Jesse launches a big bag-o-trash off the 5th floor fire escape. Does he hit the dumpster? Watch and see. Shot with a Nokia N95.

I spent New Year's Day cruising around town documenting some of the sweet rides found on the streets here...typified by the kind of shabby chic I love. Happy New Year from coBRANDiT!

I will be broadcasting live from Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba's SWOMfest '08 in Austin, October 30. Using my N95, run thru Qik.com over AT&T's 3G network into Mogulus, as seen here in player above.

Follow-Up: I turned off the live player and have instead embedded the opening minutes of SWOMfest: A Zombie Dance to MJ's Thriller, and Ben McConnell's opening remarks. Be patient...it takes 50 seconds till the zombies come out... More of our SWOMfest video content can be seen here on our qik channel and a revolving selection here on the SWOMfest mogulus channel we built.

PUMA Running has hired coBRANDiT to help distribute video and publicize content from chasingBOLT.com. chasingBOLT is a "blogumentary series" which follows PUMA sponsored 100m world record holder Usain Bolt as he travels to Beijing to compete in the 2008 Olympics. Working with our distribution partners Pandemic Labs and Involver we'll be updating various social media video channels, widgets and apps. with new content regularly for the next month, so stay tuned!

I'm gonna see how long it takes 1) to get on google's page one with tonybertone.com and 2) how long it takes to get a meeting with Tony, PUMA's global brand director. Will keep you posted. Tony! Call me. 617 823 9286. Text from vid posts:
Dear Tony: We request a meeting to discuss PUMA and social media outreach, aka the new PR. We've got your attention, and we can do the same for PUMA's fans. Make your existing programs more effective without changing how you operate. Talk to you soon-- Owen. Here are vids on YouTube, Yahoo, MySpace, Metacafe, Google, DailyMotion and Veoh.

Update: It took exactly one hour to get my Viddler video onto google's #2 front page slot for a "Tony Bertone" search. The video was viewed once. By me. Amazing. See screenshot below.



UPDATE 7/14/08: Here's a screenshot this morning of a "tony bertone" search. You'll notice that tonybertone.com is now the #1 slot, in fact I pretty much own the page. Nice. Now all I need is the meeting.

Harvard Business School is in Allston...not Cambridge. That means Allston is the seat of great business and mktg knowledge. coBRANDiT is in Allston. Get it? Here's a short drive-by tour of HBS and surrounding Harvard properties.

Ok folks...a breakdown of the technologies we used to vlog from WOMM-U last week in Miami. We used two cameras: a Nokia N95 8gb and a Flip Video Ultra. The N95 is a multi-functional phone/computer often billed as competition for the iPhone. It's user interface blows by comparison but it shoots very nice video and has a few video apps. available that make it a great vlogging tool. You can shoot video to memory and then send the video (we use Shozu) to many social media video sites at once with one touch of a button. I typically send videos to a couple of youtube channels, a couple of blip.tv channels, and utterz.com though there are 20+ others i could set up. Shozu uploads are limited to a 10mb file size (though direct uploads to individual sites are not). That's why we didn't use Shozu in Miami. Instead, we live streamed via Qik.

We loaded Qik onto the N95 and set up our account online. When you open up Qik on the N95 it takes about 2 seconds to load, then you hit the button labeled "stream" and there you are, live streaming to the web with a few seconds of delay. Viewers can type in chat comments and they appear on the screen of the N95 in real time. This means if I'm talking to Joeseph Jaffe (as I did at the womma party in Miami, see photo above) viewers can ask questions which appear on my screen and I can ask Joe to respond. Joe sent out a tweet to alert his audience and we were off and running. As a side note: Qik videos can be viewed or embedded in two ways: you can embed a player which shows live video whenever you go live, or you can embed and view archived streams as individual clips (like you do on youtube). Here's the archived stream created while Joe was running my N95. I had gone to get beer...



