal-Mart.

“The rarity is that it exists at all,” said Brad Seligman, lead attorney in a massive class-action lawsuit that alleges Wal-Mart discriminated systemically against female employees.

“Once in a while you come upon documents that are helpful in a case,” the Berkeley, Calif.-based lawyer added. “What’s amazing about this is that this company has a video record going back many years showing senior management in at times fairly candid situations.”
…
“Needless to say, we did not pay Flagler Productions to tape internal meetings with this aftermarket in mind,” Wal-Mart spokeswoman Daphne Moore said.

She declined to comment on any legal steps the company might be considering.

Flagler says Wal-Mart has no legal power over the videos because the two sides did not sign a contract when founder Mike Flagler was hired in the 1970s to produce Wal-Mart meetings and management conferences.

Hat Tip [Daily Kos]

Last year, I wrote a long blog post about what nonprofits could learn from the Chabad Lubavitch Orthodox Jewish sect. It’s a nice read if you have the time.

I saw this morning a video about what one Lubavitch man has done to turn around a public school in New York. This is a story of passion and dedication and of not judging people by how they look. It is also a story of hope for an American melting pot — a salad really — where people who come from different backgrounds can find common ground in helping our children succeed.

I received the link to this video in an email, that was sent to many people, forwarded many times. It is a classic viral video story. The fact that it started on TV is irrelevant. You and the organizations you care about can tell stories. If those stories are compelling, they will also get sent in an email and attract attention to your work and your programs.

Here’s the story from the Today Show:

Our world has been dominated by the 4:3 square box and it’s time for a change.

As Assistant Editor here at See3, our clients often ask me: why shoot widescreen? The term “widescreen” can also be called “16:9″ or “anamorphic“. The history behind widescreen is that it was originally adapted by Hollywood to give them a one-up on TV when it was first introduced. The reason you should use widescreen is simple: it gives you a larger view of what was filmed. More picture, more action in the frame, more for the viewer to enjoy. I think of it as taking blinders off a horse.

YouTube and other video hosting websites still squish 16:9 footage into a 4:3 frame, and put black frames on the footage, but this is changing. Newer websites have caught on and now play 16:9 footage in a 16:9 player. This has started to put the nail in the coffin of 4:3 and it won’t be long before all websites follow suit. As we usher in HD broadcast and HD footage, the world is going widescreen. When you shoot your next video, don’t get stuck in a box. Go wide.

With online video, we can relive the memorable moments and easily connect past and present. Here’s George Bush throwing out the first pitch at the start of this baseball season. The people show him the love he deserves. We’ve come a long way since 2001.

Hat Tip [jspot]

Can a really big ad buy move the needle on climate change?

YouTube recently opened up its API (application program interface) so that users can now customize embedded players. They’ve provided some cases studies already, but it’ll be exciting to see just how this step encourages innovation using video on the web.

But this moves means a lot more than you’ll be able to change the color of your player. YouTube will still do the heavy lifting (videos will still be stored on and streamed through YouTube), but it means that you’ll be able to fully integrate YouTube into your site or application. Now your organization’s website can have its own YouTube without ever having to leave your site. Though of course you still have YouTube branding, still have conversation around the video happening on YouTube. It is NOT a white-label product.

If you don’t have a programming bone in your body, start easy like me and go to the YouTube page of the video you want to embed. Click “customize” and you’ll be able to change the colors, choose whether or not you want to include related videos, and remove the border. Then grab the code above and put it right on your site or blog. You can see my own example below.