Everything I Need to Know About the Future of Video I Learned from my Daughter
uStudio | Industry Trends, Video Leaders
Everyone knows the YouTube generation is growing up. On the content side, early producers of content have grown up with the medium to understand this has become a vehicle to produce original content, and surprisingly to them, also make a living. A film by Dan Dobi titled Please Subscribe documents this phenomenon quite well but what I find fascinating is what is happening on the consumption side of video.
Call them the YouTube Generation, Generation Z, or even the broader Generation C but for the purpose of this post, I’ll specifically refer to my daughter. She is 13 years old and this is a small window into her day…
6:30 AM: She is in front of her mirror getting ready for school while watching a video on her iPad instructing her on the proper way to apply make up.
5:00 PM: She is watching a private YouTube channel on her laptop that provides video instruction to solve math problems that will be reviewed the next day.
8:00 PM: She is back on her iPad getting fashion ideas as well as cosmetic recommendations from kids her own age on YouTube.
9:00 PM: Her attention turns to Vine and Instagram on her iPhone to catch up on what is happening with her friends.
This brief snapshot of her day can probably describe the day of almost any teenager but the role of video is the interesting insight. This hints at what will be important to them as they join the workforce.
In a future where my daughter has a job in sales, a part of her day might look something like this:
7:00 AM: She is watching a product marketing video on her mobile device to improve her knowledge of a product that was released yesterday.
8:00 AM: She reviews leads in her sales system from a related marketing campaign. She begins to send data sheets, customer testimonial videos, and promotional videos based on recommendations from the sales and marketing system.
1:00 PM: She receives real-time notifications on her iPad to review the quality of her communications with customers and reviews the automated recommendations for additional follow up from the system.
3:00 PM: She joins a video conference call to share her latest forecast with her team and the meeting is recorded as a video and published for internal review.
If you are reading this, you are probably thinking that the technology to do this already exists and you are correct, for the most part it does. Videos are already being used as important communication assets in many organizations but the question to ask is “How seamless is the interaction between people, processes, & video and how consumable is the information?”
Business leaders should be mindful about how they engage with employees today as well as employees of the future. The population of “digital natives” will continue to grow and business growth and agility will be dependent on the speed and quality of communications with this hyper-connected workforce.
They should recognize that good business processes are not enough. They should factor in the expectations of their knowledge workers and how they want to interact with the company, with each other, and the processes that enable the business. It is not enough to expect these employees to conform to existing processes but the processes must flex and integrate with their lives, as seamlessly as possible.
If done properly, the communications will have the following characteristics:
- Connection with community
- Information in context to their interests
- Just-in-time engagement in consumable forms
I believe video will continue to play an important role in these interactions. Enterprises will no longer have a choice because the consumers of information will continue to decide how they want to interact and communicate with the world around them.
If you don’t believe me, just ask my daughter.
