Category: Web Marketing

Imagine that you’re on a web site, watching a video of a talking head. The speaker is talking about something that interests you, but it’s hard to get past the frustration of wishing you could ask her to explain a point further before she goes on to the next. Whereas the rest of the web experience is more of a dialog, with us asking questions by clicking on hypertext links, this video is one way only. She talks, we listen.

Now imagine you can click on a section of the video to drill down to another video clip or web page, offering more information. @View Magazine calls it hyper video drilling, and touts it as a way to add deeper meaning and clarity to brief news videos. In another timely application, politicians can support their sound bites on their sites with supporting content. And advertisers and online marketers are, of course, the other big winners in this new web protocol.

If I can boast for a moment: I should say that with the news of this innovation, I experienced for the second time this week a “We’ve been scooped!” moment.

It’s the sensation that my team’s recent brainstorms have already been taken and run with by others. Far from being disappointed, I’m thrilled. It means we’re thinking the right way and finding creative ways to bridge the needs of both our clients and their audiences. The marketplace is validating our work.

Moreover, these widespread introductions of new technologies* are paving the way for acceptance by a mass audience.

Take the example of this hyper video drilling: When we were brainstorming about how wonderful it would be to click off of the talking head videos we were building into a site, and thereby see supporting documentation (in this case demonstrations of the technology described by the speakers), we knew we could build it pretty easily in Flash, but run the risk of it going underused. Or worse, it could confuse unfamiliar users!

Awareness of new user interfaces is notoriously slow to grow.

Think of the hypertext link: It’s a fundamental benefit of the web, but it took a while for the average web user to fully recognize that some text on a page can be clicked on to go somewhere else (those readers under the age of 30 need to talk to your grandparents to fully grasp this sad fact).

Same goes for clicking off of videos. I’m thrilled that this is being tested and talked about widely. It’s clearly the next step in the evolution of online video. And it leaves to groups like mine the thrilling opportunity of how best to leverage this new web convention.

*The other incidence of us being “scooped” was discovering that our ideas exactly — and I mean to the letter — had been accomplished. The idea was how to express visually and with movement and “drillability” the connections in an online community such as Facebook. It’s demonstrated in this video (it loads slowly — be patient), of a visual browser created by UC Berkley Ph.D. students Jeffrey Heer and Danah Boyd. Amazing stuff, and encouraging.

Legend has it that the telephone was invented simultaneously by at least two labs in two countries, and similar innovations have had similar simultaneous origins. If I can be indulged a little more bragging, I’m encouraged that the marketing technology “lab” I’m affiliated with is working at solving the right problems at the right time.

A recent post on the 37signals blog helped explain how their project management product was born: Turn the tables on that petty tyrant MS Project. Everyone I’ve talked to who uses Project has the same complaint. It gets the job done but it’s painfully complicated.

The Chicago-based 37signals decided to do something about this complexity and created the award-winning Basecamp. It’s a smart strategy. Users occasionally need to push the limits of their software, but far more often, they just want to get their work done.

I was reminded of this as I had dinner tonight with a friend who has recently taken the plunge and bought an iMac. After working with nothing but PCs, his response was almost comical: “What have I been missing all these years?!?” On the Apple site they list reasons for “Why you’ll love a Mac.” The first: It just works.

We all pine for the day when something actually gets simpler instead of more complex. Those who deliver simplicity and still allow us to get work done win our hearts and our pocketbooks.

Is it any wonder that the biggest threat to email marketing — if you want to call this new, complementary tactic a threat — is something whose middle name is simple? Really Simple Syndication, known more commonly as RSS, is catching on because you don’t have to fill out a form, you don’t have to open an email program, and you don’t have to go beyond reading headlines, should you prefer not to. Like the iMac, RSS just works.

Read the 37signals blog entry and see if you agree: The Davids of the world are continuing to win their battles against Goliaths, especially if they stick to what’s simple. While you’re at it, take a look at some of the blog’s other entries. This is one of the best “corporate” blogs I’ve come across, if you can call it corporate. These folks really know how to use mildly subversive content to drive home points that also happen to advance their brand. They’re just themselves, warts and all.

Simply refreshing.

One thing in particular strikes me as extraordinary about Second Life, the online community game that stretches the definitions of both community and gaming. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m most impressed with its demographics. Second Life’s 750,000+ “residents” are older than most online gamers, and much more evenly split in terms of gender. Their communities’ inhabitants are much closer demographically to the real world, and most would probably tell you they aren’t playing a game at all. They’re simply … living.

So it should not be too surprising that a real world recording artist has given a concert there (Suzanne Vega) and a real life presidential hopeful has campaigned there (former Virginia governor Mark Warner).

These online community firsts were reported in this week’s excellent On The Media podcast / NPR broadcast. And although they are impressive, I think you’ll agree that the online appearances of trailblazing musicians and politicians are a little too “fringey” to suggest further marketing possibilities.

Then, a few hours after hearing that podcast, I read more details about how Harvard is teaching a law course on an “island” that it has purchased on Second Life.

Yes, one way you can take CyberOne: Law in the Court of Public Opinion is in a virual Second Life classroom. The course description explains that it is, “A course in persuasive, empathic argument in the Internet space.” Students will be, “Studying many different media technologies to understand how their inherent characteristics and modes of distribution affect the arguments that are made using them.”

What separates this genuine taste of things to come from mere headline-grabbing gimmickry is the way the subject of study actually becomes the medium of discourse:

“Students will be immersed in this study through project-based assignments in which they will be using these technologies to make their own arguments.” [Emphasis is mine.]

Having learned about using this medium within the medium, these students will be ready to help the future Mark Warners win real votes in virtual spaces. And if you can sell policy, you can sell a heck of a lot of other things.

Instead of businesses spinning their wheels trying to set up things like MySpace profiles for their brands, perhaps they should start looking at creating Second Life avatars for their brand spokespeople to use to polish their online persuasion skills. If done right, these businesses could find prospects who are closer to the demographics of their customers, and much more willing to hear what they have to say.

NOTE: Another recent piece on Second Life is in the Wall Street Journal. Read about how clothing designers for this online world are creating and selling fashions designed to turn avatar heads.