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According to Wikipedia, “streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a provider”. In layman’s terms, it’s media that you consume but don’t have to download. Netflix streams television shows, while iTunes allows you to download the content. Streaming media is undergoing a huge expansion in popularity and ubiquity. In turn, this creates a lot of opportunities for different businesses. Industries that have been fearing a decline due to technological advancements (like the movie industry and music industry) are hopeful that streaming can change their fortunes, while other companies can take advantage of the global potential for viewers that streaming provides.

Over the last few years consumers have changed the way they listen to music and watch videos on the web. Online media consumers have transitioned from downloading songs and movies on illegal platforms to increasingly watching movies and listening to music by streaming the content through a legitimate channel. We are witnessing a change in music and video consumption: people are more and more likely listen to music and watch videos via legal means. This increases revenues for both labels and artists while providing companies with new marketing opportunities.

In today’s digital age, streaming offers more flexibility than traditional content transmission mediums such as television, which enables viewers to get what they want when they want it rather than when the music and video industries decide to present it (for more information, please see our other blog article: On Demand Content Distribution Becoming More Sought After Than Traditional Broadcast). This explains the consumers’ motive behind the immense and growing popularity of streaming technology.

Nothing is popular without profit, however, and as such it is no surprise that there are several different ways for streaming websites to make money. Some, such as YouTube, require you to watch an advertisement before being able to access a video. Others, such as the French “Deezer” launched in 2006 and the Swedish “Spotify” launched in 2008 allow you to choose between paying for an advertisement-free subscription or a limited amount of listening time per month with advertisements.
The revenue obtained from the advertising and subscriptions is then split between the music labels and the website. The advantages of streaming for the music and movie industries are obvious in that they turn a group of non revenue-generating customers (illegal downloaders) into a group of revenue-generating customers (streamers). In addition, this has several consequences that will further reduce expenses or increase revenue for these industries including a reduced need to prosecute copyright infringers.

Streaming also offers new digital marketing opportunities for companies, and as the streaming technology becomes more universally accessible and more popular, the number of potential customers grows. What’s more, consumers around the globe can all view the same video and listen to the same music on the same host website. This offers huge potential for companies that would like to go global, because the audience they are reaching through streaming is not only national but international. Cimaglia Productions’s top-of-the-line digital video production services can help you create innovative video content for domestic and interantional consumers of streaming content.

De plus en plus de marques exploitent les possibilités qu’offrent les réseaux sociaux pour le marketing en ligne. Dans le monde actuel, il est presque impensable pour une société de ne pas avoir un compte Twitter ou Facebook. Certaines marques vont plus loin que simplement être présents sur Facebook et Twitter, en créant du contenu vidéo informatisé qu’ils téléchargent régulièrement vers des chaînes Youtube. D’autres paient pour faire de la publicité sur Facebook. Toutes ces techniques visent à identifier puis à exploiter les nouvelles fonctions de l’internet au profit du marketing.

Dans un de nos articles de blog, Harnessing the Crowd: Advertising on Social Media, nous expliquons comment les réseaux sociaux fournissent de nouvelles possibilités de marketing aux sociétés. Utiliser Facebook, Twitter ou Youtube pour promouvoir de nouveaux produits ou de nouveaux services est une façon extrêmement efficace de se mettre en contact avec de potentiels clients et de créer un « buzz ». Un des avantages évidents du marketing sur les réseaux sociaux est que le « j’aime » d’une personne sur Facebook ou leur « retweet » sur Twitter permet aux sociétés d’accéder à leur réseau de collègues, de connaissances… La campagne publicitaire de la société sera d’autant plus efficace que les amis d’une personne sur Facebook et ses suiveurs sur Twitter auront vraisemblablement les mêmes goûts que lui et donc seront sans doute attirés par les mêmes produits.

