Timeliness vs. Quality

When it comes to producing video content in 2011, there are many factors that help drive your decision-making process on an individual video project - goals, objectives, format, technology available, etc.

First and foremost, there are many options on how to even record your video, with much of the decision-making process depending on your end goal. You can put a flip camera in the hands of your customers. You can record an event or speaking engagement and post it after the event. You can even live-stream a show like my new addiction, HigherEdLive, and still archive the content. You can produce a high-quality informercial for your product or service. Or as we recently did, you can parody an existing video.

Recently, we ran into a timeliness versus quality debate for a video project where our end goals were community-building and building awareness of our mascot. Upon seeing the Bridgestone Beaver commercial during the Super Bowl, a colleague and I joked about finding a way to get our mascot, Biz E. Beaver a.k.a. The Biz, into a future Bridgestone commercial. I even reached out to their social media manager via Twitter and half-jokingly told them we have their talent for any future commercials. After not hearing back for a couple days, the idea finally popped in my head to film our own "commercial" with The Biz, a parody on the original.



We tried to mirror it as closely as possible to the original, but injecting some of the personality of our mascot, our institution and our dean. Unfortunately, it still took us a week to get this posted due to schedules and the fact my idea came 3 days later than it should have. Ideally, we would have filmed and edited this the day after the Superbowl.

We definitely feel filming and editing quliaty was sacrificed some, even with the one-week timeframe between the original's first airing and our video posting and promotion. We obviously wanted to capitalize on the timeliness and popularity of the Bridgestone commercial, including their success in  #brandbowl feedback, and I felt that timeliness was most important. With that being said, time will tell if the quality holds up over the months ahead as the commercial becomes less popular and searched on.

We're happy with the community's response to it these first few days and The Biz has even made a dozen new friends!