PentaVision's "What's Your Story?" Blog

On August 4, 2010 I will post my last participation comments at Baker College Online as an undergraduate student in marketing. I’m what colleges and universities would refer to as a “non-traditional” student – I’m 31, a working professional and don’t have the flexibility to attend class on campus (nor would I want to attend on campus). I live at least 20 minutes from the nearest community college campus and while that might not seem like a long commute, see how long it takes during a Lake Michigan lake-effect snowstorm! I also didn’t really want to dedicate the necessary resources to make it to a “real” classroom. On the flip side, I definitely felt that I missed out on enriching in-person, real-time discussion and interactions. To be honest, statistics was not an easy class to learn solo!

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There was a time when doing a company video, whether an image or branding piece or a sale and marketing video was a big-budgeted affair designed to have a shelf life of one-to-three years, even five years. But times, they are a-changing. According to a 2009 MediaPost article, the average online video is 3 and 1/2 minutes long. Gone are the days of the 12-minute epic corporate video; between the Internet, websites, and the ever expanding world of social media, no message or image can stand that test of time. The need to keep your web presence up to date and fresh is the key to bringing visitors back to your site. And the demand for video content has become the norm.

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Customer Loyalty Programs…  Do they work? Are they worth the money?  To both questions I answer yes, if executed properly.  Customer loyalty programs, as with many sales promotions, are not “build it and they will come” and should never be expected to be an instant gratification sales promotion.  When you think of loyalty, the words trust, confidence, and relationships should also come to mind.  Trust is not something that comes easily these days, especially in sales and marketing.  Consumers are now, more than ever, aware of their surroundings and the so-called tricks (and sometimes scams) that unethical marketers use to lure them into buying their products.  Unfortunately, this is to the dismay of many ethical marketers who have good intentions of helping customers improve their life with their product or service.

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Quality or quantity. You’ve heard these words used to describe plenty of things; work, products, food and even people. In the world of digital media production, they are often used to describe one very important element; light. Yes, light. Brightness. Radiance.  Illumination. Without quantity, it becomes a project for radio. Without quality, it becomes an average, ordinary, just like everybody else looking video.

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I, like most people, enjoy a great movie.  The ones that I find most memorable are the ones that tell a great story, like:

“Little Miss Sunshine”

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Happy Holidays from all of us at PentaVision Integrated Digital Media!