If businesses want to compete in 2010, they will have to do so online. And to do so effectively, they will have to settle their prospective customers’ and clients’ increasingly huge appetites for online video. While print and television advertising are on the wane, corporate video production and online video marketing are on the rise.

No longer is corporate video seen as mere frippery or regarded with disdain, nor is it reserved for only the largest corporations. Today, businesses large and small, are benefiting enormously from good corporate videos and online video marketing. They’re enjoying greater reach and better margins; and advertising research suggests that they will commission more corporate video in than 2010, than ever before.

As a result, companies without video content on their website this year will soon find themselves behind the competition and struggle to get noticed. It is said that a company’s website has become its shop-front. Would you enter a shop with nothing in the window?

A good corporate video, formatted for viewing online, showcasing who you are and what you do, is fast becoming integral to commercial success - but bad corporate video, should never be a substitute for none. A badly produced video sends out completely the wrong messages about any organisation, its service and its products; and can destroy a company’s hard-earned reputation.

Internet users are also extremely fickle and poor quality material with low production values will soon have them tuning out, reaching for the back button and most-worryingly browsing a competitor’s website. As camera technologies and Internet bandwidth continue to improve, so too will the importance of quality, watchable, engaging, well-crafted video content, which is why in most cases it’s best left to professional video production companies.

In the right hands, corporate video production can be a very powerful tool in today’s marketing arsenal, so make sure your business has a clear video marketing strategy in place for 2010.

Your prospective clients and customers are demanding video.

You must supply it. 

Yesterday was the final deadline to enter the IVCA's 2010 corporate video production awards. We've been a little preoccupied here at Spectrecom with our relocation to much larger premises in Waterloo, so haven't entered any films or corporate video production projects into this year's awards, however in 2008, we were awarded the IVCA's prestigious Gold Award for Video Recruitment for our work with Durham University.

These awards are Europe’s largest and most prestigious celebration of the best in corporate video production and public sector communication, and winning an IVCA Award brings with it national and international recognition. There is simply no higher corporate video production accolade for creativity, originality, production expertise and sheer effectiveness in communication!

The gala Awards Ceremony will be held at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London, on the evening of Friday 26th March 2010. Tickets will be made available soon.

So ... according to the latest research by Ad-ology, 28% of small business owners are planning to use online video advertising to market their companies in 2010.

A percentage this high clearly suggests that online video marketing is here to stay and that the reluctance of smaller companies to embrace video technologies is futile. It's also reflects a renewed sense of optimism among small business owners about the direction of the global economy, combined with the increased affordability of corporate video production and video adverts. There is nothing to suggest that this trend won't continue apace. 

Here's a video that Spectrecom produced nearly three years ago for Coleshill Organics, who were clearly well ahead of the game.

In yesterday's blog entry, I set out the reasons why corporate video production and online video marketing look set to explode in 2010. I also listed just a few of the many contemporary applications for corporate video.

Here's a link to a brilliant illustration on the Alfa Bravo blog - an online media consultancy & business development company in Stockholm, Sweden, founded by Henrik Ahlen - that lays out the many, many applications of corporate video production, from glossy commercials and large company presentations at one end, to video blogs and customer testimonials on the other. Enjoy.

So, 2009 is over and a new decade is finally upon us, but what will 2010 mean for corporate video production and online video marketing? Well … all the signs suggest that it looks set to explode! Here’s why.

Long gone are the days when watching video online was a frustrating, heavily-pixellated experience. Thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet and ever-increasing bandwidths, we are all watching more online video than ever before. Youtube has become the 2^nd biggest search engine, Google now incorporates video directly into its search results and websites that don’t contain video are beginning to look positively archaic.

As a result, businesses (large and small), charities and public sector organisations in 2009, began to really embrace corporate video production and online video marketing.

In the cluttered, information-overload world of the Internet, they realised that not only does a well-produced short film or video advert have a much better chance of being watched, than long pages of static text do of being read, but also that people tend to believe what they can see and hear, far more than what they read. They also understood that video can have an emotional impact with a viewer way beyond that of the written word.

In 2009, even the smallest local businesses started to commission video production companies to produce short promotional films and online video adverts. And with more and more online business directories incorporating videos into their listings, corporate video production becoming more accessible, social networking becoming more popular and search engines becoming more sophisticated, there is simply no reason to think that this trend won’t continue apace.

However, businesses in 2010 won’t just be using video online. The effectiveness, versatility and most importantly the increased affordability of corporate video production means that more and more businesses will start or continue to use video for an increasingly wide range of applications, from training staff and sales presentations, to recruitment, internal communications, video conferencing and even the promotion of CSR credentials.

It was not so long ago when corporate video and corporate video production was frowned upon by many, but thanks to the continued development and expansion of the Internet, it has become a commercial necessity. The future of corporate video production and online video advertising looks very bright indeed!