Save money by reaching out to more people!

Over the past 20 years, advertising and marketing have had a dramatic facelift; it was common place to view advertisements in your favorite magazine or on billboards passing by. Nowadays however, it is more common to see them spread throughout the World Wide Web. The Web is home to every topic imaginable and contains videos from music to “do-it-yourself.” Video hosting websites are the new rage and receive hundreds of thousands of hits each day. Youtube.com alone adds 65,000 new videos daily, equivalent to sending 75 million emails.

Thomas Clark of Xavier University and Julie Stewart of the University of Cincinnati decided to take advantage of this new medium to promote the Xavier Entrepreneurial Center (XEC). Some of the reasons Clark and Stewart were attracted to this idea was because video can be created fairly easily, there is minimal cost to created and upload, free hosting of the video, and more importantly, there is free distribution. Clark and Stewart were aware that videos have become superior to text by the mere fact that watching a video is more impressionable then reading text.

They began with a five minute video and after having it approved by their Board of Trustees, uploaded to YouTube.com along with three other video hosting websites. Within the first week, they received 700 viewings, ranking it 83rd for most watched videos that week. They then added the link of the University’s website and in the next three months, received 1,300 more hits.

With such a positive response to the video, the Development and Admissions Offices contacted their department to ask for more information and to obtain copies of the video to pass out to use as a marketing tool for the University. They began to show the video at many different events and it continued to impress. Over time, they realized that the video could edit the video to include up to date pictures, interviews, and news. In the video, they included alumni award winners and would have a short review of each recipient. One of the awardees’ was so impressed with the recognition he and his family received from the video, that he was prompted to give $3 million to the entrepreneurship program.

Clark and Stewart credit three areas for their success. The first is placement of the video link on the website. By making it easy to navigate to, it was less of a hassle to get to. The second is the planning of the video shoots. By mapping out specifically when the video should be updated, it was easy to keep it up to date. Finally, they credit how cost effective and innovative this medium is for them and everyone else. Their message was displayed to those would normally would not open their mail.


Conly Davidson