The best business video stories haven't even been imagined yet.
At Timothy, we believe interesting one- to three-minute videos that pop up on a company's web site can immediately turn prospectors into customers. Our thinking is built on the premise that a good video "reaches out" to web site visitors, whereas the printed word requires "reading in." We're still testing this concept, much as we're testing the effectiveness of viral marketing providers YouTube, Google and Yahoo. We're committed to pioneering this vast Internet wilderness in search of effective ways to communicate our clients' stories expediently and inexpensively.
One example of how viral marketing can bolster a fledgling entrepreneur is illustrated by the "Pianoquarium" video on this page. Nancy Keppel plays piano at some of the finer hotels around Chicago. She's a pioneer in her own right, having written her own work, and has performed for decades, but she's also a survivor. Piano bars are a fading slice of Americana, to our endless chagrin.
So in exchange for permitting us to use her original music for videos we're in the process of making (copyright laws inhibit legal use of most good music), we synchronized a brief medley of Nancy's work with video we shot at the John G. Shedd Aquarium on Chicago's lake front. And as luck would have it, Chicago Sun-Times reporter Andrew Herrmann discovered "Pianoquarium" the day after it first appeared on YouTube. He mentioned in his story on May 7, 2007 that Nancy plays piano on weekends downtown at The Renaissance Hotel. Good for Nancy. Perhaps good for the Shedd Aquarium as well, as we would hope, and even for Chicago tourism, since anyone searching "Chicago Tourism" or "Pianoquarium" on the Internet is bound to find the video and be impressed by the beauty of the world's largest indoor aquarium.
Pianoquarium (2 minutes)
May require Windows Media Player
Pianoquarium is a synchronized video medley of sea animals from Chicago's Shedd Aquarium that has been seen by more than 300,000 viewers on the Internet since twice being featured by Yahoo.
Web site video stories are the future, especially for businesses with products or services that are better illustrated by moving pictures and sound than photographs and the written word. Take, for instance, the humble example of "foundation contractors." These are the companies that perform the difficult, gritty and often pricey task of restoring residential and commercial building foundations that are cracking or sinking. We would argue that a short video, not more than a few minutes, would help distressed building owners understand why the nature of this work is relatively costly. The video would tell the story compellingly. And we would further argue that the first foundation contractor that leverages video on the company web site will have a tremendous competitive advantage.
The possibilities of web site videos are limited only by the imagination. In the next couple of months and years, Timothy Communications will take this exciting new dimension to new heights, and we'll be taking our clients with us.
