Commoncraft Blog

Splainers Video: SMS for Life

Splainers recently published a new video for the Roll Back Malaria Partnership.  I'm impressed, not only with the video explanation, but the idea behind SMS for Life, which uses mobile phones to ensure that malaria medicines are available for families who may need to travel to find treatment. It's great to see Splainers working on such a worthy cause and matching their skills to an idea that becomes more clear through video.

Splainers, like all members of the Common Craft Explainer Network, can be hired to create videos explaining your product or services.

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Common Craft - NOT a Viral Video Company

I've been really excited to see the feedback about the new Web License. Asking people to pay to embed a video has raised questions and responding to them has been an interesting experience. If nothing else, it's eye-opening to see what people are assuming about our business.

For example, Mike Masnick at Techdirt wrote an article called "Viral Video Producers Want To Charge You to Embed Their Videos."  Then, Steven Hodson at Inquisitor follow up the Techdirt article with "Common Craft Seems to Forget What Makes Viral Video... Well Viral."

Both these articles assume (mostly incorrectly) a few things:

1. Viral video is our business/marketing model
2. YouTube is required to build a business on video
3. Our Web License is focused on viral distribution

It's really interesting to me that, after 3 years of making nearly 30 of our own videos, people still think we're a viral video company. We haven't had a viral hit in a very long time, or thought we could build a business on viral videos. In fact, I'm not sure successful businesses can be sustained that way. I assumed, perhaps optimistically, that a visit to our web site would make that clear.

Now I'm wondering if what has appeared on a few blogs is a widely held perception? Are we not explaining our own business well enough? 

The truth is, we make high quality educational videos - videos that help organizations and individuals accomplish goals.  These are videos (unlike most viral videos) that people are happy to pay to license because they are useful. The best we can do is make a quality product and attract people and organizations that want to buy it. Part of this strategy is making commoncraft.com the home of our videos - not a host like YouTube.

The Web License model is something that (as far as we know) has never been offered before. In the context of purely viral videos, it would be a very difficult model.  But the value of our videos is not so much in blog posts or viral distribution, it's in solving problems for people and organizations whose job is to inform and educate others, on and off the web. That's where you'll find us in the future.

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Amit Asks: Will You Pay to Embed a Video on Your Website?

Amit Agarwal at Digital Inspiration has been a fan of Common Craft for a while and we've always enjoyed his thoughful analysis of our videos and business.  The news yesterday about our Web License prompted him to write about it - and question the business case for paying to embed videos.  We welcome this kind of analysis. 

He writes:

The good old YouTube days are over as Common Craft has created a new “web license” for their videos that would require bloggers and websites to pay a monthly subscription fee for embedding videos on their site. And this is not a small amount.

I am huge fan of the entire Common Craft series and admire the fact that they have come up with such a unique business model to distribute their “high value” content online. At the same time, stories published on blogs, unlike the newswires, stay forever so the cost of embedding a single video could easily run into a few thousand dollars over time and that may not make lot of business sense.

I think there is an important distinction to be made here that explains our licensing model. Amit, and I'm sure many observers, think of online video in the business-to-consumer YouTube model. It's social media currency - something to be shared broadly on blogs for free via YouTube. This is obviously a valid and dominant model. However, it's not the only model for online video.  Our approach is based not on bloggers or individuals, but organizations that will put the videos to work.

Over time, we've learned that Common Craft videos can be used as valuable business tools for organizations who are looking for high quality content to attract, engage and educate visitors, and potentially turn them into customers.  These videos don't normally reside on blog pages.

In our blog post about the new license and relationship with Wistia we say:

“This means a technology company can educate visitors on the basics of wikis, or cloud computing. A financial institution can educate potential customers on the stock market or borrowing money. A service organization can educate citizens about preparing an emergency kit.”

We're targeting the business-to-business market – organizations that will put the videos to work. We believe that the model makes sense for organizations because the videos can contribute to organizational goals. Plus, these same organizations want the hassle-free nature of embeddable videos that also come with Wistia’s analytics. This is very different from marketing the videos to bloggers.

Of course, this is uncharted territory for us all.  Over time, I'm a big believer that we're only starting to discover how video producers can build businesses around quality content. Hopefully this is a step in the right direction.

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Introducing Our New "Web License" and Partnership with Wistia

For a while now, we've heard a common request from potential customers.  They want an easy way to license and share Common Craft videos on their website. Today we're announcing a new partnership with video sharing company Wistia that will help us serve this need with our new "Web License."

A Little Background...

We license our videos to individuals and organizations. Two of our most popular licenses (Individual and Site) are for offline use. Customers download video files for use on intranets/extranets, training programs, classrooms and presentations. The videos are really useful internally, but they can't be displayed on public websites. Of course, some customers want to do just that.

