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Video – The Media of the Future

By Dreaming Fish Productions
March 11, 2013 //
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…or why you need video on your website!

The possibilities of communicating with your clients and staff with the use of video are greater than ever before. With video you can enhance your website and make your marketing more effective, which in turn will boost your sales and your business.

Don’t just take our word for it though. EMarketer’s research shows that video increases a user’s ‘dwell’ time on a website by 83% and Internet Retailer states that visitors are 85% more likely to buy after watching a product video.

video increases a user’s ‘dwell’ time on a website by 83%

Although text can showcase your expertise, video does so in a more engaging way. By stimulating multiple senses, a dynamic video will captivate the audience much more than text alone. Moreover, it gives a face and voice to a company allowing for a far more personal interaction with customers. This is proven by brands that have seen lifts between 20% and 40% in terms of incremental buying after implementing online video.

Now that video is an established marketing channel outside of television, consumer behavior is changing. Video sharing sites such as YouTube, the second most popular search engine in the world, are increasingly being used to access information as well as entertainment. Four billion videos are viewed every day on YouTube, and in 2011 more than one trillion views took place.

The major search engines, such as Google, are also changing to allow for video by giving priority to websites that use it. Forrester Research found that video is 53 times more likely to initially rank on the first page of a search engine than one that only uses text. Where a traditional website may take months to accomplish these sorts of rankings, a site that uses video can take just days. Quick placement on major search engines will significantly increase exposure and is invaluable to any business.

brands have seen lifts of up to 40% after implementing online video

The recent rise in the number of smartphone owners means it is easier than ever for a business to reach their audience. Strategy Analytics calculates that from October 2011-October 2012 there was a 47% increase in the use of smartphones worldwide. Furthermore Google reports that in the United States, 75% of smartphone owners use their phones to watch video online. That’s a massive audience for your video content, and they do not need to be sat at a computer to view it. YouTube mobile has one billion views every day and Ooyala projects that video viewing on smartphones will increase ten times over by 2018.

As well as your website, video can benefit your email campaigns. 88% of marketers’ surveys indicated that email marketing is more successful when integrated with video, and 72% showed that recipients were more likely to purchase or convert if an email campaign incorporates video. In fact, MarketingExperiments.com suggests that viral video increases click-through rates by 750%.

viral video increases click-through rates by 750%

One of the objections to online video is that it is the domain of the adolescent. Not true. Google states that people in the 18-34 age group now spend almost 50% more time watching online video than they do television. Furthermore the age group with the highest percentage of YouTube watchers is 35-49 years.

As video becomes increasingly accessible it will continue to enhance and replace text and still images in our digital communications. As well as a necessity for a company that wants to evolve, video will set a business apart from its competitors. Not only is it apparent that video will boost your business, it has become a vital tool in order to be noticed.

If you are interested in talking about how video can help your company, you can call Dreaming Fish Productions on 01483 714155 or contact us at info@dreamingfish.co.uk.

Notes: Natalie Howard is the new star blogger for Dreaming Fish Productions, a communications agency that specialises in high quality video production and animation. She likes zombie films, playing the ukulele and cheese.

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Categories Animation, Corporate video, Dreaming Fish, Dreaming Fish Productions, Uncategorized, Video Production, YouTube

“People Gather Around Content…”

By Dreaming Fish Productions
April 20, 2012 //
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Our intern, Calvin, made this throwaway comment a few weeks ago in one of the blogs he wrote for us…and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since!

He didn’t claim the quote as his own, but I still think it is one of the most insightful comments I have heard in some time, and it set me off on a whole thought process that led to an interesting and somewhat contradictory conclusion.

Campfire

Pass the sausages!

Travel back in time with me to the dawn of civilisation. Picture family groups huddling around campfires, listening to stories told by the elders of the tribe and singing the songs passed down from generation to generation. This is truly ‘narrow-cast’, small groups physically gathering around the content, and any discussion about the evening’s events took place there and then.

In those early days, religion and/or beliefs would have made up a large part of the content, and this model was to continue until the middle ages, albeit that family groups changed to religious congregations.