Ok, understand so far? Good. Now it's gonna get more complex...we were also using Mogulus. Mogulus allows you to produce a 24/7 video channel that's always playing a rotation of selected video. Whenever you go live (which you can do via an N95 and qik, or via a web cam like the one built into you laptop) the live stream automatically bumps the rotation and there you are. Live. Mogulus lets you overlay branding and tickers and titles and crawls, so you can apply text and images to your live feeds (and the vids in rotation for that matter). We set up a Mogulus channel for WOMM-U at mogulus.com/womma. Mogulus is set up so that multiple producers can login from remote locations. You could run a live or near live channel from different places around the world. This just in from our team in Dakar! Pretty cool. Mogulus allows chat in the same way Qik does, and offers customized embeddable players. I'm not embedding one here because they're a pain in a blog post. They're always on! They need to be on a standalone page like this one: the coB homepage.

So far so good. But it turns out that live video is hard to produce (surprise!). Easy technically, but in terms of compelling content you've got to have your interviews and situations lined up pretty well. And to get the chat going you've got to do a little pre-publicity and then run the camera for awhile to give people a chance to respond. People aren't used to live web video. The first comments we get are usually something like "Are you really live? Say hello to me if you are." To make live video work well you've got to have pre-determined go live times and you've got to stream for 15-20 minutes minimum. AND you've got to have some good content lined up. A hot interview, a sweet scenario, a crazy event, a compelling demo. Want the easy mobility of an N95 but don't need or want to go live? Want to produce video you can actually edit? Ahhhh....Flip Video Ultra.

These $140 cameras hold an hour of flash video content and produce amazingly crisp 600x480 video with good sound. The file formats can be a little wonky (.avi) but there are easy workarounds available. The converter I use is streamclip, available from apple. Here's the Flip workflow: Put it in your pocket. When you want to shoot, pull it out, turn it on and in 3 seconds you're ready to shoot. Hit the red button and you're recording, hit it again and you stop. There's a basic digital zoom that helps in some situations, but it degrades the video quality. When you've got an hour of content, flip out the built in USB and load it on to your computer. You can load on files directly (the camera functions just like an accessory hard drive) or you can edit and compress videos right on the Flip--all the software is on the camera's drive in a nifty little program that opens up on your computer screen. The way we work is to bring the files into iMovie or Final Cut Pro and edit them down a bit and add titles and music. Then we do our own compression and throw it up on YouTube or Viddler or load it into our Mogulus stream or whatever. Here's a mix we produced this way at WOMM-U. It's not live, but pretty close if you work fast and the content can better because it's edited...but you lose the live chat functionality. Though you can chat about non-live video through Mogulus if you want to.

Part of the question here is quality vs. quantity, and is live really valuable? Depends on the situation. I can certainly think of a lot of applications for live video, but you really need to do the advanced set-up, PR, and pre-production to get it to engage people and work properly. Near live like we did with the Flip worked pretty darn well, though at an event you need to set aside time for editing or be prepared to stay up late. Need more quality? That's why we aren't throwing out our nice Sony HD camera and our wireless mics...yet.

Jesse and I will be live vlogging portions of WOMMA's WOMM-U down in Miami May 7-9. For the next few days you can check out the action on our front page and here at a more permanent site. I'll do a more detailed post on what tools we're using soon. Hint: Mogulus, Qik, Nokia N95's and Flip Video Ultras.

We are taking the opportunity to make a PR announcement: coBRANDiT is teaming up with guerrilla marketing agency Street Attack to offer a full suite of alternative marketing services. We've built out the widget below to help spread the word. Check it out and let me know what you think! (That goes for the live vlogging too...)

Jesse and I attended Bryan Person's Social Media Breakfast in Cambridge MA this morning...fun event. I shot some N95 qik video of the 4 presenters and did a little video show and tell. Topic: getting hired via social media. Guess what? If you want to get hired in the social media jobspace, the paper resume is dead. You can see all the video posts here.

Well, I really do love ShoZu, which allows you to easily upload video from your phone to any number of different locations quick and easy....as long as your file size is less than 10mb. That is a tiny limit! It means that people running decent camera phones can only upload 20-30 seconds of material. Bummer! There's a petition on the ShoZu forums to raise the upload limit, or make it a pay service, but no answer from Shozu yet. ShoZu! Help! I can't use your service enough!

