Tuesday 2¢: Having Killed the Radio Star, Who’s Video’s next victim?

This week I am inspired by Forrester analyst Nick Barber who has been writing about video and video technology, and I wondered why this was not more front and center of the marketing discussion

  1. chevron left iconTuesday 2¢: Having Killed the Radio Star, Who’s Video’s next victim?
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Ian TruscottOctober 17, 2017
  • Content Marketing
  • Technology

Welcome to theTuesday 2¢Tuesday 2¢ . It’s Tuesday, the weekend is a distant memory and it’s time to let off some steam and give our 2 cents on a hot industry topic.This week Ian Truscott looks at the current and future importance of video in thecontent marketingarena.


This week I am inspired by Forrester analyst Nick Barber, who I admit, I don’t believe I have met or spoken to, but by virtue of being a Forrester client I have the privilege of being able to peer inside his head, or at least the bits he shares on Forrester.com.

Nick has recently been writing about video and video technology, and I wondered why this was not more front and center of the marketing and our solution architecture discussions. Why wasn’t this more of a focal point at the events I’ve recently attended?

We are all obsessed by personalization, big data, remarketing, social (etc. etc.) and rightly so, but there is some good stuff on Nick’s blog about the importance of video, especially in his latest report which is only available to clients.

Yes, a bit of tease there I know, offering a link to something behind such a significant payment wall, but for the purposes of this week’s rant, you don’t need to read it, just to know that it is there.

Nick’s point:

If you're not using video today, you're missing a chance to grow revenue, enhance employee collaboration, and provide quality service to your customers.

I often quote the Content Marketing Institute on such matters, and this view, of the importance of video, is borne out by their survey of B2B marketers: 79% of B2B Marketers use video, 62% think it’s effective and 74% use YouTube as a social channel.

Looking further into the future,according to Cisco:

It would take an individual more than 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will cross global IP networks each month in 2021. Every second, a million minutes of video content will cross the network by 2021.

That’s a lot of video and a lot of marketers using video. So why is video not a mainstream requirement? Why do we not see it in every RFP? Why is video technology considered slightly off the beaten track and not at forefront of every Digital Experience Platform? (There is absolutely no mention of video in Forrester’s own DXP Wave by the way, which is a Daddy of Forrester Waves).

I admit, video is a considered investment in terms of the time, kit, skills and all the other stuff which is required to do it right (we invest in an in-house team) – but your next generation teenage consumer is currently in their bedroom learning ‘life hacks’ from a 20 something international superstar YouTuber who has nothing much more than a $400 camera.

So, why is this important?

Well, video is going to loom large at some point and will be a significant test for the platforms of the unprepared. If you are choosing a digital experience technology or a content management system of any kind, sorting the Enterprise wheat from the WordPress chaff will be of the utmost importance.

It will not be enough to just hope that YouTube can sort this out for us. Video will need to be managed like any other asset, requiring governance, workflow, digital rights, to be versioned, refreshed, translated, and to be findable, to have metadata assigned to it (etc.). YouTube is a channel after all, not a content management system.

I am not only referring to the specialist platforms that Nick mentions in his research, but to every shade of content management. From Product Information Management to Web Content Management, Marketing Resource Management to those new Content Marketing Platform kids, managing video must be a core requirement. If you really want to test the mettle of your platform, look it in the eye and ask about video.

It’s been a while since video knocked off the radio star, but could your digital experience or content management project be its next victim?

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Ian Truscott
Ian Truscott has a passion for creating ART (Awareness, Revenue and Trust) for B2B software companies as a marketing leader and is a censhare alumni. Wanting to connect a like minded community and share something useful, he founded Rockstar CMO, a monthly digital publication, and is currently helping B2B companies create ART at appropingo.

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