May 20, 2010
Comments by Guillermo Kopp / @GuillermoKopp
Chairman, GUAU Corporation
PLUGGED IN – FOLLOW UP THOUGHTS
1. Shifting Consumer Habits: Video, social media, and text content will add value synergistically to meet budding customer needs. Digital magazines on portable tablets will open creative innovation avenues.
Comment: We find that multitasking viewers will rather glance at several screen areas than read. Video will be a key means to capture the viewers’ attention and prompt them to buy. Wise advertising will mix video with text ads, and give consumers better control. Effective filters should avoid overload.
2. In Contempt of Content: Smart ads double up as useful content and customers love it. People are curious and want to stumble into novelties. Consumers will know when ads are disruptive to them.
Comment: We welcome short video clips (less than 30”) with relevant infomercials from credible sponsors. Fairness and integrity of the brand, fun, independence of opinion, and transparency in the advertised facts will establish credibility at par with the deeper content of specialized articles.
3. Demographics: Facebook fans endorse or subscribe to innovative concepts and features. Small social ecosystems interwoven across common behaviors and interests will lead to more granular segmentation.
Comment: We look forward to strong growth in emerging segments. Growth should overcome the marketing inertia of big firms that stick with the purchasing power of established audiences. Advertisers must tap the exploding number of Twitter and other social media interactions with a localized focus.
4. Personalized Interaction Experience: Purposeful integration of current facts, opinions, music, video, text messages, animation and live interaction mechanics will be instrumental in engaging customers.
Comment: Consumers will spend significant time interacting with a growing number and smarter mobile devices that they carry everywhere. We envision a day-to-day, multimedia transactional business model that builds on the awareness of the customer location and acts upon personal triggers.
5. End-to-End Marketing: Agencies must orchestrate a creative suite of ads, content, incentives, and promotions across channels, track the online experience, and credit its influence on purchasing decisions.
Comment: We believe that newly designed interactive content should work appropriately and purposefully across multiple customer touchpoints. Integrated metrics across print, TV, online, and mobile content must attribute purchases that occur later in a physical store or third-party site.
I am happy to say that the first Founders Roundtable event went extremely well. In the end we had 11 participants ranging from startups, VC’s, and industry executives and the feedback that I have received has been extremely positive.
The beauty of the roundtable approach is that it lends itself to having a frank and laid back discussion as opposed to a formal format with a Q&A. At the roundtableeveryone was able to jump in and ask probing questions and follow up questions as needed. I had the privilege of moderating the first event and led off with the question of “How has the current landscape of online video evolved?”
The roundtable touched on a number of topics from video distribution- how it has picked -up over the past year and that more and more people are viewing videos online; staffing — how to find the most qualified person for an open position, the difficulty of sifting through the hundreds of resumes; CPM’s – what are the going CMP’s and what they will be in the future, Copyright and legal issues — distribution of videos, copyright infringement; Marketing – how to acquire users, marketing budget; Social Media — how they are embracing various methods to promote their brand and word via Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, etc.
It was interesting to see the dynamics between the executives from Google, HBO, and MTV as they were curious to hear about each others strategies on marketing, retention, revenue, and other topics. I was surprised that none of the founders or executives knew each other, it just goes to show you how big the industry is in general and in NY specifically.
As you can see many things were touched upon and the above list does not really encompass the entirety of the conversation. What I did take away from the conversation is that each company is coming into its own right and carving their niche. Partnerships are integral to their success and each company is reliant on ways to signing up partners so they can distribute their content or bring on partners that generate content. From the industry executive side they were excited to see how innovative the companies are and amazed to see the challenges that they face from building and leading a company to profitability.
Overall, it was a successful event and from what I have been told by the participants they expect some deals to happen from the roundtable. To me that is what I consider a successful event. Most of all I want to thank all the particpants for attending and making the event successful, it was a pleasure to meet everyone.
On that note I have already started working towards the next event which will be on September 30th and the focus will be on Social Media.
Details will be coming shortly.
Video is a trending (twitterology) topic these days and so I thought it would make for a fitting topic for our first roundtable event. From streaming, hosting, licensing, advertising, distribution, animation, creation, syndication, licensing, marketing, tracking, analytics, and much more video is now more popular than ever.
This trend is due to a number of factors, but a significant portion can be attributed to flash player technology, broadband access, and sharing of video by embedding code on blogs and web pages. In fact according to a recent report by eMarketer, a recent study conducted by Lightspeed Research states that “72% of US Internet users watched video clips monthly-making video bigger than blogging or social networking”. Truly an amazing stat and one that I would say goes somewhat unnoticed as video doesn’t create the same splash as social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.
That is why we have 5 startups dealing with different aspects of video at our first roundtable event. The companies are @5min, @Aniboom, @Anyclip, @Bliptv, @Flixwagon, and potentially a few more startups will be joining in. The companies range from a movie clip database, mobile video broadcasting, virtual animation, web TV, and knowledge and instructional video. On the industry side we have executives from HBO, MTV, and Sony attending to discuss what they are currently doing and share some insight with the founders. Lastly, we have people coming from the investor side as we have Raj Das an active angel investor and CEO of Pom Partners a global digital media firm along with Phineas Barnes from Firstround Capital and Jeremy Levine from Bessemer Ventures.
The inaugural event will be full of lively discussions and insights as we have people from all sides talking about video and where it currently is and where it will be in the future. The founders are the ones that are leading the innovation and the Founders Roundtable is giving them a new platform to help them succeed.