Problem Solved

Our new partnership with Wistia means that our customers can license high quality Common Craft videos and use Wistia's video sharing tools to easily display them. This makes adding a Common Craft video to your website:

    •    Easy - Add videos with simple copy-and-paste embed code.
    •    Smart - Gather rich info on who watches the videos and how they watch them
    •    Flexible - Choose from multiple plans, based on monthly views

This means a technology company can educate visitors on the basics of wikis, or cloud computing.
A financial institution can educate potential customers on the stock market or borrowing money.
A service organization can educate citizens about preparing an emergency kit. 

Our Web License means that any website can benefit from Common Craft videos.

This 52-second video helps explain the relationship:

If you're interested in licensing Common Craft videos for your website, look for the "Web License" option on any video at CommonCraft.com.

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Explainer Network - Animated Explanations Wins Platinum Seal of e-Excellence

A big congrats to Instruxion (the company behind Animated Explanations) for being awarded the Platinum Seal of e-Excellence in Europe, which recognizes companies who have a track record of innovation. Of course, we see this recognition as further proof that video explanations are a valuable and productive element of marketing and education. Animated Explanations is based on Brussels, Belgium and a member of our Explainer Network of video producers.

Here's the description of the award from the award website:

The European Seal of e-Excellence rewards ICT and Digital Media companies with an excellent track record in innovation marketing. Awarded annually since 2003 by the EMF and its Partner Organisations, the Seal is widely known for recognizing companies with:

1. innovative products and services;
2. excellence in the marketing thereof.

Again, congrats to Geert and the Instruxion team!

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What Pitchman Ron Popeil Can Teach Us About Explanation

If you've been reading for a while, you've seen us write that a secret to a strong explanation is putting the subject in the context of someone's life.  Don't just talk about what it does, talk about how it fits into their world - how it takes away pain or makes something easier, faster, better.

Recently I've been reading the Malcolm Gladwell book What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures, which is a collection of his past articles from the New Yorker. One of the articles is called The Pitchman and focuses, in part, on Ron Popeil of Ronco.  You may recognize his name from late-night TV, where he's often seen pitching a new kitchen appliance like the Veg-o-matic or the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie BBQ. He is a classic pitchman - a pro.

Though I would never call myself a pitchman, there is an element of the skill in creating explanations. Think of a commercial or an exhibit on the floor of a fair or trade show. The pitchman only has a limited amount of time to attract attention and hold it long enough for value to be clear. Common Craft may not sell Ginsu knives, but we do specialize in making value clear, in about three minutes.

There is a section of the story that struck me as particularly apt for explainers. Ron Popeil discusses pitching kitchen gadgets and how VCRs were marketed... 

You have to show them exactly how it works and why it works and make them follow your hands as you chop liver with it, and then tell them precisely how it fits into their routine, and, finally sell them on the paradoxical fact that, revolutionary as the gadget is, it's not at all hard to use.

Thirty years ago, the video cassette recorder came onto the market, and it was a disruptive product too: it was supposed to make it possible to tape a television show so that no one would ever again be chained to to the prime-time schedule. Yet, as ubiquitous as the VCR became, it was seldom put to that purpose. That's because the VCR was never pitched: no one ever explained the gadget to American consumers... and no one showed them exactly how it worked or how it would fit into their routine and no pair of hands guided them through every step of the process. All VCR makers did was hand over the box with a smile and a pat on the back, tossing in an instruction manual for good measure.  Any pitchman could have told you that wasn't going to work.

These days I see a lot of companies acting like VCR makers - handing over a gadget and focusing on features - without indicating how it fits into the lives of customers. Perhaps we all have something to learn from Ron Popeil.

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Steven Strogatz - Explaining the Magic of Math

I've always hated math. Since about the 6th grade, I've always felt behind and deemed myself "not a math person." As I get older, I'm realizing that part of my problem was how I was taught math. It always seemed like memorization and rules without context.  I never had teachers that helped me develop a passion for math or see the the magic in solving problems. I wrote about this experience here.

Recently I learned about a series of thirteen blog posts that are meant for people like me.  Steven Strogatz is an award winning mathematician from Cornell who has taken it upon himself to explain the magic of math on the New York Times Opinionator blog. Here's how it describes the genesis of the idea:

I have a friend who gets a tremendous kick out of science, even though he’s an artist. Whenever we get together all he wants to do is chat about the latest thing in evolution or quantum mechanics. But when it comes to math, he feels at sea, and it saddens him. The strange symbols keep him out. He says he doesn’t even know how to pronounce them.
In fact, his alienation runs a lot deeper. He’s not sure what mathematicians do all day, or what they mean when they say a proof is elegant. Sometimes we joke that I just should sit him down and teach him everything, starting with 1 + 1 = 2 and going as far as we can.
Crazy as it sounds, over the next several weeks I’m going to try to do something close to that. I’ll be writing about the elements of mathematics, from pre-school to grad school, for anyone out there who’d like to have a second chance at the subject — but this time from an adult perspective. It’s not intended to be remedial. The goal is to give you a better feeling for what math is all about and why it’s so enthralling to those who get it.

