With about 35 hours of video being uploaded every minute and youtube becoming the 2nd most searched engine after google, there is no doubting that online video watching has come to stay! The moot point is though, does this have business relevance especially in a B2B context?

Our take, corroborated by a ton of research on this subject, is that video has an important role to play in the B2B marketing mix. In fact, there are two situations where video can play a very effective role- one is to illustrate a concept creatively and two is to help “humanize” the brand.

On conveying a concept or an idea, check out these videos IBM’s video – smarter energy (a part of the smarter planet campaign) http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=smarter+energy&aq=f

Accenture’s video to explain cloud computing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eq3Sj1GGs8&playnext=1&list=PLAC82DD3F64D6015C

and Infor’s campaign against large ERP systems – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMYjFFCfK4k.

On humanizing the brand, video can be used for customer testimonials, interviewing your experts, or for your management to express their point of view. Cisco has used video quite effectively in this context.

Now, you may say, all this is great but making a video is expensive and time consuming. Well, not anymore. While making highly creative films including perhaps concept videos may be time consuming, interviews and chat shows can be done very economically and in quick time using the Cisco flip or Kodak’s pocket video camera. And then, you could use software like windows media player to edit and publish.

Believe it or not, it takes no more than a couple of hours from start to finish to produce HD quality video clips.

So, what are you waiting for? As marketers who are fine tuning their mix for the next year, go ahead and explore the possibilities in the realm of online video…………..

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Do you often feel overwhelmed by the deluge of information that is available online and wish there is someone to organize it for you and shares it with you regularly, thus making it unnecessary for you to spend your time on the same exercise? Wouldn’t that be a cool thing? That is exactly the role of a content curator. Clearly, content curation has become a big deal with the explosion of online and social media. In fact, it is no longer sufficient to scan through articles and new-items but it has almost become imperative to look at blogs, youtube and twitter ( for links to more articles for instance).

Content curation requires not just research skills but also a high degree of contextual skills- to sift through a ton of information and cull out just what is relevant is not as trivial as it seems. Also, oftentimes, one also needs to synthesize this information and present it to the audience in an easy-t0-assimilate fashion.

So, among the many trends that social media have popularized, here is one more- content curation. Content curation is also a great opportunity- for marketers who were dreading about creating more and more “original” content, content curation offers a great alternative. Content marketing is therefore today both about content creation and curation – the smart ones are those who figure out the right blend!

Do you agree?

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Make the headline interesting, obviously. What is not so obvious though  is how to do that!! This, and other aspects, of writing effective content was the subject of our discussion last Friday at a workshop we ran for the marketing team of a well known IT MNC.

The headline, and in fact, the entire copy, needs to be really compelling to grab and hold the attention of today’s information deluged audience.

We discussed what constitutes compelling content and also ways to create such content.

It will be interesting to get your views on both catchy headlines and compelling content. Have you come across any interesting headlines off late? Or, content that made you sit up and say, wow! that is clever!!

Please do share……

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A bunch of techie co-workers had queued up at the coffee vending machine. Well, coffee early in the day definitely works wonders. All in their 20s, giggling as they shared stories of their respective flat-mates.

One of them asked her friends, “Do you know when the Open House is and at which location?” The only guy in the bunch of girls frowned and said, “No idea. Don’t think anyone really reads mails from the Communications team.”

I was part of the same team. I felt hurt. Can I generalize the statement and share the feedback with boss, I wondered? Isn’t it ironical that some days back at lunch, our team was discussing how satisfied everyone was with the regular communication that is going out from us in a more structured manner?

The obvious question that came to my mind then was, so who was really satisfied? Is it management? Is it some layer below management? Is it the communications team and its head? Or is it the audience to whom the communication was addressed?

Who were we writing for? Was our objective to make the management happy about the visibility we created for them? Or was it really aimed for the techies who were more than half the population and help them understand where the organization was heading?

I realized the problem was more in the way the communication was delivered. I am sure the communications team did a wonderful job of putting across the message, but we did not realize that there could be other associated activities to pull people to the message. Would it have been better if the mail had gone from the leader’s desk than just another mail from the communications team? Did we need a regular feedback mechanism by which we got to know what our audience wanted from us? Well, we can continue debating.

Ultimately, if the message does not reach the desired audience, the communication fails. Trash the brownie points! What do you say?

Popularity: 12% [?]

I came across this term in a recent McKinsey Quarterly article. As we all know, today, one can own media ( by creating your own content); likewise earned media refers to getting publicity through stakeholders working for you- example sharing your content, rating your product or service positively, engaging with you on community sites etc. At the other end of the spectrum is hijacked media- which is when irate customers choose to spread the negative word. Then, in a sense, your messaging gets hijacked!

This is one of the biggest concerns that a lot of companies have when they are exploring a social media strategy. They want to know how to minimize this.

While policies and processes can be put in place, direct communication with customers does mean that we need to be able to take the good with the bad. It is better to handle negative feedback gracefully, and see if there is merit in the criticism and fix it, rather than try to suppress it. There are many examples of companies that have tried the latter approach and found it backfiring.

What is your view?

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Another post related to Nasscom Product Conclave 2010 . And this one is highly influenced by the talk by Ajay Sharma from Shrishti Soft. I attended a session on “Products going global” , on how Indian products are slowly breaking the myth surrounding the “lack of proven Indian strength in the product space”. The panel spoke about their personal experiences and their perspective on why the Western world still sees us primary as a “services” leader ( that is slowly changing now ). One aspect brought out by Ajay from Shristi was the “Jugaad” culture imbibed in the Indian DNA.

Funny because today I found myself doing the same. My son suddenly woke up at 3:45am and told me “amma – I have to dress up like a tree for fancy dress today”. He promptly dozed off, leaving me in a frenzy. So, there I was, at 4am fumbling with scissors, fevicol, glitter, and green chart paper trying to create something with the semblance of a tree. I managed to get him dressed up in green and brown , ready to board the bus by 7:30 am – jugaad at its parental best !

Needless to say, this happens in every office in India – and it works. What Ajay said was that when we go global, we need to bear in mind that the cultural ethos in the Western world doesn’t care much for this. I would go one step further and say that no customer anywhere in the world, would buy a product from you, if he/she is made to believe that “we don’t have it ready right now, but we’ll scramble and manage to get it up and running tomorrow”. The bottom line is that you need to convey to your customer that you have everything under control – careful planning and strategizing is needed.

Popularity: 12% [?]