Video Spokesperson and The Sound Byte
Video Spokesperson and The Sound Byte
By Joe Schaefer, PhD
President, Live On Page
In the age of the political sound byte, the power of visual, live media has superceded all other media. We watch news commentators, and assuming they have dug deep into all appropriate source material, allow them to summarize everything into a few sentences. We want to see background images of graphs, pie charts, stock tickers and polling results, but the public in general will never verify this information.
It is the same in your website. People want to begin their experience of your site with a superficial approach. They actively look for the “wrapper” on your website; a way to quickly get the surface level information to verify if the site content is a good match for their needs.
This is the perfect job for a video spokesperson. The video spokesperson is able to command complete attention and instantly communicate the surface level information about the site. In fact, just like the political sound byte, there should be some graphs, charts, bullets or other easily digestible visual information on the page so that as the spokesperson performs the script, the visitor can easily see confirmation that the site can – and will – back up the script with real, deep information, once the visitor decides to stay and “dig in.”
This is counter to the notion that since “nobody reads anymore these days,” that we need to get a person to read the content of the site aloud, like a kindergarten teacher reading aloud to a group of 6 year olds. Doing it this way sounds like a person reading a sales brochure – or worse – and NOBODY is going to stay to listen. In the arena of political sound bytes, spin-doctors don’t want to come off sounding like a Harvard professor of political science reading from a textbook. They deliver short blurbs of common language that easily can be passed around at the water cooler the next day.
