Don’t Pitch It: Vitch It

This is the second of a two-part post focusing on how the FLIMP Platform should be a go-to tool for marketing agencies (advertising, public relations, etc.).
Purveyors of public relations know that media relations can be a difficult task.  Even though public relations is a strategic marketing tactic, many clients just think that PR means media mentions.  Clients have news.  Heck, let’s face it, clients think that their news is THE news.  Period. 
Thanks to the Web, a lot of news content can be shared via blogging and social networking.  But that still doesn’t satisfy the desire for features and articles written by reporters. 
Since relationships are at the heart of media relations, PR practitioners walk a very tight rope between making their clients happy by securing media placement and not irritating reporters.  You can’t pitch every single story to every reporter.  Not only does the client not get coverage, but you risk burning bridges with reporters.
A big challenge is always what to pitch and how to pitch it.  In some cases, it might make sense to vitch-it.  A vitch is a pitch that uses online video to tell a story.  Since audiovisual content can make complex information easier to understand and also enhance a story through visual and audio content, in some scenarios a vitch may make sense to add to a media relations strategy.
What would make a vitch even better than straight video would be creating the vitch on a video landing page (VLP).  A solo video lacks a number of different things that a VLP easily has.
A VLP can include:

  • Contact information / corporate (client) branding
  • Brief message
  • Links to pertinent content – press releases, fact sheets, corporate bios
  • Ease of distribution

Face it, video alone does not afford the opportunity to incorporate a message or even include written contact information.  No one would want to have to re-watch a video just to capture your name or email address for follow-up.  Also, attaching a video file to an email would be even worse than attaching a Word Document or PDF due to the sheer size of a video.
A VLP would let you elegantly incorporate messaging and calls to action.  When a flimp VLP is sent via email, it is typically smaller than sending a Word Document as an attachment (meaning it is under 10 KB in size).
Finally, VLPs are easy to create.  It took me about 45 minutes to make the below sample VLP.  We shot the video in roughly 5 minutes.  Matt Shaw was kind enough to convert the video to a FLV for me and I made the flimp in about a half-hour. 
Here’s my sample vitch:

This is what the vitch email would look like.

If I sent this vitch using FlimpMail, I would be able to track viewer (i.e., reporter) engagement at the individual email level.  New to Flimp, learn about our robust analytics.
So PR practitioners – for the right news, would a vitch make sense?

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