Drive Greener and Save Money was produced in conjunction with our friends at Launch Group and was pulled together in 4 weeks from brief to broadcast!

As mentioned in my last post, I think this sponsored TV model is a very interesting development. At a time when there is a shift away from coventional TV advertising, maybe sponsored broadcast content could be an exciting development. I guess only the viewing figures will tell!

However the channel it is to be broadcast on is interesting in itself.

Information TV, as they say on their website;

“We broadcast in-depth public service programming on topics of vital interest to various sectors of the community.

Public bodies use Information TV to broadcast their own video material in the form of sponsored TV programming. Programmes may be one-off broadcasts, or regularly repeated, and can be as short as 5 minutes.  The sponsor of each programme will be clearly credited so that viewers know who has enabled the broadcast.”.

Watch this space for more news.

I was pointed to Howcast.com today. I find it fascinating how people are finding different business models for on-line video, but particularly in this area, where the subject matter can be just about anything at all. As they say on their homepage “Howcast shows you fun, informative how-to videos and guides” Video Jug paved the way here with their “Life explained on Film” website.

What I want to know is do people really go to these sites for genuine advice or is it just an entertaining distraction; a kind of more defined YouTube? And why would a producer produce a ‘How to’ video and upload it to one of these sites rather than a generic UGC site? Howcast does offer the princely sum of $50 to Directors making programmes on their behalf. Budding Spielberg’s would have to make a lot of programmes to get into a higher tax bracket going down that route!

Knowing Bryan, there is no doubt he will be measuring the effect on his traffic, lead generation and conversions so I will post the results here in due course when he lets me have some numbers.

Thanks Bryan, but I think I’ll try and stay behind the camera in future.

Received a great written testimonial today from our very valued client Peter Czapp of the Wow Company for whom we recently completed filming a set of video testimonials. (Peter has agreed to commit this to video when the opportunity presents itself!)

I just wanted to write to you to say thank you very much for completing our video testimonial project for us. It has been an absolute pleasure to work with you and we are delighted with the end result.

I also wanted to thank you for your professionalism throughout the whole project – it could not have run more smoothly and it is great to be involved in a project that is completed on time and on budget. I was really impressed with the speed that you got the completed videos back to us and your prompt response to the edits we required meant we had the videos up on our website really quickly.

I would wholeheartedly recommend Web Epics to anyone thinking about using video to convey a message about their company. Martin and the team really do a fantastic job and the results speak for themselves.

Kind regards,
Peter

Thank you Peter!
You can see the videos embedded in The Wow Company website here

An amazing local business event took place on Friday evening at Petersfield Festival Hall, for which Web-Epics sponsored the video coverage. Under the banner of the Life in Petersfield Magazine, which itself is only 18 months old, my good friends Nick Keith and Gareth Gammon, both directors of Life Magazines pulled off an excellent first event. Cat Jarman did a lot of the behind the scenes hard work and pulled together a large team of supporting individuals and organisations. It was a huge achievement to persuade some 250 people to attend this first event and they have set a precedent for a significant local business and community annual event for many years to come.

Watch this space for news of the video of the event (when we have time to edit it all!). Thanks for involving us Life Magazines… it was a privilege.

Please tell me it is an April Fool!

I am constantly coming across US figures and all too rarely UK statistics. So it’s good to get confirmation from Hitwise that online video growth is every bit as healthy over this side of the Atlantic.

The headline figure is that UK Internet traffic to online video websites increased by 178% between February 2007 and 2008.

But perhaps of most interest (and buried towards the end of Robin Goad’s blog) is the fact that “One in every 40 searches in the UK during February 2008 resulted in a visit to a video site”.

As the email sent to all subscribers states;

“It is with our sincerest regret to inform you that we will be closing the doors on the Videoegg Publisher Platform and related services at http://my.videoegg.com/. “

In answer to the question as to why they are decommissioning, the FAQs on the site state somewhat ambiguously that;

“… resources at technology startups are limited and it is in our best interest to focus on the core of our business at this time. With a wide range of video destination sites available on the market, we feel that we are leaving you in good hands. “

It was not that many weeks ago that Brightcove pulled the plugs on their free upload facility.

Presumably the “paying” side of the Video Egg business is working. As they stated in a recent blog;

“People working in the digital marketing space have a couple of things to be happy about in 2008. First, we are finally seeing a decent amount of TV dollars moving online - something that took much longer than it should have, and wasn’t easy.”

Suggesting that this particular egg has landed sunny-side up and they have secured enough of those TV Dollars to jetison the user generated video that brought them traffic… and overheads.

Is this a start of a trend as the plethora of user generated content sites try and find sustainable business models? After all, Google can’t buy them all!

I wonder as well if the pure ‘novelty’ online video has had its day and whether people are more interested in sensible communication with video rather than distraction?