The N95 arrives and is unboxed...and the mobile era begins at coBRANDiT. Shot a bunch of sound bites and office views, then strung some of them together in iMovie. The raw footage can be seen (and contributed to) at obttv.com.

And can I take a moment to talk up Viddler? Viddler is an amazing service...good video quality, all the sharing tools you'd expect, plus you can comment and tag in the playbar, embedding links...you can even leave video comments. Very cool. And we've discovered that comments in Viddler vids index very well (great google juice).

Some years ago we started a site called OBTTV dedicated to cheap uploads. We've resurrected it as a mobile platform, for the moment running on blip.tv. Upload your own mobile vids to obttv.smile@mobile.blip.tv and it'll appear. Fun eh? Here's an official announcement we ran on Qik earlier today.

We just got ok'd for a Qik alpha account...sweet. Here's the first little test vid. The Qik interface on the N95 is very sweet i gotta say. Once you've got the application installed (easy) you just turn it on and the video screen opens up with a little Qik bug in the corner and a buton for "stream"...hit the button and you're live. The player above contains the first vid I shot, but will update as I shoot more or play live if that's what's going on. At least that's how I think it works...we'll see!

update: yeah, that's how it works.

Note on the N95: I've gotta send it back 'cus it's having trouble buffering video when I shoot to memory, which is to say whenever I'm not shooting live to Qik. Big bummer. Video is of course the only reason I spent $700 on the thing. This better be a solvable problem.

I'm sick of hearing about SXSW. Look, we all know it's a music festival that got glommed onto by marketers. So here's a little video about how Jesse and I stayed in Allston (aka Rock City). Shot with the secondary camera on the N95...only 2 megapixels.

I've got a Nokia N95 8gb on loan to play with while I wait for mine to come in (thanks to Brett at Street Attack). It's UI is not great...buttons feel cheesy...and I can't get it to download video over MMS (yet). But I can upload videos of my sleeping puppy!
Here's a test through Blip.TV (much better vid quality):

Elliot Yamin of American Idol fame sat down in NYC with top bloggers to discuss his role as a global ambassador for Eli Lilly's Inspired by Diabetes and other topics related to living the dream. Video by coBRANDiT, 'natch. (Note: Videos are NLA as of 7/2010)

Inspired by Diabetes is a global campaign asking people with diabetes, as well as their family, friends and health care professionals, to express how diabetes has impacted their lives — and share those stories with others around the world.

To share your story, and enter the Creative Expression competition, visit www.inspiredbydiabetes.com. You could win a trip to Italy and backstage passes to an Elliott Yamin show. Eli Lilly will also donate money to the IDF Life for a Child Program, which provides insulin and diabetes supplies to children in developing nations.

This video is pure experiment. How many hits will it get on YouTube (and how quickly) by having a picture of a woman as the thumbnail image and the word "ass" in the title? So far in one day it's surpassed the video I put up 2 weeks ago...

Description: Flashback to 2/07. Flying Dog Brewery winnebago ride down the mountain into Steamboat Springs, CO. Danada gets out at the top of the pass in a blizzard to take a leak. Rippe gets us lost, walks into the wrong house. Impromptu party in the driveway, beer and cigarettes. But wait! Whose naked ass is that hanging out of the hot tub?

In a post tilted "Steve Garfield continues to make Internet Video History" Jeff Pulver provides links to a how-to for live streaming video over the net from a Nokia N95 camera phone hooked up to a wireless ComVu set-up. (I'd show you the video, but as with so many cutting edge things, it won't play w/o updates and plug-ins I don't have on my 6 month old MacBook...) Do go look at Steve's Nokia testblog. It's good.

Amanda Congdon's newest gig is pitching for DuPont.

It incited some controversy:

"Poor Amanda Congdon. The bodacious videoblogger and ABC News contributor just can't seem to understand why she should be embarrassed about playing journalist while taking money from companies like DuPont to shill for their products." (from RadarOnline)

The videos were made for online audiences looking for different and interesting stories told through video," said DuPont in a release. "Each video showcases how DuPont science helps to protect people and how innovations developed by DuPont enhance people’s lives."

