Captains of Industry

By Ted Page, Captains of Industry
Brightcove’s announcement of a low cost video hosting service while no doubt a response to free/low cost hosting from Vimeo and YouTube,  nevertheless marks the acknowledgment that the use of video on business-to-business websites has come of age. In some respects, this new era is similar to the time when having a website suddenly became mission critical for every business. Let’s remember what happened then. Businesses got into the web as fast as possible, and basically created brochures on the Internet. Only a relatively few companies took the web to the next level and made genuinely interesting websites that helped them stand out. A similar rush is already under way as businesses push to get whatever video they’ve made in the past repurposed to the web. Understandably, businesses want “in” on the web video action.

At the risk of appearing self-serving, we at Captains believe that businesses should take the time to create a web video that’s made fresh with the web in mind: short, “snackable”, and compelling – with storytelling that quickly gets across what your company is all about, and encourages viewers to share the story with like-minded colleagues. A media center, like that created for www.firstwind.com, hosts a range of video content that viewers can browse and snack on. Or see what Akamai did to get across the story of cloud computing.  Done right, web video transcends ordinary motion pictures and becomes images that move people. It moves people to buy, to think, to take action, or simply to care. That’s the real promise of the age of video on the web; it’s not about technology, it’s about the power of storytelling as a strategic advantage for companies who understand its value.