We are live streaming sessions from WOMMA's word-of-mouth marketing summit today and tomorrow. You can check out the stream here.
UPDATE: Archived Summit 08 content can be seen here. An example can be seen above.
We are live streaming sessions from WOMMA's word-of-mouth marketing summit today and tomorrow. You can check out the stream here.
UPDATE: Archived Summit 08 content can be seen here. An example can be seen above.
Here's the video we just put together promoting WOMMA's Summit 2008 in November at the Rio in 'Vegas. Shot the whole thing with Flip Video cameras and my N95.
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...)
Ted Wright, founder and president of word-of-mouth marketing organization Fizz Corp. moderates a panel with Andy Levine of Sixthman, Ken Block of the band Sister Hazel, and band fan Marc Pruitt--a "hazelnut". Taped at WOMMA's Summit 3 in Las Vegas, NV by coBRANDiT. Disclosure: Fizz and Sixthman are coBRANDiT clients.
It's not our usual MO to tape whole panels, but there was a lot of interest in this one. Presented here on viddler, with chapter markers so you can scroll through. Feel free to add your own markers and comments.
Jeff Bell of Microsoft was in charge of the Halo 3 launch and in his WOMMA Summit 3 keynote provided a detailed overview of the program--very impressive. In this interview he touches on the elements of the launch, the relationship between online and offline activities, and taking risks in marketing.
Richard Tait of Cranium was a very inspiring keynote speaker at WOMMA's Summit 3. Here he talks about what it takes to breakthrough in an industry and develop new distribution channels.
Dave Balter of BzzAgent on PQ Media's forecast for WOM marketing, what it means for the industry, and how his business is developing international contacts in the advertising and media space. Taped at WOMMA's Summit 3, Las Vegas, NV.
Jamie Tedford of Brand Networks on the size (and measurement) of the WOM industry--does Facebbook count?--and Brand Network's move into application development (for Facebook and OpenSocial). Taped at WOMMA's Summit 3 in Las Vegas, NV. Background: PQ media's projection for the WOM industry. We're at 1.35B now, going to 3.7B by 2011.
Here are the interviews we shot at WOMMA's Word-of-Mouth Basic Training 3.
Jesse and I will be attending WOMMA's Word-of-Mouth Basic Training 3 in New Orleans next week, we urge you to go. If you do, stop and say hi...we'll be the guys with the camera, interviewing attendees and speakers as well as presenting on a panel with our client Neal Stewart of FlyingDog Brewery.
The above is a promo for WOMMA we made back in January 2006 (when everything was done in quicktime...now it's in flash and the video is stretched...)
Doug Walker is the Managing Director of the World Rock Paper Scissors Society, and in this video he leads a fiercly contested RPS battle among WOMMA Summit2 attendees. His keynote speech told the story of the viral spread of his organization, and what we as marketers can learn by it.
