Why Video?

This may seem like an obvious question but it begs to be asked. The question is really why invest in professional video? Why not give your guests a $269 HD flip camcorder and let them shoot some video and post that?

The answer is that you would not trust your logo or your essential branding to an amateur or have an amateur write your mission statement, shoot your still photography, or design your website because viewers will subconsciously equate the presentation you make with the experience they will have in the destination or property.

The reason most marketers have not already invested more in video is because until recently there has not been a sufficiently good way to deliver quality video to viewers at the right time to influence purchase decisions.

That has changed dramatically, thanks to widespread high bandwidth and the advent of YouTube and other social media that viewers have thoroughly embraced.

85% of USA and Canadian $75K+ income households today have high bandwidth sufficient to watch even High Definition video online. In May, 2010, YouTube celebrated its fifth birthday by delivering two billion videos daily, up 100% from a milestone of one billion videos daily just six months ago. Video has penetrated every online channel of distribution from web sites to social media, E-mail, newsletters, and broadcasts to mobile devices including smart phones and tablet PCs.

Video now makes up 32% of all Internet activity.

Consumers prefer video 6 to 1 over text and photos so even Google searches give uneven weight to videos in the search process. YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine, and of course it's owned by the largest search engine, Google.

Researchers and analysts industry wide report that video is the favored medium to reach consumers and affect purchase decisions. Consider:

1. "More than one-half of marketers considered video more effective than other forms of advertising, and 83% claimed they were getting more value for their video advertising dollars than a year ago." eMarketer May 3, 2010.
2. Forester Research predicts that "Video will be the fastest growing area of display advertising over the next five years." Adnotes Feb. 2, 2010.
3. 94 percent of agency executives planned to spend more on online video in Q1 than the prior year. eMarketer May 3, 2010.
4. With an annual growth rate of 40%, online video will soon be the mainstay of any serious website or social media marketing effort. RISMEDIA, April 28, 2010.
5. Video has moved from being an exception to an expectation. People are reading less and watching more. We're fast becoming a visual society and there's no turning back. Steve Schweickart, CEO and co-founder of VScreen, April 2010.

Video has become one of the most important core elements of effective marketing. Good video footage is as essential as good photography in presenting the travel experience. Destinations should no longer think of having just "a video". Video footage and edited clips are tools that can be customized and integrated into many areas of your marketing mix. Having devoted a quarter of a century to the production of tourism video for all distribution methods Travelview is an ideal partner to help integrate video throughout your marketing mix.