We're Still Missing the Target

I get about a dozen rich media marketing newsletters everyday, not to mention all the content on my RSS feeds, Furl links and water cooler conversation ("hey'd you see that new site?"). It's enough to drive a guy insane. And they're all talking about the increasing use of video.

Well whoop-pid-eee-do.

Until we can integrate interactivty and a better sense of directing a viewer's choice through content, we're still missing the point.

The video components are not the story. They never havebeen. Video is the new jpeg, except now it's an mpeg. The really big news is the context with which all these jpegs and mpegs are combined. Sight, sound and motion on the web is great, but it's the interactivity that makes the web wonderful.

I read about this new promotional site for a video game called SOCOM3. Great site and good use of video, but it's presented like a TV show. Lots of video clips. Again, great interface and the content is actually cool...if you're in to that type of thing...but where's the interactivity? I can still lean back in my chair and skim through all the content. That's a passive style delivery just like TV. But the web is not just another delivery channel for TV. It's not.

Even more risque online promotions like this one for Lynx UK body spray (it's called Axe Body Spray here in the USA). Good use of video...if you're in to that type of thing...but where's the interactivity?

Rich media marketing can be so much more if we engage viewers in a conversation. Interact with them. Listen to them. Give them choices. Create environments where they can explore, decide, chose and ultimately find their own way to what they want.

That's my vision of the Rich Media Web.


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