What’s video, anyway?
iPhones in a blender? The Old Faithful of Internet traffic? A subtle way of laying the submodality smackdown on unwitting customers?
Or maybe it’s something technical~ CCDs on the NLE at 640×480, 25% of all web traffic, at 30 frames a second, 25 in Europe, 24 in high-def?
Or just a waste of time or a pain in the
Could be.
Or maybe it’s something else.
I like to step out of marketing-think and watch myself watching video. On the Web or on TV. Watch myself in awe of the Genius of Pong. Or pretending Jay Bilas can hear me hate on him during basketball games. Or feeling all warm and kindly at Wilfred Brimley talking about “diabeetus” like he’s my grampaw or something.
I mean, these people are strangers! They get paid a lot to appear on a box in the living room, but they don’t know me from Adam.
And I feel like I know them.
That’s one of the keys to video. You hear the voice, see the face, the body language. You’re not there with the person, but you might as well be. I recall something the great Russian director, Andrei Tarkovsky, wrote about this:
…the screen records personality from a mosaic of imprints on film…
He was talking about Le Cinéma, not humble video. And the quote comes in a chapter on actors in his book Sculpting in Time. Still, the same principle applies. Give me a camera and a mic and I give you a laser beam right into your customer’s mind.
You want to get in the minds of your customers? Even better, you want to bond with them?
Use video.
Nothing’s faster. Nothing’s more powerful. Nothing else can make them feel like you’re right there with them, talking with them.
Not to them. Not at them. With them.
