IMV25 : Online Video

The following is a transcript for IMV25 : Online Video. The original podcast is located here.

Announcer:

Welcome to the Internet Marketing Voodoo podcast brought to you by MindComet. And now, here's your host, Ted Murphy.

Ted Murphy:

Welcome to Internet Marketing Voodoo episode 25. I’m your host Ted Murphy and with me today is Brad Inman, founder of TurnHere.com. Welcome to the show today, Brad.

Brad Inman:

Greetings Ted. How are you?

Ted Murphy:

I’m wonderful. How are you?

Brad Inman:

No complaints. I’m in California. It’s beautiful and hot.

Ted Murphy:

(Laughing) I’m in Florida. It’s hot and sticky. (Laughing)

Brad Inman:

There you go.

Ted Murphy:

So Brad, can you start out by telling our listeners a little bit about TurnHere.com.

Brad Inman:

Sure. TurnHere is a destination site focused completely on video. We have almost 1,000 videos about location, place, really suited for travelers, also in the local category. So we always say, “What am I going tonight, what am I going to do this weekend, what am I going to do this summer?” And TurnHere’s a great place to go. We have two to three minute short videos about different destinations and locations and places in a really fun, authentic style for the Internet. And we’re supported by sponsored video, which are interesting stories about restaurants and spas and hotels, and again in that authentic local narrator approach that TurnHere uses.

Ted Murphy:

So these are actually professionally produced videos where you guys are going out, and somebody’s sponsoring it, and then you’re producing the pieces for them?

Brad Inman:

That’s right. This is really about our incredible network of filmmakers around the world, who we really drive down creativity and ownership to, while we get all the rights to distribute it for music rights to appearance rights. Our philosophy is hire filmmakers not lawyers and how we approach video.

But we really give them creative control, so that they can tell the story of a local place through their own discovery of a local character. It’s kind of like when you travel you want to meet a local to tell you where to eat and where to go, we use video in the same way where our filmmakers find local narrators and interesting ways – entertaining ways to tell stories.

Ted Murphy:

And how would you say that that differentiates you from a Google or a YouTube? You know obviously the Internet is getting saturated with video out there and not all of it is professionally produced to say the least, what type of value are you providing and are you also allowing some sort of user feedback or community feedback? How does this site exactly work?

Brad Inman:

Sure. Well, first of all, what everyone’s doing in video we’re real excited about cause it means more people will become familiar with video online, and realizing, hey I can click this image and it actually plays, I don’t have to download, and it’s likely not to buffer, and it won’t be grainy quality. So adoption of video is something we’re really, really fans of. And that’s why we’re so excited about the success of YouTube and Google Video and all the other platforms.

And in fact, we upload all our video to all of those platforms. The only difference between TurnHere is we’re all in the video business, but none of us are competing cause this is too known in the industry. If anything, we’re competing with the offline experiences that people use when they find locations, travel guides, and online where they’re looking at data fields and little pictures. Video and using Hollywood is just a much better way to communicate.

But our focus is, as you said, professionally-produced video. We go to trained filmmakers and they can either be the indie film crowd or journalist who are trained videographers. The important thing is that they tell a story. There’s a narrative. So we really stick to that.

We also have really strict, what we call E&P, entertainment and production guidelines. So cutaways, sound, lighting, basic things that go into good filmmaking. And then the rights. We do require that we acquire all the rights for our creators.

And so that’s really the difference between us and most of the other sites. And then finally we organize it. We’ve organized it around a very specific category, and that’s travel and local. Where we think video really, really works. You know, where am I going to go clubbing tonight and where am I going to go on vacation this summer?

Ted Murphy:

So obviously videos very hot for a lot of companies that are looking to use it in different ways. Who would you say that the main consumers of online video are? And if a company was looking to leverage video who would you say is their best target?

Brad Inman:

Yeah, I think everyone’s clicking on video now, so I don’t think there’s a demographic exclusive club. However, I would say that for our content it really matches our filmmaker network, which is again that local, authentic character. So probably 20 to 40, adventuresome, trying to find new and interesting things, whether it be music or restaurants or places to go. And that tags pretty closely to who has really adopted video.

