Walmart employs more than two million people in 15 countries across the world – and to celebrate the World Cup we’ve been helping them to come together across nations and continents through a collaborative pass-the-ball internet video.

With countries like Argentina, Brazil and Mexico (not to mention the home nations of the United Kingdom) represented in the Walmart group there’s no shortage of football talent around. And judging by their performance against England in South Africa, we can’t write off the US any more when it comes to “soccer”.

So employees in stores and depots everywhere have been recording their own contribution to a video that sees the ball being passed back and forwards across the globe from an office in Oklahoma to a store in Liverpool to a warehouse in Mexico City and on and on and on …

Posted by Mark on 14 June 2010, 14:05

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The explosive growth of video on the internet – and the ability to create and access video inexpensively on mobile devices – brings huge opportunities for businesses, at the same time as letting individuals do things we couldn’t have dreamed of a decade ago.

Video is core to our products and services. Some examples:

VIDEO BLOGGING:

We help companies cover live events, tell stories and communicate with their customers in a much more honest, genuine, conversational way by using blog-style video.

We help businesses create and manage complete video-based blogs, we help you to ditch old-style corporate websites and replace them with a more human way of communicating, and we use realtime video blogging to capture the raw excitement of live events. We’ll even send out our team in their mobile blogging support van to help you do it.

Take a look at the some of the work we’ve been doing with Asda chief executive Andy Bond and the communal blog we managed for Orange at this year’s Glastonbury Festival: 100 Hours In A Field.

UGC VIDEO

Whether you’re aiming to “democratise the process of creating movies” or you just want to get your customers sending in funny video of themselves, we’ve got the tools you need to let people do it, and we’ve got production teams who can help package UGC (user-generated content) into really compelling products.

Our Profusion system is designed to make it easy to manage videos, photos and supporting text uploaded by mobile or web – and we provide managed editorial and moderation services for brands running UGC-based competitions or ongoing products. One of our favourites was Wannabe Wicked, which combined fans’ own video competition entries with behind-the-scenes videos recorded on mobile phones by stars of the West End show Wicked.

VIDEO ON MOBILE

More and more people are using their mobiles to download and view videos as phones become more sophisticated and the operators introduce simpler charges for using data.

We build and manage mobile internet sites featuring high-quality video content optimised for different devices. We also provide video advertising solutions allowing you to automatically stitch short ads in realtime before, during or after the video content a user has requested depending on their profile, the context, or the nature of the content. See an example in our Zap! service.

VIDEO ENTERTAINMENT

Every day we’re taking in live feeds of video from the UK’s top broadcasters, TV production companies, film distributors and games companies to turn into a range of different interactive services on web and mobile.

One example: We manage the Orange Film service uses trailers, clips and behind-the-scenes features to help people decide what to go and see with their Orange Wednesdays 2 for 1 tickets. We make sure clips are optimised for the device you’re viewing it on – your specific mobile phone, a PC, a TV screen – and we create supporting images and editorial material for the service. Find out more here.

Posted by admin on 15 October 2009, 09:39

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Asda has emerged this year as a real pioneer in the use of video, blogging and social media to transform the way a business engages with its customers – and we’re helping them to do it.

Back in May we sat up and took notice when Asda’s chief executive Andy Bond gave a keynote speech talking about the need for radical transparency and openness if businesses are to build trust with customers and employees in the future.

Since then we’ve been working with Asda to start down this path by replacing their old-style corporate website with a completely new site, Your Asda, which uses raw video and a much more open, conversational blog-style approach to interact with customers and seek their feedback and involvement.

Andy Bond himself is a fan of the way video blogging can give you a much more personal, honest view of of the people within an organisation and its culture. We followed Andy on a 1200-mile charity bike ride from Land’s End to John O’Groats, helping him and his colleagues capture the epic journey in a live video blog and bring to life the objectives of the Pedal Power campaign.

Now Asda has rolled out a new blog, Aisle Spy, where 14 people around the business take Flip video-cameras wherever they go, capturing what goes on behind the scenes and lifting the lid on how things are done.

Our work with Asda also covers communication among the company’s 167,000 staff through The Green Room – and some of Asda’s wider online activity in areas such as Twitter and YouTube. Here’s another recent example of how Asda’s people really “get” social media.

Posted by TC on 15 October 2009, 08:33

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