Business Opportunities Weblog

October 3, 2006 by Rich Whittle | 1 Comment

InformationWeek:

If you still forward joke E-mails around, you’re out of the loop. The in crowd swaps YouTube clips.

Vendors are pitching new ways to get your company into the mix. Cisco Systems last week launched a business unit called Digital Media Systems that’s selling encoders to turn video into digital formats; a media server to host searchable, categorized video; and a portal that lets companies brand their own Web-based video players.

An intrepid few companies already are pushing beyond the video applications long popular in the business world–for internal communications and training. For example, Frito-Lay is challenging people to make their own Doritos commercials for possible play during the Super Bowl. Submissions will be screened, though, and only five finalists will be posted for public viewing on Yahoo Video.

And, after homemade videos of the foam eruptions that come from dropping Mentos into a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke became a huge hit on video sites, Mentos itself bought ad placement on the original video at Revver.com.

For now, most businesses will play it safe. Last week, carmaker Saturn said it would join Google in a pilot Web ad campaign for its new Aura sedan. The Web ads, Saturn’s first using Web video, let a shopper use Google Earth to click on a nearby dealership, then show a clip of a salesperson from that dealer urging the customer to visit. Says Scott Horn, Saturn’s Internet marketing manager, “You have to go where the consumers are taking you, and video’s where consumers are on the Web.”

Photo by Hugo.

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Tags: Ecommerce, Strategy, Tools