There’s probably a younger generation even more that’s doing a lot of the sharing and video sharing. And some of the stuff that’s being produced, you know kind of the how can I be more outrageous than the video that was just uploaded. And that’s really not our strategy, but there is, again, a lot of users and they’re adopters of video.

But the way I look at it, every webpage is going to become a television channel. And print and words are going to look really, really unattractive compared to things like you’re doing with audio and video. It’s just so much more powerful way to not only entertain people, but also what we think is to transmit information.

I mean how are you gonna really get a feel for a place without going there? Well, one way is to get a local narrator who gives you a tour and there’s a really good filmmaker that captures the neighborhood. It’s like being there without going there. And that’s what Hollywood has perfected in the last 100 years is how to encapsulate in film an emotional experience about all kinds of things. And place is one that we’re really focused on.

Ted Murphy:

What would you say is the sweet spot in terms the length of a video that you’re putting out there for someone?

Brad Inman:

Great question. We hire a lot of documentary filmmakers because we do storytelling. And their form use to be two hours, and then –

Ted Murphy:

Two hours isn’t going to cut it on the Internet. (Laughing)

Brad Inman:

No, I don’t think it is, man. Definitely not. But the young videographers, they’re not making two hours. That’s the long form. They’re learning the skill set of storytelling in that format. But we started out, if you imagine, two years ago 12 minutes, 9 minutes, we went to 6, we went to 5, we went to 4, we went to 3. We really believe 90 seconds is a way to impart a lot of interesting information and keep people entertained. When you get over two or three minutes, you’ve probably lost your user.

However, it’s interesting, the average TurnHere movie is watched 109 seconds. So we have one of the highest user rates of anybody because we spent a lot of time and money getting really good video.

Ted Murphy:

So if a marketer was looking to put video on their Web site, what would be some tips that you would give them?

Brad Inman:

First of all, you gotta compress your story into a small format, which is great cause it’s that intimate relationship between you and one user as opposed to an audience, or a family in front of television. It’s usually you and the computer, so it’s an audience of one, which is quite distinctive. You have to establish trust, which is why we do video ads for our clients and we use authentic local characters. Get away from the actor, the scripts, standing on an “X” – that just isn’t working on the Internet. It’s not believable.

There’s an expectation of real truthful information. And if you can impart information, one of the great ways is with local authentic characters. And it’s gotta be quick. You know we say in the old print journalism world that stack the elite at the top so you keep people engaged. Well, you got to get something punchy at the top to keep people engaged, whether it be humor or whether it be a really great shot, or we call it the film moment that one liner that we all remember from the Woody Allen or whatever movie. We don’t remember the whole dang movie, but we remember that one liner.

And so we think it’s gotta be cut quick, a lot of cutaways, it’s gotta be sharp, precise and clear, and fun to watch.

Ted Murphy:

Jumping back to the travel and hospitality industries, I noticed on TurnHere.com that you’ve done videos for South Africa. And I was wondering –

Brad Inman:

What inspired that?

Ted Murphy:

Yeah, what exactly inspired that? It seemed like a very niche market.

Brad Inman:

Well, anyone who comes to you and says, “I got all the answers about video on the web,” please, please email me afterwards so I can talk to them. I think the reality is that we’re all experimenting with an entirely new medium. And I say, “Where did we come up with 30 minutes in television in the ‘50s?” You know it was probably based on dad getting home at 5:30 and dinner at 6:00.

And where did we come up with two- or three-minute video on the Internet? Well, that’s probably how long you can look at something before your boss catches you. A lot of this is accidentally. All the deliberateness and planning, we’re trying to be really organized about our approach, but there’s a lot of unanswered questions. So we’re experimenting with far-off locations.

