Alan Weinkrantz’ heads up on the launch of pulverTV got me thinking that internetTV could very well be what’s next in research delivery channels.
It’s easy to imagine an internetTV channel dedicated to high tech market research.
Already, anyone can create their own internetTV channel. Jeff Pulver is raising the bar on quality. Social networks are forging ahead with the idea. Why not the tech industry analysts?
Many research reports and presentations would benefit from delivery through internetTV. The content could be globalized and socialized. Plus, the content would be portable to all screen sizes — from LCD walls in conference rooms to multimedia phones on the go. Nice changes from text-dense presentations.
Equally important is the level playing field. Size isn’t a barrier to internetTV. JupiterResearch and Freeform Dynamics could develop program schedules just as easily as a large company. The one early advantage could go to Forrester Research, with their well-established inhouse TV studio and media training program.
InternetTV will transform mass media. The question is, who’ll be the first Jeff Pulver of the industry analysts?
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February 6th, 2008 at 2:53 am
Hi Barbara, thanks for the namecheck - but I feel we may have already been pipped at the post by the good ol’ Redmonk boys, who have been doing this for a while: http://redmonk.com/tv/
Your post really got me thinking. One of the tricks with TV, as in analysis, is to know your audience (James at Redmonk characterises their audience as “make-side” which no doubt applies to their video outputs). We’ve been going for 2 years now at Freeform Dynamics, and we’re getting to grips with who is our own audience: delivering best practice insight to the IT decision making stack up to and including the CIO. I think one of the issues with analyst firms is that they see the CIO as the be-all and end-all, for quite valid reasons - that’s where the big money is, where the buck stops etc. The disadvantage is its a pretty crowded space, and while I think you’re right in saying the setup costs are low for everybody, equally, one must be prepared to jostle for position with the big boys, for what is a quite limited pool of CIO eyeballs. Incidentally, we see a similar thing happening in the vendor space, where a lot of the tier-1 vendor marketing is aimed at the Enterprise CIO/CxO (”Agile business” etc) rather than the mid-market IT manager. This might well (but I speculate) reinforce the analyst attitude that the CIO conversation (aka influence) is the only one worth having.
As I said, this CIO-oriented perspective is not wrong but (as you’ll know from my fireside chats with Duncan) I believe its incomplete. Given that we want (and I risk slipping into marketing speak here) “to maximise the business value of IT by distilling and promoting best practice” - we are probably, like mid-market vendors, risking missing out on the big bucks - but equally we are tapping a market and audience that larger companies find hard to reach. To the (TV) point: our audience is very different, our content is different etc - so I absolutely agree that the playing field is levelled, but not just because of set-up costs
Of course, if we want to play TV we’ll have to “get off the pot.” For us, like all smaller companies no doubt, the issue is bandwidth - putting together a schedule etc is no small endeavour. While we may not be launching Freeform TV just yet, we are actively pursuing a number of media activities with partners - you’ll see us pop up on CRN and The Register, and I’m just talking to a conference company about hosting some podcasts. Small steps!
One of the things we did last year at Freeform was to spend a day with an NLP expert. One thing that really came home was that different people respond differently to different forms of communication - imagine the penny-dropping moment when we compared this to our current, largely paper-based outputs! To your point about “nice changes from text-dense presentations” - totally - if we really want to do our job properly, we should be using whichever mechanisms are going to have the most impact on our chosen audience.
February 6th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Jon, Your attention to matching up the right audience+message is right on the money. InternetTV discussions need to start there.
Based on history, I expect you’re right: many analysts will simply go for the CIO persona as their target audience. (Then, some will measure this new communications channel as though it were a virtual salesforce or ad campaign.)
I’m fascinated with your comments about bandwidth. Bandwidth seems to have equal impact on analysts at every size company. It doesn’t seem to be a bigger or smaller problem based on company size. However, I would think the biggest bandwidth burn would be on ramping up on the tech and integrating it with content management.
The media, their advertisers — both are jumping from the occasional YouTube link to a stream of original video alongside normal text, graphics, and social stuff. With eyeballs and ad revenues at stake, they’ve got to be itching to rethink their criteria for preferred research partners.
February 7th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
And equally, we need to be careful not to confuse “bandwidth” with “priority” - or at least use the lack of bandwidth (you’re right - it’s in short supply everywhere as an excuse to do nothing).
Watch this space
February 19th, 2008 at 11:38 am
IDC has http://youtube.com/user/IDCeXchange but it has only has a handful of videos, most posted two months ago.
Desired quality has a lot to do with the amount of bandwidth required. One can go quick-and-dirty like Jeremiah Owyang with his cell phone video recording. Or one can go for a more polished look, which requires a heavier investment in time for planning, recording, editing and so on. I think that many analyst firms and analysts are frozen in place thinking they need to do the latter in order to maintain the brand. Sure, Jeremiah’s videos are not slick, but they are out there and deliver useful information — I know because I was the interviewee on one episode ;>. So JO’s “good enough” approach beats the silence of the other firms.
Another aspect is whether the firm’s clients and prospects would even watch an analystTV channel. I consume all sorts of media, but I’m quite atypical for someone my age. It’s going to be a balancing act for firms to adopt analystTV (and podcasting and blogs and…) just before their clients do, but not too early as to waste money and time. Why put out video when your clients want the analysts on the phone answering an inquiry?
February 20th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
The differences in blog style and tone run the gamut, from very casual to very formal. The same will hold true with video — I hope.
I agree completely on the importance of getting the right mix.
As to the risks of analystTV, as you call it
the risk seems quite low:
* Analyst clients and prospects have shown they like the media: they’ve been tuning into vendor-sponsored video clips for 10 to 15 years. Likewise, audio replays of keynote speechs and telebriefings.
* There’s a massive amount of metrics data out there on what does and doesn’t work. Analysts can get it from their media partners, vendor sponsors, hosted web service providers. They could also buy it from media researchers who specialize in this sort of information.
* The financial analysts and the investment information mega-publishers have already pioneered the delivery of market analysis through broadcast media and to an extent over the internet. It’s not as though we’re talking about C-SPAN…