Pauli Kopu

Have you been pondering with this question, at least I have. After flipping through several websites, blogs and vlogs there is, so to say, a simple answer to a simple question. But before revealing what it is, certain foundations need to be made.

A bit more than seven years ago YouTube ended the era of Windows media and Real media as ruling displaying options for online video. In 2009, four years after it was established, YouTube had 81.9% market share while Vimeo was a distant second with 8.8%.

While everyone must give credit to YouTube for pioneering the field of online video, and despite the size difference, certain groups of people are seeing Vimeo as a thought-worthy alternative. These people are artists, musicians and filmmakers sharing their creative work. Why aren’t they using YouTube? The reason isn’t important, but what is, is that they started sharing their work and giving quality feedback to one another, something that is rarely seen in YouTube. So Vimeo is the option for groups mentioned above who seek for feedback from users like themselves, but would it be the right choice for most companies?

If your company wishes to receive higher position in search engines and a lot more viewers, as I think most companies do, then YouTube is the only real option for you. The reason YouTube videos are getting more views is not only due to the fact that it gets a Google hit ratio of 86 to 1 in comparison with Vimeo, but also because YouTube itself is the second biggest search engine in the world with more than 2 billion searches per day.

To answer the simple question I placed in the beginning, you should consider using them both: Vimeo for better feedback and experience and YouTube as a first source of spreading the content.  Or if you are to make a decision between them two, it all depends on what you want to achieve with your video.

Stanley Kubrick, one of the great storytellers of our time, said that any feature film should have seven or eight fundamental story pieces where all the non-essential padding has been stripped away. He called these story pieces or sequences of action non-submersible units. These units should be so strong and interesting that they would, by themselves, be able to keep the viewer hooked. They would contain only what is absolutely necessary for the story. And when pieced together they would create a greater narrative.

But what about online video? It is only a fraction of the length of a feature film. The rule of the non-submersible unit is just as relevant in online video, except that an online video can be seen as one single unit. An online video needs only one interesting and compelling story. That story should immediately hook the audience and should not contain any non-essential information. If a feature film is a seven course meal, an online video is only a snack.

And online video becomes even more interesting when we start talking about what we can do with playlists. Where a feature film has a window of about two hours to tell it’s story, an online video has an unlimited amount of time to tell a story that can go on for as long as we like.

Here is a great example of one single unit, a single video, that is told very simply without any effects or any unnecessary information. The Power of a Glass by The UNICEF Tap Project 2012. It’s just a few images and a few words, a little snack. But it is just as compelling as any other story. And when viewed beside the other videos we are given a bigger picture of what is going on.

Using playlists we can create individual non-submersible units that when pieced together become a part of a greater narrative.

The story will always be what makes a video interesting. That will never change. But how we tell these stories, that is up to us.

The Vimeo Awards Festival 2012 is almost here. The annual video gala showcases the best online videos from last year in several categories, compiled into a nice, simple-to-browse site. This year the nominees in every single category are spectacularly good, and well worth the watch, for all and every one of us.

The Vimeo Awards inspires. It proves that the video has long since ceased to be the private property of the large movie companies. What people do with video resonates within us, with our drive for excellence, bedazzling us with new ways to create quality content. We here at KLOK sincerely hope that what these videos have to offer will inspire you as well.

After the splendor of such stunning quality, the great promise of online videos may appear as a daunting challenge, something that is easy to grasp but extremely hard to master. When you aim high, this may be true. However, don’t let the size of those dreams paralyze you. The video is a party where everyone is invited to, and it’s about letting go and having fun while daring to dream big.

The path to stars starts from small stuff, from the details of a single idea, and the need to put it to form.

Experiment, experience, and most of all, enjoy.

The Ghosts is a perfect example of the quality of Vimeo Awards nominees. It’s a rough and tough love letter to teenage rebellion of yonder days, bristling with attitude and charisma. You need passion as well as love to do something like this, and the movie’s unpolished feel simply underlines its raw power. I tip my hat to you, Eddie O’Keefe, for capturing the spirit of rock & roll rebellion.

Last week we looked at how well Finland’s largest companies are doing on YouTube. Today I take a closer look at one the top performer, Stora Enso, and compare it to the best YouTube user in the paper industry, SCA.

The graph below includes Stora Enso, UPM, SCA, Avery Dennison, Bernis Company and Domtar. The biggest paper producers in the world, International Paper and Smurfit Kappa Group, don’t have YouTube channels.

What is SCA doing different from Stora Enso to attract viewers? SCA is using YouTube as a marketing platform while Stora Enso sees it as a corporate communications tool.

SCA’s most watched video is a humorous commercials with their character Juan Sheet. The video is a part of their €3,7m TV campaign and it has attracted 108000 views. Almost all of the views are coming from searches or referral sites which means that people have found their videos funny enough to search for and share them.

Stora Enso have employed a different content strategy to be seen. Their most popular video has 14700 views and is about their corporate rebranding. It has gotten half of the views from ads linking to the video, and half from a combination of YouTube searches and external sites that have embedded the video.

As for the technical stuff, Stora Enso seems to have forgotten to optimize their videos for YouTube. SCA has included the appropriate tags and descriptions in all of their videos, increasing their view count. None of the companies are however making use of calls to action.

SCA shows that combining TV ads with online content can be a very powerful marketing tool.

The paper industry’s top hits

By now everyone has probably heard about the importance of engaging content in regard with successful online video marketing. If you haven’t, you could read about it in our previous blog posts or study YouTube Playbook for Creators here: http://www.youtube.com/yt/creators/playbook.html. In short, engaging content is something that is relevant, compelling and if possible new. These are video characteristics that can be applied in all medias. In addition to these, there are some that work either only or at least much better in internet than in other medias. These features take the interaction between the user and the media one step further from watching to action. And hence they create higher recall and stronger engagement than video just on it’s self.

Here is two examples of aforementioned videos with interactive features. Now click play and be surprised by the true internet video experience.