But you know what’s interesting, I was in a meeting recently with a banker and he said, “I just saw your movies in South Africa.” I was like, “Whoa, really.” Well, he was from there so he was intrigued. And what happens here is people go to check out their own neighborhood, in their own backyard, their own place, where they were born, or where their parents live, or where they want to move, just to see are these people believable? And if we pass that test, they watch two or three or come back.

So part of that is comprehensiveness, diversity but also I want to learn about something new. Like one of our most popular movies, and surprising results after people see this, a movie we did about Iceland. I guess people in America have some perception of what Iceland’s about, either melting cause of global warming or a city on ice. But we get this really good movie that gives people great insight and people gravitate to this movie and love this movie. They watch it to the end.

So we’re really experimenting with programming. No one’s programmed video on the Internet, so we’re trying to figure out things. And so you’ll see a lot of experimenting. We stick to place, but we had competing videos in North Beach in San Francisco. We’re doing series Crazy Legs Conti, an international competitive eater, did a series on cold pizza in New York and cool food carts in New York. And we have one belly dancing in San Francisco and tango dancing.

So you see a lot of variety in the program, again all centered around place, but to find out what people expect from video on the Internet. And I think that’s really what we have to learn.

Ted Murphy:

Brad, we got an email from Jason from Denver. And he said, “Hi Ted. I wanted to hit a little bit on viral videos, because it seems as if these are all the rage right now with advertisers. I wanted to see if you knew what made these short videos so appealing and what type of return on investment advertisers are seeing from this?”

Jason, we’re going to go ahead and send you a $10 dollar iTunes gift card for participating. And, of course, we always encourage all of our listeners to participate in our program. You can also send us an email or leave us a voicemail on the toll-free number. Brad, I’ll let you go ahead and answer that.

Brad Inman:

Yeah, I think it’s incredible. What’s happening with the technology is you can now send a video in an email. I’m not sure if there’s any piece of content that’s been more fascinating to email around than video. We’ve sent around jokes, we send around list, we send around gossip, we send around spreadsheets, we attach certain things, we send around links. But when you think about it you can send a movie, people love it.

And so the basic, simple technology of sending by email is really a profound thing. Plus you send it to someone who has an affinity similar to yourself. So what you like, you sent it to someone else that likes the same thing, and they stretch it out to the next person. So the technology makes this possible.

And then what’s happening is outrageous, tends to have more viral impact, humors, jokes, comedy. We certainly saw that with the success on television of some of the outrageous video shows. And so it’s not surprising that that has happened. I think long term if advertisers only think about this with viral and they go out and try to make the most outrageous video, I think there’s a trend there but I’m not sure it’s a long-term trend.

The long-term trend is participating in this new medium by creating new and interesting ads about your business and about your company, and tagging them onto existing content or independently distributing them is fine. But I think it’s still a publishing model, and still a publishing and advertising. And it think we find that people come in and look at our neighborhoods and then we have an authentic-sponsored video by a real cool restaurant, and they automatically click on it.

I think one of the dangers is that advertisers say, “Ahh, this is cool, I’m going to put a 15-second preroll on top of it.” That our users tell us they don’t want. They don’t want 15-second preroll on the top of a really meaningful video. What they like though is let me navigate. The mouse is in the hands of the users, not television where we dump it in their brain.

And so the key here is to create relevant-sponsored videos that really follow a path that the users navigating themselves, so that cool restaurants in San Francisco, if they do a search and they find a video, it shows some pretty cool restaurants, that’s going to turn into transactions and something meaningful, if you want to gauge them and get an experience of that restaurant in that video.

So I think, again, we have a lot to learn in advertising – and you know it may go preroll and that’s great. We’ll go down that path, if that’s where the advertisers want to. But for now, we think we can be a lot more creative. And we also think that companies can get really creative in creating video. It’s sort of like winning the lottery though to think you’re going to create on that’s going to be viral and ten million people are going to watch it in five minutes. I think that’s like a lottery ticket.

Ted Murphy:

I agree.

Brad Inman:

I wouldn’t invest if it’s like you buy lottery tickets. I would invest in it like you do any advertising medium as a meaningful opportunity to tell people about who you are using the power of Internet distribution with these low-cost production opportunities.

