If I had a Cliche of the Week, I think it would have to be "Flickr for Video"... at least this week anyway. It seems like in the last few months or so, we've seen a lot of new focus on video, whether its user generated or Apple-repurposed. YouTube got funding, the CollegeHumor guys refocused on Vimeo, and Alex Vitaki is working hard to build Castpost, to name a few.
People are going to keep their videos somewhere, don't get me wrong, and they're going to want to share, discover, etc. So, there probably is a Flickr type business model there somewhere, but that's not so interesting to me.
I was speaking with an entrepreneur about this the other day and they told me that they were experimenting with ads inserted in the videos. Ugh... I just had a bad reaction to that... the same bad reaction I had when CNN was showing mortgage ad clips everytime I wanted to watch a Hurricane Katrina video. I'm glad they stopped doing that after a while.
Around the same time, I saw the new Dunkin Donuts commercial where the the CEO gets some cornrows in addition to his new vanilla spice latte, prompting a lackey to say, "That's kind of a new thing for you sir, isn't it?" Its hilarious.
Then it hit me. That commercial is so funny, I'd love to run the clip on my blog. In fact, there are a lot of good commercials that I'd love to run on my blog. (My favorite all time commercial is the Outpost.com one where they shoot the hamster through the O in outpost... or at least attempt to, and they miss, smacking the poor things against the other letters.)
If I did that, though, why shouldn't I get paid for that?
In fact, Dunkin Donuts probably would pay me for that if they could. Advertisors have come up with all sorts of stupid little ways to steal desktop space from me... to get in front of my face in annoying ways with clips, sound, etc. What if we could just choose commercials to view... to go to a site, pick the best video clip commercials we can find, and get paid to have our audiences glue their little eyeballs to your 30 second clip. Some of them are pure entertainment. I think that would be a great use for some of these video clip services... and a good business model for them.
Even better would be if you let the audience create their own. What if Dunkin Donuts said, "Ok, we're looking for commercials that have the product in it the whole time, no profanity, nudity, whatever, and are funny as hell." How many college kids would probably make really fantastic Dunkin Donuts commercials worth watching, displaying on blogs, and e-mailing it to others? Remember when someone made a Tiger Woods/Nike ad? Someone else made their own iPod ads.
For companies, it would create cheap advertising, brand awareness, and really capture the attention their looking for. For bloggers and other publishers, they would be getting paid to display the most entertaining content. For video creators, they could get a cut, too, and get their name out, and, if nothing else, the pure satisfaction of starring in their own commercials or having the most popular one.
So instead of trying to sneak your way into my attention, why not let the community create something worthy of my attention for the brands they're passionate about, and then pay them for it?
Makes me think of when I was in the fifth grade and Sal Auteri, a tough, bruising little guido if you ever saw one, was doing a class presentation. It was supposed to be a "TV Newscast" about the state of Missouri or something. His group couldn't get his act together and all of the sudden, he just turns to the class , rubs his cheek and goes, "Use Dove soap. It doesn't try your face like other soaps..." Pure humor. User generated commercial clips on the web. I'd click on that and I think advertisers would be to have me watch it.