This  is a good thing, as we have been playing in the online video content creation  space since before YouTube was YouTube.

Unfortunately, all the online video money seems to be chasing companies who are trying to crowbar the old media model (aggregate and aggravate… gather an audience with cool content then interrupt the content with an ad). This is not a good thing.

So we thought we’d offer our predictions for where online video will go in the future. And it’s not the traditional media model.

(This is a longer blog than we normally do, but hey, we have a lot of predictions to make)

Prediction 1: A  smart, small brand will start creating DAILY content on their website. The content will capture the imagination and the attention of the public. Think The Far Side, but only available by going to the McDonalds website. It’s simply bypassing the networks and attracting your own audience. No competitors, no clutter. All you have to do is make good (ShareWorthy®) content and the audience will show up.

Prediction 2: A  smart, early-adopting BIG BRAND will copy this idea. Their agency will fight them tooth and nail, because the agency can’t make media commission on creative that is streamed on the Web.

Prediction 3: Creative companies that write and produce the content mentioned above will start getting funded by venture capitalists.

Prediction 4: Some smart college will reinvent their marketing curriculum to deliver the Content Creator Of The Future Degree. Graduates will have multiple skill sets: the ability to write cleverly, aggregate and edit relevant content for websites, produce and edit engaging online video instantly, and leverage the latest Social Network technology to get the word out. These people will eventually pass up VP-Marketing types as the gatekeepers for brands.

Prediction 5: A few smart brands will start paying good $ to exclusively channel content creators with real personality on their websites and through their Social Network programs. A comedian for a candy brand. A folksy storyteller for an insurance company. A fashion guru for a clothing brand.

Prediction 6: Video will become the Weapon of Choice in Social Network programs. Sharing pictures is nice. Sharing videos is powerful. We are one case study away from tipping the first domino.

There you have it. What we think will happen in online video this year. We’ll report on the accuracy of our predictions next January.

Thanks for listening!

We have a better idea. Shareworthy® videos. Inexpensive, fun, engaging, eminently easy to share because they aren’t trying to sell. We just make them cool enough to sneak into the Social Network conversation. We can do a bunch of them for around $10,000, and we betcha we can get you more views for your dollar than the big fancy ad campaigns. Check out some of ours at http://www.totallyshamelessplug.com

Can we film on for you?

Seth’s latest post talks about what customers want. We are proud to say that everything Seth claims customers want from a product matches the criteria we use to create Shareworthy® videos. His insight, and ours, is that there are basically 3 things that engage people.

You can read about Seth’s version here. Our version follows below.

We have basically distilled why people will watch a video about a product down to 3 key reasons.

Number One: I will watch if you show me dramatically that your product really works. This is pretty simple stuff. When you make a better mobile device, like the iPhone, the benefits of the product alone will get attention. People really do crave information, if it’s presented well.

Number Two: I will watch if your product entertains me. Why do people love Bud Light commercials? Time and again, the brand takes a simple taste message and turns it into pure entertainment, and makes us laugh. Entertainment is not easy. But it always attracts an audience.

Number Three: I will watch if it makes me cool. The insight here is that knowledge is power. The early adopter of the iPad is cooler than the person who waits a year to buy one. The person who can talk about a new product to friends before the friends know about it owns the ego-high ground.

So today, every time we create an online video for a client, we ask these three questions of the product: Does it work? Is it fun? Will it make me cool?

Within those 3 questions lies the key to making a Shareworthy® video.

We have a better idea: Hey brands: In a social networking context, where people share videos millions of times a day, you don’t want to be an ad. You want to be the video people share.

You can’t buy this kind of media. You have to earn it. So why not save the media dollars and put the money into a Shareworthy® video?

We can help.

I hate the very idea of commercials. They are designed to interrupt. Don’t you hate people who constantly interrupt you? I thought so.

So why do brands, in an attempt to get people to like them, do something that people hate them for? It’s an old, old model.

This ad supported entertainment model goes way back to the first crowds that gathered around a Renaissance Faire. You create some entertainment, you gather a crowd. You gather a crowd, you sell goods. It’s that easy.

You want to watch Greys’s Anatomy? You gotta watch my commercial that interrupts Grey’s Anatomy. I hate that.

So here’s a thought (stolen from a British Honda TV campaign, ironically). Hate something, change something.

So here’s how we’d change what we hate.

We’d make products into entertainment. Make the product attract the audience. Cut out the middle man.

It’s being done right now on YouTube. With brands like Blendtec and their series “Will It Blend?” And with Coca-Cola and their “Happiness Machine” video.

When products make commercials, they get ignored. When products become entertainment, the entertainment gets shared.

With the advent of social networks, entertainment-sharing has become simple, fun and widespread. Here’s an article talking about where video is going in the next decade. Social sharing could be the next big media for products.

But only if products become entertainment.

Look for a new product from us, that helps brands become entertainment in Q1 of this year.

Hate something, change something.

His best quote is “Don’t write me. Tell me. Show me.” Then he talks about how online video is the modern equivalent of ancient trade routes, or the invention of the printing press. Both of which enabled different ideas from far flung places to intermingle.

This reminds us of the words of Scott Whitaker, our client at The Larry and Carol Levy Institute for Entrepreneurial Practice at the Kellogg School of Business here in Chicago. He said videos help “increase believability and decrease uncertainty”. Which is how you’d expect academic people to express that simple fact that videos are a faster, easier, and more powerful way to communicate.

And since the Internet makes any video viewable by anyone, at any time, anywhere, you start to see just why we believe so strongly in the BYOB philosophy: Why not use your website like a broadcast station?

And we love it when smart people agree with us