ESCAPE VELOCITY

1 - Funny I was just writing your boss about a similar question to pose.

2 - @1 - Lotus 911 isn't a global brand (yet) so there is some measure of production quality that is necessarily "guerrilla" for us. Still, I think Jimmy tends to do a pretty good job when he puts on his video editor hat. Certainly better than when he puts on his coder hat.

3 - 1.) Please, come to ibm.com/lotus/alloy so we can continue to NOT show you the product actually in use.

2.) I'll show you the product but tell you every mundane thing I'm doing because I'm assuming you're an idiot.

3.) Look how easy this is to use.

4 - I believe that the last one is so successful because it instantly starts out identifying a problem I have (and that everyone has so we can all relate to it personally), and then telling me how the product will solve it.

It's a similar situation why some technical conference sessions are better than others. We need to be able to connect with them personally instantly. The good ones start out by saying "here's why you're here", or "here's why you need this".

5 - It's not a matter of production values; that's easy to fix. The Lotus video is "technical sales" product information, the MS one is business sales and the Apple one is consumer sales. There's room for all three but each company is known for just what you show. IBM Lotus could benefit from a better mix.

6 - @5 - It absolutely is a matter of production values. The first video is practically a camcorder shoot, with almost no action from the speaker and no compelling scripted content. The second video is highly scripted production with a contextual demonstration of a user experience. The third is a sound bite demonstration that is pure user experience, in the form of the problem and its solution, in 30 seconds.

The distinction between technical, business and consumer sales is illusory. And it's precisely this illusion that causes the massive difference in marketing success between the above brands.

7 - I don't see the first one as trying to be viral.

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8 - AAAArrrgggghhhh! Why oh why doesn't IBM "get it"? They keep pumping out the same "wrong" marketing material, the rest of us can see it's wrong (but can do nothing but bitch and complain about it), the competitors can see it's wrong (and easily outflank and out dance IBM/Lotus on the consumer floor), the users can see it's wrong and therefore it makes either no impression or a negative impression.

I mean... who lets this crap get out? Is there no-one at IBM or SAP that saw this and went "ummm no... no... absolutely not"?

Feelin' kinda Don Quixote-ish.

9 - Nate, I'm going to argue that the distinction is not illusory. You cannot compare/contrast a 30-second television commercial targeted at the general population (of the smartphone-buying public) with a longer-format technical overview aimed at a specific slice of a particular industry. Perhaps your argument is more generally that IBM should directly advertise its products at John Q. Public via expensive TV ads?

10 - Fascinating. I was bored to the point of turning off the video within two minutes for both the Alloy and Excel demos (I was actually somewhat intrigued by which you thought was notably better), because they yapped on about features without describing problems. Sure, the iphone is fun and funky, but mostly they said "Here's a problem you may be able to relate. Here, we solve it, before your eyes." Obviously, the tasks to be solved by Excel and Alloy are different, but the iPhone ad didn't talk about all its features, though it showed a few off as visual eye candy. It showed one problem - one solution - which suggested how much more could be done.

11 - @9 - I love it when someone tells me what I can and cannot do.

My argument is that these are videos which make progressively more compelling use of the medium. If your content isn't going to be compelling, DON'T MAKE A VIDEO. The IBM one is awful; the MSFT one is good; the Apple one is great. If IBM were smart, they'd make 30 second videos like Apple does, and that's what you'd find on YouTube's Collaboration4You channel.

I can't think of a more compelling way to present the feature set of Alloy than to show someone getting a vacation request and approving it. Can you?

12 - @10 - Ben, the Excel video shows you the Excel software in use. The Alloy video has a few sheared screenshots in the middle of some slides. It tells, but never once does it show.

13 - @12 - OK, I'll grant you that the Excel video shows the software in use, but in such a dry "here's a feature, here's a feature" fashion that there is little sense of the overall way of doing things and solving problems. I gritted my teeth and watched both again, and it is true that the IBM video gets worse and worse due to talking-head-syndrome, while the Microsoft video gets a bit better when he shows a few examples that one can almost (with no help from the presenter) imagine using. Not to be a suck up or anything, but neither does half as good a job as you did with the BONES demo, since you showed it in action while describing real life issues you needed to deal with (such as the need to wear gloves making it important that an audible click technology for the touch screen was needed).

I do think you mislead in the beginning, as nobody expects either of these first two to become viral (or nobody sane, so possibly some IBM and Microsoft suits do). I just think the issue is only partly production value, and partly an approach of grabbing the customer with a problem to which they can relate, and showing how you would solve that. Obviously, IBM would throw slides on a screen while Microsoft would spin its ribbon bar endlessly looking for something that might relate. That much we did learn.

14 - @13 - I bet the MSFT video gets at least 5 times the views of the IBM video within the next two weeks.

And thanks for the compliment on the BONES vid.

"nobody expects either of these first two to become viral"

Yeah, they do. This is their version of "air cover" remember. This is IN LIEU of mass market media coverage, not in addition to.

15 - @14 - Answering myself: actually it's ONE DAY old and it's already got more views than the IBM one.

16 - I watched the Excel one again, and the presenter absolutely delivers a better "here's my problem and here's me solving it." He finds and opens a group of sales data, isolates a group of customers, runs a series of competitive trendlines, and then shares it via Sharepoint. The only talking part is 30 seconds at the beginning.

The IBM video spends the first 20 seconds on branding and theme music.