Can Science Explain the Power of Video?

Content, content, content – it seems to be the only thing marketers talk about today. And the growing content medium of choice is video. You don’t have to travel very far online to learn this – over 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute on YouTube resulting in 1 billion unique users each month!

There are lots of reasons video is becoming the fastest growing digital medium for enterprises and individuals alike. It’s entertaining. It’s fun to watch. It’s not static like a book or PDF.

But the most compelling reason is that it works. The online world is full of reports, studies, Infographics and blogs that provide data showing its effectiveness in marketing, advertising, learning, communicating, educating, training, etc. (See our blog post on the effectiveness of video in increasing brand awareness.)

But why does it work?

The Brain Lady has her theories about why, including the role of the Fusiform Facial area. And a Quicksprount Infographic even points to the power of peripheral motion.

But frankly, it’s difficult to compete with renowned physicist Michio Kaku’s explanation. He attributes the power of video to the mind itself: apparently, a large part of the brain is devoted solely to visual image processing. We think visually, and hence interpret data visually. Leading physicists such as Einstein and Newton used their visual intelligence to understand the secrets of the universe.

“All the great theories of the world are not equations,” says Dr. Kaku, “[rather] they are based on simple principles which can be manifested as pictures, as in video images.”

So our attraction to the medium and its affect on us relates to our brain’s ability – propensity, perhaps – to structure information visually. The secrets of the universe have been revealed this way. Who are we to argue? See Kaku explain it firsthand.