Capitol Communicator Thought Leadership Series: Richard Harrington discusses using video effectively with Limor Schafman in a Capitol Communicator TV video and podcast sponsored by RHED Pixel (www.rhedpixel.com). The Capitol Communicator TV Thought Leadership Series podcast is up in iTunes now. The transcript of that interview follows:
Limor Schafman: Welcome to Capitol Communicator TV. I’m Limor Schafman and with me is Richard Harrington of RHED Pixel. Richard, thank you so much for being with us.
Richard Harrington: Sure, thanks for having me.
Limor Schafman: Why don’t you tell a little bit how RHED Pixel actually started?
Richard Harrington: We’ve been around for ten years and we started as a visual communications company. So, we work with advertising agencies, PR firms and some end clients, helping them create materials that are meant to be seen. So, I’ve got a background as a teacher. I’ve been a college professor before. And one of my early beliefs was that we were getting into a culture that really no longer wanted to read. And that there’s all these great messages. I started as a journalist. I’ve been a writer. But I was noticing a tendency that people just weren’t reading or consuming information but they still needed information. And so, I started web publishing back in the early ‘90s. And we were doing some online video back in ’95. And I just saw well, this is eventually going to get there. I’ve been in broadcasting. We’re gonna get to a point where we can start creating content and whoever wants it can get it whenever they want it. And we’re there now. So, it’s really exciting. You’re not really limited by the cost and barriers. It used to be so expensive to do this. It’s not cheap; I mean it still costs to create good content. But it’s not like, "Oh I have to own a satellite in order to get this around the world." Or "I have to have $150,000.00 worth of equipment to create a message."
Limor Schafman: How are some of the corporations and organizations that you are working with using video effectively to tell their story?
Richard Harrington: We’re seeing people starting to learn that video needs to be a library asset. Like people have had photography assets for a long time. You collect images. You’d manage them. You’d make sure you were sharing them throughout the organization. But video was always done in little isolated pockets. And what we’re starting to see are clients are looking at video strategically. So, we may be producing a public service announcement but while we’re producing that public service announcement, we’re capturing additional interviews. And the public service announcement features real people. And so we’re capturing their stories and we’re creating short web vignettes that will also run. And then we’re getting some additional sound bytes that will get put on the shelf for a training product that’s getting developed down the road. So, it’s really getting that deeper relationship with a client so they don’t think of video as a onetime, "Okay, we’re gonna do a video now." But rather, "Oh, we need to be documenting what it is we’re doing, creating educational materials," and video is one more element like photography- storytelling; to really get this captured and then make sure you are regularly producing content that people want to watch. What we’re seeing is that people are more likely to pay attention to a video and watch that. And then once you’ve got their attention, then they’ll dig into the website. They’ll read the printed brochure. They’ll ask for more information. They’ll look at the White Paper. It’s pretty hard to wave a big a printed document in front of somebody and say, “Don’t you want to read this? Aren’t you excited?” It just doesn’t really capture that human element.
Limor Schafman: Looking at the different tools out there, we have video, audio and the written blogs, Twitters and stuff like that. Which do you think are the most effective? How do we choose where to put our energy and under what circumstances?
Richard Harrington: I always say it’s a social media web. And that web has a big component. And so, you have at the most instantaneous end, the Twitter. The breaking news. The short burst of information. The little bit of, “Oh, this is a cool link that somebody else shared. Let me share it.” And then you get to Facebook. And Facebook has video and pictures. You could do that in Twitter but it’s really heard. Yes, you can have a link or an embedded picture but it’s not really meant for that. That’s a short burst. Well, you move into Facebook and the blog. It’s like, 'Here’s something we thought about and we want to share. And here’s a video. And here’s some pictures. And here’s a great resource." And then it just continues to move down the chain. Producing a good video, sure, you can have breaking news and a news organization could capture video and have it on the air a half hour more. But most organizations, if it’s a association or a corporation, spends anywhere from a few weeks to a few months developing a video product because it’s really got to go through a lot of quality control, vetting process, development; because it’s an investment. So what we usually say is, "Think about it as a continuum. And make sure that you’re delivering your message along that whole spectrum, from short bursts of information for your most interested group to the big eye-catching piece that pulls in a wider audience." So, that video may be a tremendously effective, emotional, storytelling piece that captures a bigger audience. Once you have that audience, you need to nourish them with blog posts, maybe monthly articles, an audio podcast, a video podcast. But then, if they’re really passionate, feed them with those daily or multiple times a day burst through a Facebook or Twitter and they become raving fan. They’re there. They’re interested. They’re advocating for you. They’re communicating your message. But you really have to use all those tools together while still keeping a consistent voice.
Limor Schafman: Now you're adding one other tool to the mix-- you're going mobile. Tell us about your ventures into that direction?
Richard Harrington: Well, we are seeing that a lot of our clients want to be where people are. And truth be told right now, it’s not just devices like the iPhone. But when you start taking iPhone, Google Android and Blackberry, all of a sudden your most intelligent, most engaged, most active consumers are on the net whenever they want to be. So, they’ve got this ability. They have the magic box in their pocket. It plays music. It takes pictures. It could shoot video. They can watch video. They can download things. So, it’s huge. The average iPhone user watches four videos a day on their phone. And so, what we’ve decided is people want content to go. We’ve been producing video podcasts for years. My partner and I actually wrote the book producing video podcasts and we’ve done this for ourselves and for clients. And we know that people want to download video and take it with them. What we’re seeing as a recent trend, is now people want the video but they want more. So we’ve been developing some iPhone applications and it comes loaded with video. So, they’re training topics on digital photography for example; a hobby of mine. Teaching people how to make better pictures both with Photoshop and their cameras. Well, they can watch the video. They can take a quiz after watching the video to see if it stuck. They've got an e-Book so they could read more information and they can interact. There’s a Twitter feed right on it so they can interact with us. They can leave comments. It’s all on their phone. So, we’re creating an experience that works whether or not they have the Internet and that’s the cool thing. You’ve got these portable computers in people’s pockets that work both online and offline. And people are finding themselves with so much downtime. You’re on the train. You’re waiting to fly in a plane. You’re standing in line at the grocery store. So, what we’ve started focusing on is tighter, shorter content in the three to five minute burst, grouped into a bigger collection around a theme. And when you have time, you take it out and you watch it. And we’re seeing that work really well for our clients too.
Limor Schafman: Is this a trend that you see that’s happening in the future in terms of human behavior and how they are interacting with media and their devices?
Richard Harrington: Yeah, they want stuff that they can take with them, that they can watch online and offline. So you have to have it both components. You need to have that online interactivity but we’re finding that the average attention span gets shorter and shorter. So, we’re grouping it into three to eight minute segments but that’s not the end of it. Multiple segments are themed and stitched together so you can go deep or you can just take a look at it when you have time and it builds that relationship through multiple impressions.
Limor Schafman: How can people find you?
Richard Harrington: Our company website is just RhedPixel.com and we have lots of things through the social networking space too. You could follow us on Twitter, Facebook, etcetera.
Limor Schafman: Wonderful. Richard, thank you so much for being with us.
Richard Harrington: Sure.
Limor Schafman: You’ve been watching Capitol Communicator TV.