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YouTube goes to work

Heather Havenstein, Information Age

13/06/2008 14:25:05

While some companies are still struggling to keep employees from watching online YouTube videos in the office, others are turning to video technology to improve internal training and collaboration, and to expand external marketing programs.

For example, Rohm and Haas Co, a specialty chemicals, construction materials and other products, has launched what it calls a "corporate YouTube" site for its 15,000 employees around the world.

Other companies are taking a less expensive route by posting internally created videos on and other social networking sites to market themselves and their wares.

Rohm and Haas said the internal video site will be used to provide its workers with training programs and a way to more easily get information about a wide variety of topics from their peers.

Charles Wallace, chief technical architect and IT director for global architecture and infrastructure at Rohm and Haas, said that a searchable library of online videos supports the natural tendency of workers to "bypass the knowledge base and go to their next-door neighbour [at work] or to the employees who know" to get answers to questions.

Wallace said the company expects that the system will cut back on travel needs - a big priority for the manufacturer - by providing Rohm and Haas employees with access to one another via video programs.

The company's internal affinity groups - workers with common interests in performance management, career development and mentoring - were among the creators of the first videos for the library, which will be called PrimeTime, Wallace added.

Rohn and Haas said it expects 50 to 75 Prime Time videos to be available to employees when the program begins operating.

The videos are created and will be run using the Studio hosted webcasting service from Interactive Video Technologies, Wallace said.

The hosted Studio tools combine and synchronise audio and video, PowerPoint presentations and screen captures with "one-click publishing," according to Interactive Video officials. The system can also track the use of those videos, the company said.

Over the long term, Rohm and Haas plans to extend access to Studio so additional employees can make videos for the library, Wallace said.

A shot at democracy

Greg Pulier, founder and chief technology officer of Interactive Video, described the efforts Rohm and Haas and other companies as a move to "democratise webcasting" by allowing more employees to create and view videos on their corporate desktop systems. For example, a top salesman could create on his own a video that demonstrates his process for selling products, he noted.

Pulier described the video sites created by companies such as Rohm and Haas as a kind of second-generation corporate video strategy. "A lot of organisations start [out by] using YouTube to post corporate videos," he said. "When they reach a point where there is too much stuff on YouTube, they start to look for another solution."

Several companies are still in the first stage of video use, posting marketing productions on YouTube and other sites to improve external marketing efforts - and to respond quickly to negative news stories.

Dunkin Donuts in late January launched a YouTube channel to host a marketing contest that called for customers to post their own videos that explain the company's marketing slogan that Dunkin' "Keeps America running." The channel generated more than 208,000 views before the contest ended on March 1, according to the restaurant chain.

And Southwest Airlines earlier this year created a YouTube video to dispute the assertions of two female passengers that they were escorted off a flight in mid-February and banned from the airline for life for being too attractive.

Analysts say that more and more companies are launching such YouTube-style videos to take advantage of a massive increase in traffic to video sites over the past couple of years.

According to a research report earlier this year by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, traffic to video sites increased considerably over 2006. Almost half - 48 percent - of the 1300 Internet users surveyed said they visited a video-sharing site during 2007, compared with 33 percent in a year-earlier survey.

Just Grapes, a wine shop, upgraded its blog site by adding videos on topics like how to select wines for specific occasions and advice from wine tasters around the world.

Don Sritong, sommelier and owner of the store, said that he decided to create the upgrade, called GrapeTube, based on the popularity of various videos he has posted to YouTube. Those videos provided customers with a look at wine seminars in the store, his own observations after visiting various wine regions around the world and other information.

Sritong found that more people were viewing the videos than were reading the company's e-mail newsletters. The company also determined that the return on investment from video marketing was 10 times higher than that from its print-related advertising, he noted.

"Wine is such an intimidating topic for people; it has been seen as this elite beverage," Sritong said. "That is not true. Video allows [us to] translate that better than print. Video is really the next step of closing the gap between those who felt wine was an elite beverage and those who are super intimidated by it."

Itzbig Inc, an online job site, launched an internal contest in January to judge employee-created YouTube-style videos promoting the company's goals. "It was our way of getting the whole company as part of the marketing team," said Denise Court, vice president of marketing at Itzbig. "It was a way to cut through a lot of the corporate-speak and bring an authentic voice."

The contest attracted 15 submissions. The winning video, created by a member of company's customer-service team, recommended new ways to promote Itzbig.com's policy of letting job seekers anonymously post their sums. The winning video will be posted to YouTube, Court added.

Cost benefit

Court noted that the cost of producing online videos has declined significantly in recent years, She estimated that several years ago, making a corporate video in a studio for distribution at trade shows could cost $15,000 to $20,000. The winning video cost $2600 to produce and will be distributed for free on YouTube, she said.

"Given the rich digital media we have today, we all of a sudden have an opportunity to use a platform that is inexpensive and easy to use for companies to express themselves, share ideas and collaborate," Court said.

Oliver Young, an analyst at Forrester Research, said that external marketing will likely be the most popular use of video technology among corporate users in the coming years.

Training videos, like those set for use Rohm and Haas, may also evolve in very large companies, but they probably won't be as widely-used in small and midsise companies because they require that users learn new work processes, he noted.

Wallace also noted that the "internal YouTube approach" requires significant network bandwidth not available to all companies. Rohm and Haas in recent years has installed a Multiprotocol Label Switching packet-switch network and compression technology that should easily provide adequate bandwidth for the PrimeTime video network, he said.

"We've had a very successful, stable performance environment," he added. "If the infrastructure wasn't set up and put in place, this [PrimeTime] environment would have come apart very quickly."

"The external side is really where video is going to have a permanent home in the enterprise," Young predicted.

"The cost of distribution on YouTube is free, and the cost of production is [affordable] because people don't expect a high production quality," he said. "The consumer expectation has been set - this can be low-quality video."

Young did warn that once companies open the door for its customers or other external users to post videos about their brands or products - an important feature for online audiences - they should be prepared the company and its products to be criticised.

"Honest, open dialogue is the way to really tap into the community and gain the trust of the community," Young said. He did note, though, that "it is a strange mental shift for a lot of brand marketers who have felt like they have kept such a tight control over brand and message".