TurnHere Partners with Kudzu.com to Offer Online Video Services for Local Service Providers

We are very excited about our our new partnership with Kudzu.com, an interactive Web site that connects ready-to-buy consumers with local businesses. TurnHere will provide kudzu.com’s listing with videos to allow viewers to learn more about local merchants.

One of the great things about video for service providers is that it gives them an opportunity to demonstrate excellence in their service offering.  By using video to showcase the extra attention to detail, customer service and superior know-how and craftsmanship, service companies can differentiate themselves from their competition in the same field.

Imagine two cleaning companies with listings on the Web.  One company has a video showing them giving extra attention to oft-missed spots in the house, showing extra care around breakable items and providing a customer testimonial to their great work.  The other simply has text, contact information and a few photos.  Who gains more trust?  Who do consumers feel more connected with?  Who do those consumers call?  The one with the video.

That is the power of video for service providers.

From our press release announcing the partnership:

“By supplementing our Kudzu.com listing with video, we can really showcase the care and detail that goes into our cleaning service,” said Anna Zanthos, owner of Persnickety Cleaners. “Highlighting our business and the people that make it successful is a valuable marketing tool that helps potential customers make the decision to call on us ahead of our competitors.”

“Partnering with TurnHere adds another dimension to the breadth of services we offer to our listed companies,” said Edward Rosenfeld, director of business development for Kudzu.com. “Kudzu focuses on giving businesses the tools they need to tell their own stories. Consumers use this information to make important hiring decisions, and video provides a memorable and compelling addition to a robust business profile.”

Read the full press release here.

Chris Cassidy's Interviewed in FilmStew

Chris Cassidy is one of our NYC go-to-guys. He cranks out consistently great work from book videos to IFC segments. Check out this article in FilmStew about his feature length video in the works. Check it out. --Kelly Duane

EXCERPT:
“This will be Cassidy’s third feature-length documentary, an art form that famously does not pay the bills. So, in addition to continuing to support himself as a music and boxing photographer, Cassidy has for the past couple of years also been working as a videographer for TurnHere Inc., an Internet video production service that relies on a stable of thousands of filmmakers just like Cassidy.

The 40-year-old Long Island native has worked principally on short promotional videos for publishers Simon & Schuster and Random House, interviewing the likes of Stephen King and Mary Higgins Clark. It is work that he thoroughly enjoys.

“For these three-minute book author web videos, you get to spend a few hours with these brilliant writers and then try to tell their stories," Cassidy explains. "It’s a fun challenge.” Given the fact that Vic Thrill himself has an autobiography in the works that will be published by Random House, Cassidy jokes that it would seem somehow fitting if he were the one recruited to shoot Thrill’s TurnHere promo.

Full Article.

Meaningful Media NOT Mass Media

Our CEO and Founder Brad Inman had a byline in MediaPost’s Online Media Daily yesterday.  His commentary on the state of online video and the trouble that traditional producers have had with the crossover from broadcast to online video outlines some of the many challenges that companies face as they try to understand and embrace this new advertising format.

The failed attempts of blockbuster online video campaigns by high-profile brands point to the unique challenges that a highly-fragmented, often cynical Internet audience presents to the old-fashioned advertising paradigm.

From Brad's commentary:

The Web is not about "aiming for the middle," a broad branding exercise seeking the lowest common denominator, big advertising themes and irrelevant emotional hooks. The control is no longer in the hands of the broadcasters; it is in the hands of the consumer. This shift in control changes the consumption of video from a "lean back" disengaged experience to a lean-forward, "I-need-relevant-information" experience, where the consumer determines when and how content is consumed. The world of permission-based, demand-driven advertising, prescribed by the ethos of the Web, offers a relevant ad model opportunity.

The Internet is a micro-media world in which millions of niche audiences with thousands of members make up the greater universe. This ultra-fragmented reality forces advertisers to adopt a new paradigm for reaching consumers in order to be relevant and meet the expectations of today's jaded online audience. Overly produced, generic or irrelevant advertisements fall on deaf ears. The new video ad creation needs to align production costs, content and quality to this new paradigm. It needs to connect with the audience and deliver the content that they want to see, where and when they want to see it.

The Internet is ushering out the age of mass media and heralding the new age of meaningful media. It is not campaign-driven, but relevance-driven.

This new paradigm calls for new thinking, new ways of packaging and delivering content.  And why shouldn't it be different?  The Internet and Television are completely different user-experiences.  The "lean forward" interaction of a typical Web experience stands in stark contrast to the "lean back" reality of watching television.

Advertisers that embrace these differences and leverage them will find their campaigns are more relevant, more engaging and more valuable than any attempt to simply cross-purpose video content from broadcast to the Web.