I've read the first few installations (he's posted 4 of 13 so far) and I'm impressed. It's not in plain English, per se, but he does a great job of using visuals and metaphor to explain math in a way that is new to me. Each post takes about ten minutes to read. All the current posts are here, and I encourage you to start at the beginning.

Thanks to Jay at Juxtaprose for letting me know about the series.

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Skype Mobile for Verizon - Explained by Say it Visually

Say It Visually!, a member of the Common Craft Explainer Network, was hired by Verizon Wireless to explain Skype Mobile. 

This style of video has become a standard for Say it Visually and I think it does a great job of creating a dynamic experience.

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Erring on the Side of Happiness

Not everyone knows, but Common Craft is a two-person, home-based business. We're 100% independent, with zero employees or investors. While we work with specialists by contract, everything that Common Craft does comes from us and impacts only us. This has been our goal since 2006 when Sachi and I started working together and today, we're starting to really understand what it means to be a two person "couple company."

It's not all unicorns and rainbows. Along with our important video-making duties, I am one of two people in the customer support department. Sachi is our head bookkeeper. There's no one else to answer the phone, run errands or follow up on a question. We spend valuable time on things that could easily be done by others, which surely impacts our productivity. But, we are connected directly to our customers.

Work is a constant part of our lives. Business happens over dinner, on walks and off-hours. We don't ever really get away. Instead, we've learned ways to streamline our work, even when we're supposed to be traveling or on vacation. 

Perhaps most importantly, our business is difficult to scale with two people. When headcount is a constraint, fewer business models make sense. So we have to find what works for us. 

These are obviously self-imposed limits and I'm sure most business people would say that we're missing opportunities. It's true, being small means passing on many opportunities and focusing on ones that fit for us. But it also means new perspectives, perspectives that don't make as much sense outside of a couple company.  

Think for a minute about how decisions are made in many businesses. Money is obviously the driving force, which is directly connected to investor and shareholder interests. Business leaders make hard decisions every day, ones focused on increasing the health of the business. Of course, this is responsible and rational behavior.

But what if there is another perspective, one that is unique to companies like Common Craft? What if, along with money and business health, a driving force of every decision is happiness among the founders? This is how we've learned to operate - our happiness as a home-based unit is perhaps the most important thing for our business and something directly connected to long-term financial success. When we look at opportunities, we ask ourselves - will this make us happy? If this opportunity comes to fruition, will we still be able to live the life we want to live? 

Of course, it's not just happiness. This is really a strategy to prevent its evil twin, unhappiness, from rearing its head. Unhappiness, in the context of a married couple's work together, is poison. Business success wouldn't matter if we stopped enjoying our life together.

So we've been very deliberate about how we run Common Craft. We don't have employees because we don't want an HR department. Instead, we've found a business model (video licensing) that scales without employees.  We don't have an office because we love being at home and have made it our best possible workspace. We can be very low-overhead, agile and lightweight with two people. We've never required outside investment, and I think we're better for it. Investors aren't likely to enjoy a return based on our happiness. We are happily independent. 

In the end, we're designing a business that fits with our goals as a married couple. By erring on the side of happiness, we can grow in ways that create a successful business, but also ensure that we don't lose control of our day-to-day lives. And with these things in place, we hopefully have a solid formula for sustainable creativity.

Of course, things change and Common Craft may become something different down the road.  But what will always be in the front of our minds is the idea that we have a choice. Every business is different and just because your "supposed-to" do something doesn't mean you have to do it. We all have a choice, and for us the important question is - will this make us happy?

For more posts like this, see our Being Small category.

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Video: Secure Websites in Plain English

We've published a new video called "Secure Websites in Plain English"

Security is obviously an important part of using the Web. Thankfully, through cooperation between a number of organizations, standards have been developed to communicate when a site is secure.  Unfortunately these clues are not always known to everyday Web users.  This video covers the basics of web site security - the common threats, the basics of encryption and how to tell when a site is secure.

The video also covers a new and growing standard that gives banks and other organizations a way to communicate that their site is the genuine article. This new standard, called EV SSL Certification, is meant to battle phishing scams. 

This video, like all our videos, is available for licensing and use by individuals, organizations and websites. Learn more.

Here are other videos in our growing "Net Safety" series...

Phishing Scams
Protecting Reputations Online

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