Cependant, quantifier le buzz généré par des stratégies de marketing sur les réseaux sociaux n’est pas toujours facile. Des donnés issues de The Power of Like Europe: How Social Marketing Works for Retail Brands, un rapport co-publié par Facebook et l’expert en statistiques liés aux réseaux sociaux Comscore montre que faire du marketing sur les médias sociaux est réellement efficace. Le rapport se concentre essentiellement sur des marques de vêtements européennes branchées telles que ASOS, La Redoute, H&M et Zara. Il montre que ces sociétés ont la capacité de diffuser des publicités à jusqu’à quarante-quatre amis de fans sur Facebook, un fan étant quelqu’un qui a « aimé » la marque. Le rapport determine également que la publicité payante sur Facebook augmente le comportement d’achat sur le site d’ASOS de 130 pourcents pendant les quatre semaines suivant l’exposition aux publicités, comparé à des clients qui n’étaient pas exposés mais qui avaient une affinité similaire pour ASOS. Ainsi, on peut dire que les campagnes publicitaires sur les réseaux sociaux non seulement fonctionnent, mais peuvent fonctionner extrêmement bien.

Ceci est une autre preuve soutenant l’argument selon lequel les médias sociaux seront incroyablement importants dans le futur du marketing. D’ailleurs, ce type de marketing pourrait devenir de plus en plus efficace au fur et à mesure que la société accepte la participation croissante des personnes au sein des réseaux sociaux. En outre, s’il devient normal d’ « aimer » des marques, plus de gens le feront, ce qui conduira à plus de consommateurs étant exposés à la publicité sur le web. Donc, si votre société ne fait pas encore du marketing sur les réseaux sociaux, prenez garde : ceux qui ne changent pas le monde sont laissés de côté.

Suivre @Cimaglia_FR

Contactez-nous : fr@cimagliaproductions.com

“Going Green” has developed from an environmental movement carried on by a small demographic into a popular social trend. Individuals of all different types are becoming more aware of their ecological footprints and trying to make use of this increased understanding by recycling, reducing energy usage, and buying from green-certified companies. Many people are willing to spend significantly more money on products that they think are more environmentally conscious in an effort to live a greener lifestyle.

Just last month, Apple decided to pull 39 of their computers from the EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool) registry. EPEAT is a means for measuring the impact of a particular product on the environment over the course of its lifecycle. Facing severe backlash from consumers, pundits, and bloggers, Apple recanted after realizing they had made a huge mistake. Within the week, they had rejoined EPEAT while publishing a letter on their website apologizing for withdrawing in the first place.

This strategy has seen limited success in soothing many of Apple’s irritated but loyal customers, since it appears to some that Apple was putting their green practices on the backburner and acted only out of interest in avoiding negative public relations. This incident goes to show the importance of not only being a green company but also staying completely committed to being a green company. With the go green craze becoming more and more popular, customers are growing increasingly sophisticated as a greater degree of environmental consciousness becomes more normal behavior. Under these circumstances, token showings of support for environmental causes or insincere commitments to sustainability have a high chance for failure or negative press due to a more discerning public.

At Cimaglia Productions, we are always striving to work with more sustainable business practices everyday, and have been doing so for several years. Whether it’s a fanatical devotion to the paperless office or just the simple practice of shutting off lights and computers when we leave, we are happy to take an extra step to make the world around us better.

By Virginia Thomas, Account Manager, Cimaglia Productions

I am a proud member of the Junior League of Chicago.

I first joined the Junior League in Washington, D.C. for two reasons: I wanted to do something more with my free time and to meet new people. I thoroughly enjoyed the social aspect of the League – the parties, get togethers, and events that helped the League provide financial support to children and families of the District. Furthermore, the League’s support of literacy in DC meshed with my own personal charitable desires as well with my work at a non-profit, Junior Achievement.

However, my involvement with the JLW merely scratched the surface of my potential contributions. I kept a list of my requirements next to my desk at work and made sure to check everything off by the end of the year. I did not particularly feel like doing much more than what was required of me.

When my husband and I moved to Chicago in late 2010, I transferred my membership to the Junior League of Chicago. I was looking for a new job, new friends, and the opportunity to get to know the city more intimately; hopefully the Junior League could help me tackle some of these things. Once again, I started a new checklist and made sure that I met all of my requirements. I attended events and volunteered, and again, did not really have the desire to get more involved than I had to.

