While you read this, millions of Indians are watching a video on their phones. Bollywood songs, Hollywood movie trailers, recipes, standup comedy performances, gadget reviews, fake news clips, local talent displays, porn, comedy sketches, parodies & spoofs, chemistry tutorials, bhajans, random street videos, you name it.
What are these people doing when they are not watching videos on their mobile phones? Well, they are shooting videos on the mobiles… at weddings, family get-togethers, cafes, streets, monuments, concerts and their children’s school events. Besides professionally made videos, the digital space is flooded with user generated content shared across facebook, instagram, youtube, and of course, whatsapp.
Cut to 50 years back to get a perspective on India’s transformed videoscape.
Back in 1969, movies were the only videos there were. That was the year of Rajesh Khanna with five releases including the blockbuster, Aradhana. That was also the year when Amitabh Bachchan made his debut with Saat Hindustani.
A total of 83 movies were produced in Bollywood and some 180 in all regional languages put together. That’s all that happened in India in the name of videos, unless you wish to include the 5-minute daily news bulletin aired by Doordarshan. Still under 800 hours of videos in all in the entire year in the whole of India.
Back then, who would have imagined that someday the descendant of fuddy-duddy dial phone would drive a video revolution with movie-theatre, television set, movie camera and editing suite all rolled into the palm-size device!
Consider this…
What’s in it for your Business
People are getting so used to video content, they find static communication very dull. This will just get worse (or better, if you like) by next year 50 crore Indians will be watching videos online.
By 2020, 50 crore Indians will be watching videos online.
Videos can be used very effectively for achieving various objectives in business.
Video has the power to deliver a message to any audience with the highest degree of impact, without any dilution.
So far, the medium was constrained by the challenges of the vehicles especially for small and medium businesses. TV had a high entry barrier; one needed a big budget to get on to it. It also had a high spillover; you paid big bucks to reach audiences that you were not interested in. For B2B marketers, TV made no sense at all, and they had nowhere else to go.
Video has the power to deliver a message to any audience with the highest degree of impact, without any dilution.
Smartphone proliferation and affordable 4G connectivity have demolished these barriers.
Big marketers are already exploiting this opportunity in a big way. Going beyond just releasing & promoting their TV commercials on youtube, they now aggressively develop special video content for online consumption.
Scroll down your IG or Fb newsfeed and you’ll see more videos than still images each passing day. A senior facebook executive says that by 2021 their content will probably be “all video”.
Don’t be surprised if BigB – 5 decades and some 230 movies down his career – soon announces his web series debut, as Rajesh Khanna’s son-in-law just did.
And while all this is happening, make sure your business doesn’t miss to ride the video wave.
