If you travel back in time to 2004 you will find that Corporate use of video as a marketing tool has undergone dramatic change.
The factors that have had the greatest influence on these changes are:
1. YouTube, Vimeo and the other contenders offering free online video hosting. It is hard to imagine that YouTube is not yet 10 years old. That’s correct. As this post is being written YouTube is only in its ninth year and will celebrate it’s tenth birthday on Valentine’s Day 2015!
Life before YouTube for online video marketers practically didn’t exist. Companies that used video in their marketing had to make multiple hard copies of their video marketing and deliver them to their prospective customers. And once the customers received these hardcopies, initially those video tapes, eventually DVD’s, the marketers had to hope that the customer could be bothered to play the video!
2. Download Speeds:
Fast forward just five years from the birth date of YouTube and you will find that many marketers and consumers had started to cotton-on to the potential of YouTube (and Vimeo and other channels) as a means of using video to convey a marketing message.
However, there was one major problem. Download speeds worldwide. Do you remember circa 2006 having to wait for an hour or so for a YouTube video to download? Now, you may have been patient enough to deal with this waiting game if the video was going to be your favourite rock band and your all-time favourite song… But watching waiting this long to watch a company promotional video? No, it wasn’t working.
56K modems quickly became outdated – they were simply not fast enough to carry the download speeds necessary for music, videos, or streaming TV programming – and were replaced with faster Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL), then cable, and afterwards by fiber optic lines. Those then lead to an increase in Wireless internet usage at both home and “hot-spots” in commercial locations such as airports, hotel/motels, coffee bars, bookstores, and even some restaurants.
With the development of internet speed came an explosion of internet advertising. And video advertising was the main winner.
3. Production Affordability
Simultaneous to the development of the internet another digital revolution was taking place: digital replacement of film.
The costs involved in using film to produce a video compared to digital format are like comparing chalk and cheese. Again, just looking a decade into the past film makers had to work with multiple reels of actual film. The reels were taken to large editing studios where edits were literally cut out and the transitions physically inserted.
Every part of the editing process, having been so recently digitised is fast and portable. From editing suites that literally cost tens of thousands to set up, a top of the range editing suite with Apple, such as the advanced Final Cut Pro X editing suite, is now available for operating on an Apple devices such as the Mac Pro Air, for just $US300.
DSLR Video cameras have become affordable items in most Western households and the video output is arguably equal to film.
Are Professional Video Companies still necessary to produce Corporate Video?
Even with the advent of high speed internet, free video hosting and affordable recording and editing equipment, the art of beautiful film making remains the same.
If your company has invested in beautiful branding then a slight investment in presenting your message through a professional corporate video production company is also an essential.