Tag Archives: video engagement

Inside PR Newswire: Meet the Director of Multimedia Engagement for MultiVu

Posted on September 21, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Tom Miale – multimedia guru and king of ‘cue.

To some, the idea of walking away from email, Twitter, and Facebook for an hour seems impossible. But Tom Miale looks forward to unplugging for a bit each day. He’s not doing mantras or meditating. Miale spends that hour doing research.

“I try to take an hour where I’m not distracted by email and social media,” said

Tom and his son (and fishing buddy) Nate.

the director of multimedia engagement for MultiVu. “I actively research new technologies, and I’m looking for ideas and products to help get our clients’ messages out there. Technology is changing our industry, and you have to be on top of it.”

Tom and his new daughter, Ellie.

Miale is an entrepreneur. He helped start up two webcasting companies right out of college.  It began simply enough: Miale saved his money and bought a computer. He’d always wanted to be a filmmaker, telling visual stories and finding the balance between audio, video and technology.

The moment he figured out that you could do it on a computer, “the video geek was born,” he said. Miale was immersed in the webcasting industry for a decade before joining PR Newswire in Aug. 2006.

Today, as the director of multimedia engagement for MultiVu, PR Newswire’s broadcast and multimedia division, Miale handles multimedia distribution. He was the creator of the Blogger Media Tour, which takes PR Newswire’s satellite media tour product and tailors it to bloggers.

Essentially, this allows a client’s spokesperson to be available to bloggers for live interviews. Some of the more popular PR Newswire multimedia engagement products include the multi-media news release and the ARC, an easily shareable and distributable engagement platform that functions like a container holding clients’ multiple multimedia assets, including video, audio, PDFs, and infographics.

Miale now is concentrating on working social distribution into all PR Newswire products.

“We’re making sure our clients’ content is distributed out to as many social channels as we possibly can,” he said. “In this role, I’ve become sort of the multimedia storytelling evangelist for MultiVu.”

This has led to many speaking engagements about multimedia – something that has surprised Miale, who never imagined himself a public speaker.

“I enjoy speaking at conferences,” he said. “I like being a teacher to the brand world. I wrote a proposal that got accepted with some colleagues that got into last year’s SXSW. This is a big deal for someone who never thought they would be a public speaker.”

While Miale likes being behind the camera, he’s also become quite comfortable in front of it.  In fact, you might know him as half of the TnT team, the “Tom and Tom” videos that are produced by PR Newswire. For the last couple of years, Miale has teamed up with PR Newswire’s blogger relations manager, Thomas Hynes, on a bunch of videos that began at SXSW.  The to collaborate on other videos throughout the year, too.

When he’s not digging into the latest technology, the New Yorker writes a food blog called I’m Not a Foodie.  Miale also stays busy with his family. All reside in and around Long Island, and Miale admits he “gets the shakes” if he leaves New York too long. He currently resides in Queens with his wife and two young children, who are almost 1 year and almost 3 years. They also have a dog, Oakley, who’s almost 4.

Christine Cube is a media relations manager for PR Newswire and freelance writer. You can follow her @cpcube.

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Brand TV: Using Video to Engage Audiences

Posted on May 2, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Read our free white paper on utilizing video in communications campaigns.

Today’s communication professionals are well aware that social media and video both have a major impact in marketing strategy.  The question that many of us ask is how these tools should be harnessed and when are they most appropriate?

In 2011, we hit an important tipping point: fully half of all web traffic was accessing online video. Clearly, audiences of all kinds are watching video and on any one of a plethora of devices that are available.  Did you know that as of the beginning of 2012, there are more mobile devices in existence than people on the planet?  That fact alone is mind-blowing. There are now an infinite number of combinations of platforms and devices where content can be viewed and experienced, along with the different browsers used along with them.  Ignoring the fact that this combination exists is, the biggest mistake that marketing professionals can make.

The Content Marketing Institute recently held a webcast that focuses on this hot topic entitled “Jumpstart Your 2012 Content Marketing Strategy with Video + Social Media,”  with a presentation from Steve Rotter, VP of Marketing for Brightcove, who declared that the best way for marketers to learn is through customer examples, starting with our own viewing behavior.  Audiences in 2012 “want options,” he said, along with “living room content everywhere.” As usual, I thought of my own short attention span, and translated that to mean that companies should keep their content short (2 minutes tops), entertaining and of good quality.

For more examples of how brands are using video, click the the image.

Branded video applications:

One tactic that was discussed was “brand TV” – the development and display of branded videos.  Considered a video engagement best practice, brand TV is a proactive format that is great for branding, education and it can also cut down customer service costs.

  • Kohler, a company known for making bathroom fixtures, has developed “The Kohler Network” their own TV channel on their web site.
  • Hoover uses video to address popular customer issues and provide instruction guides presented in short videos.
  • Citrix TV utilizes videos between 30 seconds and 2 minutes utilized in a “bite-sized” fashion.  This type of visual experience with a brand, according to Rotter, strengthens customer loyalty, which is a goal for all marketers.
  • Phillips, Oracle, McKesson and even the US Department of State utilize live video in some way, causing what Rotter labels the “halo effect,” making sure that people will come back to the site due to past live content.

It’s interesting to note that the most popular question from marketers typically has to do with YouTube, and how important it is in social media strategy.  While having a presence on YouTube is pretty much necessary these days, Rotter says to be careful when looking at the search stats on the site.  While it does garner a large amount of web traffic, the searches performed on YouTube are a lot more topically specific than Google.  A company’s own website is still very important. Thus, a “blended distribution strategy” is the ideal set-up, where a company has some video on YouTube, as well as their own site.  This offers more control over the entire user experience.

There are plenty of options for a marketer to consider when putting together their strategy, and it is quite evident that social media and video are requirements for that strategy.  It was astounding to me when 67% of the webinar audience claimed that their company “doesn’t have a mobile strategy.”  This is where the eyeballs are, and where even more of them are going.  Harnessing this fact by creating and distributing your content to work on these devices should be a priority.  As Rotter explained, “With video compared to standard web stats, you get more statistics and information about your user.”  That information is a fundamental requirement for all marketers.  As technology continues to fragment, conversion will become more complex.  It is our responsibility to build marketing strategies that keep up with these changes.

Author Gena Sabin is director of multimedia business for PR Newswire/MultiVu.

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