"We're going to be measuring the impact," said Spangler. "Does this deliver of DuPont science resonate with the audience? Is this the way they would like to receive information? Did we pick the right blogs? Is it the right channel strategy? Should we broaden it to other channels with video?"

"This wasn't supposed to be a viral marketing program like one of those `look how cute this is' type of thing. We really are just telling the story behind DuPont science in an interesting way... They were made around the story, the delivery, presentation and, to some degree, Amanda."

This is the problem all conventional vloggers looking for corporate dollars will run into: "Selling out" and "ethical lapses". Interesting to note, though, that most critiques of Amanda's DuPont deal are about Amanda as journalist vs. corporate shill, rather than the question of whether DuPont itself is ethical. DuPont has not been faulted...Oops wait! How about this, (also from RadarOnline)?

We've been producing WOMMA's video series for awhile, now they've built a page to contain it. Check it out here.

We'll be at WOMMA's Basic Training 3 in New Orleans, April 17-18 presenting with Neal Stewart of FlyingDog Brewery and continuing our interview series. Hope to see you there (and get you on camera...)

UPDATE: This video took about 36 hours to reach it's intended audience...Mark Hellendrung, Narragansett's CEO. He called me to say he loved the vid (except for the "worst beer" part) and to chat about social media video. We plan to meet up soon.

Shot and edited obtainium style. Testing Blip.tv.

Brands joining the conversation successfully have learned their cluetrain lessons: transparency, authenticity, and a conversational (human) voice are critical. These core values apply to video as much as they apply to text. The companies that get it right often hire videobloggers as spokespersons, or they go a step further: they hire their customers.

At some companies, customers form a core of evangelists with whom they market. These brand communities suggest new products, test prototypes, and spread the word about new releases. As brand stewards move to provide video sharing tools to these communities, they are finding a wealth of research material, as well as authentic brand content. As an online communication tool, video has arrived.
We're here to help.

SERVICES WE OFFER
Video Production including social media/blog content, field ethnography/market research, event coverage, and internal communications. (Click links for video samples)

Consulting on social media/CGM/ad/event/word-of-mouth integration, brainstorming/ideation for new business pitches, RFPs, and marketing programs; video sharing technology for brand communities.
Project Management for the above.

Our work is predicated on the belief that 1) Consumers are interested in seeing their peers interact with brands and products in real life environments and situations, 2) Consumers are interested in behind-the-scenes information relating to brands and activities they care about, and 3) Consumers want to participate in the creation and marketing of great products and brands.

Brands, agencies, and organizations we have assisted: Flying Dog Ales, Communispace, PUMA, Pabst Brewing, Arnold Worldwide, Liquid Intelligence, Converseon, WOMMA, PSFK, Future Marketing Summit, I Have An Idea.

>Contact coBRANDiT for pricing
>Download a PDF version of this page
>View interactive quicktime presentation (35MB, QT 7 req'd)

Watch this: The show with zefrank. It's funny.

Tip thanks to Church of the Customer.

Documentation of local flavor: this is the packie (package liquor store) we procure our alcoholic goods in, Boston accent and all. But who's the mystery man? Whitey Bulger?

Jesse runs the nice camera, camera 2 is the cheapo Canon zx60 we carry around for backup and when we're goofing off and want something that fits in a pocket. This piece is a collection of clips from two missions we went on in 2003: exploring an abandoned factory in Somerville MA and checking out the environs in Eastham MA near Jesse's dad's house.

Here's the deal: Recently we've been doing more consulting on web video and social media than actually PRODUCING web video and social media. Also it's now officially summertime, and we want to be on vacation (or at least sitting on our butts and drinking beer). With these factors in mind we've decided to simplify our approach... we're going thru the archives looking for pieces we've made previous summers, and looking at these pieces with fresh eyes. A so we present: BEARHOG. A look at the construction of a motorized raft from June 2004.

We also plan to shoot some very loose video (in an ethnograpaphic vein) capturing elements of our 2006 summer experiences. Stay tuned.

We got written up in the Japanese Ad Age, fall 2005. I wonder what it says?

We went out to Boston Bentley to film J. picking up his new car. He got silly while the salesman wasn't looking.