Today's Corporate Communications

The world isn't the way it used to be. Text and paper-based communications are being relegated to second place: the details, the product manual, legal terms and conditions. The big picture is now the province of video.

The shift in relative importance of various media is evidenced by the decline in print-based media, and the proliferation and growth of new and different delivery systems for video-based messages. There's TV and cinema, video billboards, memory sticks, DVDs, personal video players, podcasts, webcasts, video kiosks, social media sites, YouTube. Wide screen flat panel TVs and digital video projectors for trade shows and presentations. Streaming media to deliver one-on-one presentations directly to shareholders, analysts, brokers, distributors, and millions of potential customers and investors via the internet.

A lifetime of TV and film watching, and the proliferation of video media has conditioned your market to be receptive to video-based communication. Today's business audience expects big ideas and expansive concepts to be delivered through dramatic video communication, and small ideas and details to be delivered in print.

If the medium is the message, then quality video sends out the message that you're at the front of the race. If you're trying to squeeze big ideas into print and power-point, the message is - you need to catch up.

So where do you start? How do you suddenly show amazing facility with a complex medium like video?

Easy. Refine the message. Keep it simple. Keep it short. Make it dramatic. Stick to the big picture. Don't get bogged down in detail. Video makes an emotional impression on an audience. So your corporate video has to use dramatic visuals and emotionally involving audio to create that impression. Don't get distracted from that, and it will all fall into place.