Our blogcast - the new one

Subscribe Free
Add to my Page

You're Hired! Episode 9

Subscribe Free
Add to my Page

We won the cup!

 

Create web video, but PLEASE not like this.

Ill conceived. Muddled. Detrimental. And that's me being kind. If I read one more blog or Twitter tip that glibly says you should "enhance your web presence with video-and it doesn't have to cost a thing", I may spit. Of course it costs. You may not have to spend tens of thousands of pounds on a lavish production which explores the outer reaches of Final Cut Pros capabilities but why would you want to make your company look rubbish? It makes no sense to buy into this amorphous and nonsensical rot that "all you need is a phone with a camera; even a webcam will do". NO IT WON'T DO. No more than you would sign off a piece of business artwork which resembled a dying spider crawling across the page.
The people spouting this unhelpful drivel always "film" themselves in a cluttered and untidy room with half a grubby curtain in shot, replete with tinny sound and woeful shot composition.
I don't know of any walk of professional life where "that will do" is a commendable ethos or something to strive for especially not when it comes to the image of your business. I don't care if you're a one man band life coach or a national organisation, you do not give you web designer £500-£2,000 and then make your own crappy video. Unless you want to be a laughing stock. Yes it's great that so much effective technology is reaching a much wider market but sometimes, you need someone with skill, experience and insight. I would no more expect the CEO of Barclays to pick up a mobile phone and shoot his corporate video than I would visit the local oncology unit and start administering chemotherapy with no background in it whatsoever.

Look at The Emperor's new clothes!

I never bought the platitude "there are no new ideas". It evoked thoughts of defeatism and cynicism; pretty undesirable qualities if you have an iota of optimism in your make up. I believe there are fresh and innovative concepts crackling away and that the original will always triumph over the re hashed. It is somewhat dispiriting however to see even trifling numbers follow slightly re worked ideas as if the espouser was some kind of Messiah. I can think of nothing worse in business than the Tin God.

One of these characters in particular is a pitiful amalgam of leviathan proportioned ego, self righteousness coated in the thinnest veneer of what he believes to be "personality" and a bar room philosopher of the worst kind. Worse still, all his ideas are someone else's. A stuck record of the hackneyed and the empty headed, a litany of arrogance fuelled proclamations that he can't even be bothered to rename or re package. Hubristically speaking, you'll find none worse. Find some ideas of your own. And fast.

An opinion + a platform does not = expert

I like to call it "marketing white noise". The cacophony of minutiae and tedium that meanders through cyberspace. Bless our chums at Twitter for opening up the field of the nebulous and the downright pointless. "Just got back into the office and grabbed a skinny latte". Forgive me if I don't whoop and holler and commend you on your choice of vacuities. It strikes me that just because we've got myriad outlets for our less than lucid outpourings, we don't have to climb on board the latest social media bandwagon. Never confuse being opinionated and shouting the loudest with being an aficionado. That's not how it works.