If you know me well at all, you will know that this is unusual! When I get involved with something, I tend to jump off the high dive into the deep end before taking off my shoes! However, I had a lot on my plate at the time and decided that the Junior League could take a backseat.

However, my feelings towards my Junior League involvement began to shift in April 2012. The Junior League of Chicago turned 100 this year, and a good friend told me that the JLC was looking to have a video made to celebrate their Centennial. I asked my boss, Matt Cimaglia, if he would be willing to create a video for the League pro bono and he enthusiastically agreed. Producing videos for non-profit and other socially responsible organizations is an important part of Cimaglia Productions’ video production services.

I began to do my homework, which included watching (and transcribing) interviews with key members of the League. What started as homework quickly became a lesson in JLC history through the words of its members. I loved listening to the stories from the sustainers and seasoned League members recounting their own memories of the League. I learned how these women, some blessed with wealth and a load of free time, used their resources to better the city in which they lived by volunteering, creating programs, and providing resources for children and less fortunate families. Other women, who had full time jobs and families, made significant impacts as well because they truly valued the work of the Junior League. These women were, and are, pioneers; they accomplished many things by working together and focusing on specific issues that would better the lives of people in Chicago. I was impressed with these women, but most of all I was proud–proud to be a part of an organization that has accomplished so much over the past 100 years.

Twelve interviews and nearly 100 pages of transcriptions later, I decided to prioritize my involvement with the League. I chose to take a community placement on the Kids in the Kitchen Committee and my goal is to do more than just check off my requirements this year; I will strive to make the Junior League a priority. Of course, I still plan to be involved socially with the League. After all, meeting new friends and engaging with women who have similar mindsets and interests is a large part of what makes the League so special!

Working on this remarkable video has been a fun project for the team at Cimaglia Productions. We are thankful to be able to partner with the Junior League, and are excited to attend the Centennial Celebration this evening!

About Cimaglia Productions
Celebrating over 10 years of growth, Cimaglia Productions is a full-service video production company proudly located at the John Hancock Center in the heart of Chicago. With experience in everything from long-form documentary series to creating interactive press kits for national corporate clients, the award-winning team at Cimaglia Productions can create the video content you need. We can also help you find the audience for your video, using our expertise in search optimization, new-media marketing, and brand management.
www.cimagliaproductions.com

About the Junior League of Chicago
Junior League of Chicago, Inc. is a metropolitan organization of women committed to promoting volunteerism, developing the potential of women, and improving the community through effective action and leadership of trained volunteers. The Junior League of Chicago, Inc. reaches out to women of all races, religions, and national origins who demonstrate an interest in and a commitment to voluntarism.
www.jlchicago.org

The fifth and most recent season of Mad Men, AMC’s primus opus, ended earlier this week. For a show obsessed with giving its characters dynamic character arcs full of ups and downs, their ratings have steadily increased with every year. This is a highly unusual growth pattern for a television show, but Mad Men isn’t just any television show.

In fact, it would be fair to say that Mad Men has taken the modern day world of television by storm, garnering awards and accolades from the first exhale of smoke in 2007 to the twists and turns of the tumultuous fifth season. It explores, alternating between lamentations and celebrations, 1960’s America as it was experienced by a small group of fictionalized individuals tied together around the burgeoning industry of mass media advertising. It’s replete with brilliant direction, illuminating acting, and pitch-perfect writing; but, this only begins to explain a small part of the current obsession with Mad Men.

Watching these characters smoke cigarettes, drink at work, and hit on their secretaries is the core of this obsession. Whether it is a desire for things to return as they were, the most reactionary of nostalgias, or some pleasure of the perverse derived from watching people do things that are now bad, watching actors perform these actions over and over again–especially knowing that they themselves can’t–is what motivates the particularly fierce adulation this show inspires.

In surveys, or in passing conversations, this logic may not boil up immediately. People will talk about the fashion, the coiffures, the dialogue, or maybe even the characters, and claim that that’s why they love it. Or they’ll claim they like it the same way they like every other tv show: for the sex, drama, laughs, and violence that add up to a caricature of human life on a small screen. Certainly, it is all of that too. But with Mad Men, it is so much more complex because of the emphasis on our history and on the phenomenon of experiencing (or re-experiencing if you’re of the correct generation) that history.

