Brick by Brick

When I was in traditional PR one of the activities I always thought was a waste of time and money was the creation of internal, morale boosting videos.  Basically, the idea is to make this “cool” video to get everyone fired up at some big event, nevermind the other 364 days in the year.  It almost impossible to make one of these that doesn’t make people cringe.

Thanks to YouTube, these types of videos are showing up on the Internet.  Below are three that represent the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the team building video genre.

The Good

This internal Kodak video is brilliant. It beautifully describes the company’s transition to digital. I got a little fired up watching it.

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I’ve been saving interesting political videos in my YouTube account in preparation for a cheap “list” post.  I’m pulling the trigger today.  So here are the six most interesting political videos I’ve come accross in the first part of this year.

(6) John McCain sings “bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran”..

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Arianna Huffington has a blog post up exposing the maker of the now famous “Vote Different“ Hillary Clinton attack ad as Philip de Vellis, an employee at the Democrat web consultancy Blue State Digital.  Background on the situation is available here.

I’d like to personally thank Huffington for breaking this story.  I was suffering from a serious case of parkridge47 overload. 

Here are some others on the story:

• I Made the “Vote Different” Ad - Philip de Vellis
• My Thoughts, Before This Gets Out of Hand - The Beta Stage
• What de Vellis? Obama Consulting Firm Employee Made The Act – Hotline On Call
• ParkRidge47 Mystery Solved by HuffPost - Tech President
• Creator of Anti-Hillary “1984″ Video Revealed – The WP Fix
• Anonymity Sucks - Tech President
• Surprise! Obama’s web team is ParkRidge47 - David All

Here’s the video for those who haven’t seen it.

Viacom Inc. reported this morning that it is suing Google and YouTube for $1 billion (via the Washington Post, BBC News, the Blogging Times).

Honestly, the only thing that surprises me about this is that it didn't happen sooner. 

Apparently, Viacom, which owns brands including MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, BET, Nickelodeon, CMT, SpikeTV, Paramount and Dreamworks, believes that "almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of its programming have been uploaded onto YouTube's site and viewed more than 1.5 billion times."

Viacom is accusing Google and YouTube of massive copyright infringement. Go figure. 

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One trend to watch this year is the boom in well produced, niche video blogs.  The children of Rocketboom. 

My favorite example is Wallstrip, a daily video blog that takes an in depth look at a hot stock each day from a sort of layman’s perspective.  Using humor, they try to explain in real world terms why a stock is doing so well.

I think it is terrific.

To give you a taste, following is a recent show in which a bunch of venture capitalists race to see who is the most proficient on a Blackberry.  Most of the shows are a bit more informational than this one, but it gives you a taste of Wallstrip’s tone. 

On a side note, I think it is just a matter of time before someone does this for the political scene in DC. I’m looking forward to it and I hope it is as good as Wallstrip.