Video is the New Email: Adding a Personal Touch to Client Communications

This is 2009, and email rules the world when it comes to business communications.  It’s powerful and efficient, but heartless and absolutely one-dimensional.  There’s no inflection, intonation, expression or visual queues.  With billions of emails being sent every day, it’s no wonder that so many are lost in the melee, and those that make it through are barely digestible. The signal-to-noise ratio (valid emails vs. spam) is incredibly low, and that alone can be damning to interpersonal communications.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love email, and could not live without it.  However, we’ve been using alternative methods of communicating our strategic and design work for quite some time now, with tools like BaseCamp, Axure RP Pro and Screenflow.  It’s time to add a bit more flavor to the day to day updates.  I’m going to do our clients justice with better communications through technology – video messages.  This isn’t cutting edge, I understand – but it’s the closest thing to a shout across the office or a quick, in-person update.  I want our clients to see my face and watch my expressions as they listen to my words…that’s what communications are all about.

I’m not talking about real-time videoconferencing – I’m talking about sending a personal message that can be saved, reviewed, fast forwarded and rewinded.  A file that is easy to reference and organize when you want to see it again.  Something much better than a blinking voicemail indicator.

Friends, partners and soon-to-be clients of dt, look out!  My funny-looking face is coming soon to a screen near you. http://www.vimeo.com/7294755