It speaks to those of us in the office especially because we are professionally connected through history and have to face similar tasks and travails in our working lives. In fact, the new challenges and opportunities posed by the television’s coming-of-age are similar to those posed by the contemporary emergence of the internet. The similarity only increases when considering how video has, and continues to, become more fastly embedded within the normal internet experience. Both of these developments, separated by half a century, are ultimately about creating or discovering untapped markets and convincing the eyes, mouths, and wallets of their inhabitants to participate in an experience. Buying a product, watching a video about a business, or describing a video seen online to a friend are all experiences that brands and advertisers worldwide are trying to entice consumers to participate in using social networks and the internet at large.

Of course, even saying all of this, it is still possible to enjoy Mad Men without bringing any of this up, just like any other work of art can be appreciated without a complete understanding of the object. And this just happens to be what we did recently at Cimaglia Productions, with our first ever Mad Men Day! The girls were in pearls, the brutes were in suits; shiny black pumps and skinny ties took over the corridors of the John Hancock Center. We couldn’t smoke or drink at work anymore like those Mad Men, but we could look every bit as good.

Social media consumption has revolutionized online content distribution, radically changing how and where individuals find their news. Sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube allow for video to be easily uploaded, making online video content today’s most popular medium and requiring many businesses to embrace online video as a marketing tool.

Video marketing through social networks succeeds because human interaction is at the core of the medium. Users post comments that incite discussion amongst each other. Businesses are able to capitalize on this by directly engaging with their clients or customers online. A company can post a video featuring a new product and evaluate consumer response based on the comments posted to the video. Users also interact by sharing videos with each other, thereby increasing brand visibility at no extra cost or effort to the business itself. Social media not only allows a more direct connection between advertiser and consumer, but also makes it easier to evaluate attitudes towards a product or campaign.

The following statistic shows how essential social media is to marketing:

• 41% percent of Facebook users have shared a video link about a brand.

Companies have the ability to leverage their branded video content across social media platforms to maximize their reach to the target audience. In “Brands Cash in on the Social Media Addiction,” David Murcido classifies the top four social media sites to help businesses select the most appropriate channel for their messaging.

• YouTube: Accessible, affordable, and people always want to see more of them.
• Facebook: Inflated reality, everyone talks about themselves – a marketer’s dream.
• Twitter: Self centered, short conversations, always changing.
• Google+: A lot of excitement and talk, more fun if your friends are also present on the site.

On social media networks, brands can either produce original content or brand user-generated content. Regardless of the method, the content must appeal to users and fit into the social platform’s environment. Videos must first and foremost entertain before advertising to users in order to distract from the corporate interference in the social media world.

This leads to an important understanding of the role of advertising and branding within social media. Individuals can spread messages, sentiments, or videos created and endorsed by a company or brand, and in this way advertise that company. However, if this process is heavy-handed, or otherwise lacking in some sense, then the individuals who make up these social media sites can remove themselves from this process by refusing to participate, or can disrupt this process and begin disseminating a message other than the one originally intended.

YouTube, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and the numerous other websites that serve similar functions provide a huge opportunity for brands, advertisers, and marketing firms. If their campaigns are crafted correctly, these companies can harness the fluidity of transmitting videos among friends to rapidly provide groups of similar people with information about products that they like on Facebook, and will be likely to purchase. If done without proper consideration or care, however, these campaigns can backfire and individuals can disengage from the video sharing process or can manipulate it to their own purposes. Ultimately, when relying on non-employees to provide positive messages about a brand it is important to ingenuously, ingeniously, and powerfully engage your audience–emotionally, intellectually, financially, or otherwise–in order to encourage the distribution of this method.

To take advantage of this newly built avenue for advertising requires a good plan, a light touch, and a creative approach. Like television to the Mad Men of the 1950’s and 60’s, the internet is a great boon but is still not fully understood as a medium by either the experts or the masses.