Now this new kid is bound to cause a revolution! The revolution is bound to impact the marketers as well as the users or who consume online platforms voraciously. How that will impact the supply side and the demand side, I will tell you in a bit. Before we deep dive, here’s a peep into what we are talking about.
This new application that is already available on Firefox 3.5 browser allows users to post comments on videos and even use tiny parts of the videos elsewhere on blogs, documents. However the video edit facility is available on a much smaller scale even now on websites like www.hulu.com and http://www.gorillasports.net.au/. But what’s most interesting is that no longer will you have to depend on a video playing format like Flash Video Player to view a video. The Firefox 3.5 browser can play videos on the HTML browser itself, using the HTML file video. Further you can interact with the video using tool available therein. Here is the DEMO (Play it only on Firefox). I must however say here that the video player is not highly robust. I will give that to the fact that it will still go through numerous rounds of enhancements and version modifications.
Now let’s come back to the possible impact that this new tool may have on the supply and the demand side.
It’s certainly a wonderful tool for the users. They move one notch up from mere viral-ing a video or Youtube link to friends to actually commenting on the videos right on the video itself. They can even slice and chop portions of the videos that they do not wish to circulate and may even add videos from other sources, relevant or not relevant to the original video. No more will a user need to use often cumbersome video editing tools (whose usage more often than not is a mystery to most users). The user can now create a video mashup, comment, spread the new produce on the websphere.
All these sound interesting and fun to do. But can you imagine the plight of the marketer.
A marketer may soon find that a new video or a television commercial or a brand speak or a brand launch or a sales event promo may have gone horribly wrong moments after it left the brand managers safe tables and landed on the websphere. And before the brand manager could know or even do anything about the situation, the new reconstructed video about his brand has reached millions. What different does a brand manager do now?
I reckon this would set a new dimension to the world of brand management. Suddenly the scope of brand management will be expanded. Brand manager not only builds the brand and manages it; he now manages the conversations on the brand, interactions and also takes care of the negative publicity and users’ negative comments not just to learn and grow but also builds counter strategies. That is the new scope of the management called brand management, something that needs now to be well brushed up long before the brand manager launches a brand (especially on the web). Sure, Public Relations agency is the brand manager’s best friend now. They work 24x7 all 365 days, hand in hand, more than they did before.
Second – we have already seen an unprecedented upsurge of marketing dollars being pumped-in for online advertising. A recent study on the UK online advertising market speaks for itself - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8280557.stm. If predictions are ripe, then soon video advertising or advertising through videos will be norm in advertising and social media forays. Even brand ads on other channels and mass media exposures will be governed by online user generated content ported through television. Hence with this new tool at the hands of the users, it’s imperative that the brand manager is really savvy in understanding the online social media stratosphere and is adept in handing the user requirements thereby not undermining their egos and preferences.
Overall, it’s a wonderful tool in the hands of the users and does a world of good to democratization of the web.
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