Comments on: Crossing the Line in Video Marketing

By: TJ

TJ — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 18:11:35 +0000

So, what was the “ONE “NO CHOICE” FUEL COMPANY miles ahead of the competition”??? I couldn’t stomach it either. lol

By: Graham

Graham — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 07:36:30 +0000

I too have been guilty of watching a full 20+ minutes of mindless, “Have I told you how good I am,” video. Watching, waiting, hoping that this was the one, this was the video which would deliver the information that the pre-sell said it would.

Okay, so I now know that the word, “naive,” has been removed from the dictionary.

Now, as soon as I see no controls on the screen, my reaction is instant. Blood pressure goes up, eyes cloud over, ears fail and the mouse hand hits the exit at Olympic Gold speed.

I also make the occasional video and my viewers will always have total control.

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 15:38:08 +0000

I’ve written to several IM marketers expressing these same thoughts. I think it’s a mark of enormous disrespect to viewers to deny them control over the video – and stupid as well. If I have to interrupt a 15- or 20-minute video for some reason, I’m probably not going to come back and suffer through what I’ve already seen.

If I’m really interested in one of these videos, I use DownloadHelper on Firefox and I can usually download the video. Then I view it – at my convenience, and with all of the controls that the Windows Media Player gives me.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 05:03:41 +0000

I switched off after 10 minutes, not good advertising…. fail.

By: Bill

Bill — Tue, 17 May 2011 16:49:53 +0000

Horrible, reminds me of that interminable “end of America” video, which is about 45 minutes long. I’m sorry I called it a video. Neither of these are video in the real sense, it’s a transcribed piece of audio. The End of America radio spots are hilarious…”contains explicit content” or some such. Would it really have been that difficult to get some royalty free video, even stock photos. Rule #1: Be entertaining. These are not.

By: Russ

Russ — Sun, 15 May 2011 09:19:18 +0000

100% correct with your assumption about how ‘Net savvy users will react to this video. I stopped watching it after a short while. I just didn’t like the idea of being “force fed” the information without being able to “cut to the chase”. If customers don’t stick around for the entire message, what’s the point?

By: Vincent

Vincent — Thu, 12 May 2011 01:04:37 +0000

I know of the Fools from a very good book I read of theirs and subsequently their website – so I was already predisposed to listening to the message… after 3 interruptions, noticing the infomercial familiar manipulations and not knowing how long this was going to go on for (I’m busy fer chris’ sake) I exited. It also got too repetitive in style – I can only tolerate so many hooks with no satisfaction… So I guess I miss out on the ‘free’ information you get by taking up the half price offer. Crucially for them, I stopped caring and they lost me. Damn what’s with the comment “worth just over $374,549″? [or what ever the amount was - I couldn't rewind] Did they mean 27 or 82 cents more?? IMHO this video as marketing material failed bigtime.

By: Doc (Steve) Yankee

Doc (Steve) Yankee — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 15:44:15 +0000

Bingo, Hal! You make a huge point here – “YouTube sets the standard for how people expect to control online videos.” We are truly in an age (like it or not) of permission-based marketing. Videos that start and run with no control are a turn-off to most viewers, just as highly-compressed audio tracks of fast-talking pitchmen are on TV. “Apply directly to forehead! Apply directly to forehead!” How awful.