Theatre very much kept this approach alive; large groups consuming content at the same time, be it new content or existing content repeated or updated for a new audience.  The innovation here was that the play could be repeated over and over as it toured around the country, or even to different countries, but groups experiencing the content continued to remain relatively small.

The advent of cinema at the turn of the 20th Century built on this. Although similar in nature to the experience of theatregoers, for the first time cinema allowed the same content to be shown in different places, and for wider groups to now start consuming it simultaneously. The same post-film conversations could be heard across the country, but these conversations remained isolated and short-lived.

Family gathered around an early TV

Dreaming Fish crew reviewing their work

Fast forward to the invention of home radio and TV sets and the explosion of broadcast content. Technology is now involved and the audience has become dispersed. Only very small groups are now physically gathered around the content, but in disparate locations there are increasingly larger numbers. They are not physically co-located any more, but are still experiencing the same content at the same time. The discussion about the most popular shows is now carried out at the time of the show, or increasingly on subsequent days in the playground or at work following the advent of audio-tape and video recorders. These devices fracture the simultaneous audience, people no longer need to be in a certain place at a certain time, but they increase the life of the content and fuel the on-going discussion.

Then came the internet and video on-demand, with the opportunity to broadcast and narrow-cast, and for the content to be consumed when and where you wish. The physical audience is now almost down to the individual, but the virtual audience is now global, and for me this is the interesting point. People are still gathered around the content, but the difference is it’s not a physical gathering. However increasingly the conversations about the content take place simultaneously as people discuss the content live on Facebook or Twitter, just as they did back around the campfire. The conversations are the same, it’s just the medium that’s different.

So in some way we’ve come full circle; from the tribal group to a global audience we continue to experience and share content in a similar way. But one thing remains; it is the content that creates the conversation.

…or does it? Increasingly now it is the conversation that creates the content, but that’s the subject for a whole different blog!

Notes: Phil Miller is Director of Dreaming Fish Productions, a communications agency that specialises in high quality video production and animation. He also likes to sit around a campfire telling stories!

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Categories Content, Television

The Death of ‘Serial’ Television?

By Dreaming Fish Productions
October 19, 2011 //
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When was the last time you planned to watch a TV programme at the time it was broadcast?

For many of us it’s difficult to be sat on the sofa at a given time to enable us to watch X Factor or Eastenders. Life just isn’t like that any more, and increasingly the Gen Ys out there are used to having entertainment at the touch of a button, not when they are told they can watch it. TV has long been based on a ‘serial’ approach i.e. one programme following another. But do we still consume our entertainment like this?

It is true that ‘live’ TV events like X Factor or Strictly do still draw a crowd. There is a sense of shared enjoyment – it’s a social event in the same way we tend to experience a film at the cinema. However the numbers tuning into the big shows are falling and this could be due to two factors; either the formats are starting to wear a little thin or people choose to consume their TV in another way (or at another time). With the advent of Sky +, PVRs, smart TVs and online catch-up sites like iplayer, 4oD and to some extent YouTube, there is little need to be sat in front of the TV when a broadcaster tells you to be.

So what does this mean for broadcasters and the future of TV programming? Increasingly we will see a focus on fewer high value productions such as Downton Abbey which will remain as TV events, with cheaper productions made to be viewed via the broadcaster’s on demand service. This gives room for smaller production companies to compete in the marketplace, providing lower budget but equally compelling content which can be viewed favourably beside that of their larger cousins and via a similar medium. It will also allow for a more versatile approach where length is immaterial.

The one fly in the ointment as always will be finance. Advertising will continue to be the main source of income for the foreseeable future but it may be that other funding models may appear, such as cloud subscription channels where you could subscribe in the same way as LOVEFiLM, but covering a very wide range of content from broadcast to narrowcast (kids to kayaks).

In a time of austerity people aren’t consuming less TV and increasing ways of viewing programmes can only be good news for programme makers. It’s certainly an interesting time to be involved in video and TV production.


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Categories Adverstising, Corporate video, Dreaming Fish, Dreaming Fish Productions, Television, Uncategorized, Video Production, YouTube
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