Ted Murphy:

And this is kind of a little bit off base but also something that our listeners are interested in. You’ve got all this wonderful content on your site, how do you get people to your site to view these videos?

Brad Inman:

Part of it is viral. Almost 40 percent of our users come back. So once they see this site, they come back. The bloggers have taken off. There’s also a community of people that glom on to what we do. I mean we did a really interesting movie of Queens about a Mets fan who took the subway and kind of gave us a little tour acquaintance. But most importantly gave us a tour of the kind of culture around the Met Stadium. And it maybe a function of how well the Mets are doing this year, but what happened it got into all the Mets blogs and it just took off amongst that little niche community.

And that’s what the opportunity is here for advertisers. If anything we know about the web, it’s about niche marketing and this is really proving to be true. So that was viral within that community. So instead of – we don’t shoot for blockbusters, we really shoot for these community busters where a community of people get excited about something because they have some relationship or identity.

And then for our users, they become really qualified transactors for other opportunities that are associated with their affinity group. And in all cases, whether it be the sponsored video or the neighborhood video, you’re going to see that authentic, believable, local trustworthy character who is telling the tale that wants people to engage.

I mean we all have to make shopping decisions and half of it’s emotion and half of it’s comparative shopping. But the half that’s emotion, it would be nice if we could be guided by our emotions but actually get information that’s useful and we want to do something. And that’s our approach. I don’t know if we’re wrong or we’re right, but that’s what we’re going after.

Ted Murphy:

So what would you say are the top three things that marketers should know about integrating video into their online marketing mix?

Brad Inman:

One they should view it just as another powerful communication tool, whether it’s an advertiser that had ads and is going to communicate to his ads salespeople on wanting to do a video, whether it’s a corporate video about the company. But as an advertiser think differently. It’s not actor standing on an “X” reading from a script. You know really look for this authentic, believable, trustworthy – that’s the new standard of the Internet. Short, really short, really brief. Find different places to distribute it, and find distribution partners like TurnHere, UTube, and others.

Experiment with the preroll and try it out. See if it works. Compare it and contrast it. If anything, participate. Start testing. Start doing production.

We produce movies for all kinds of companies and their short video ads and other things from major hotel chain to television stations and others. And we’re finding with our corporate advertising clients is they’re willing to experiment. And the production of the ad becomes part of the ad campaign, because they’re doing it is these authentic, interesting styles.

In the case of the hotel chain, they’re using their local concierges with the narrators to give people that might want to come to their hotel a sense of the hotspots in their neighborhood around the hotel. So they’re inspiring people to come to the hotel by selling the neighborhood through the credibility and trustworthiness of the local concierges.

You can really experiment with production, cause production now has really changed radically. You don’t have to send a crew of 50 people in and do these high and mighty, costly productions. This isn’t about caters and assistant caters and agents and celebrities. This is about really efficient film production and using the landscape right in front of your business to tell the story. And try it, do it, experiment.

It’s not like we use to make a television ad for $5 million dollars and hope it works and only discover it doesn’t work.

Ted Murphy:

(Laughing)

Brad Inman:

You can try lots of things here to find your kind of success quotient.

Ted Murphy:

Brad, we appreciate you coming on the show today. If anybody has any questions about online video or anything else about Internet marketing, give us a call at 1-866-206-4461 and you can leave us a voicemail. Of course you can visit Brad’s Web site at TurnHere.com.

Brad, we hope that you’ll come back on the show again in the future and tell us about all the wonderful success you’ve had.

Announcer:

For more information on this week's topic, visit http://www.InternetMarketingVoodoo.com. This podcast has been brought to you by MindComet, the Relationship Agency.

[End of Audio]

Marketing Resources
Get LinkedIn to Ted Murphy

Listen to the Online Video podcast.

Contact MindComet about integrating online video in your next online marketing campaign.

Subscribe to the Internet Marketing Voodoo podcast in iTunes.

Technorati Tags
online video, viral video,video marketing,online advertising, Internet marketing