Vendor Profile – Executive Communication Technology
October 31, 2008
From the archives of The Influential Executive, 11/2008
How (and why) to make your leader a โvirtual spokespersonโ
iSpeakVideo is one of a number of vendors that can transform your executives into walking, talking web site hosts.
Youโve seen a โvirtual spokesperson.โ
You go to a website and after a second or two, a pretty woman or a natty man pops up on the screen. โHi. Welcome to XYZ Inc. Iโm glad youโre here. Let me show you around our site โฆ.โ
And youโve probably thought: annoying, or cheesy, or both. But the executive communication pro inside you thinks: It has potential.
Erik Kretschmar is the co-founder and business development VP of a company that makes these virtual spokespeople work via โvideo walk-onโ technology. He blames the tackiness of some virtual spokespeople to amateurish vendors, unappealing actors or lousy video scriptsโpitfalls he says his firm helps its clients avoid.
Though the lionโs share of iSpeakVideoโs work does involve actors and not real executives (the company has a stable of actors to choose from), the firm is also set up to support executives who want to hawk a new product on a website, introduce analysts or shareholders to an investor relations page, put a face on an FAQ page, or welcome new hires to an intranet employee-orientation site.
Hereโs how such an experiment would work, say for one 30-second video walk-on:
Youโd write a script for the executiveโthough iSpeakVideo people would look it over and make suggestions if itโs too long or too short or otherwise not suited for video walk-on. Then the executive either flies to one of iSpeakVideoโs studios, in New York and Florida, or goes to one of iSpeakVideoโs local affiliate studios, where he or she reads his or her spiel from a teleprompter, in front of a green screen.
The vendor then creates a sample video for the client to see; once approved, the virtual spokesperson is walking and talking all over the websiteโall in a matter of weeks, and for about $700.
Kretschmar acknowledges that using actual executives or employees for video walk-ons brings an element of risk into the pictures. โSome of the best videos and some of the worst videos weโve done have involved real people,โ he says.
If you think one or more of your executives could warm up part of the corporate Website or the intranet, give Kretschmar a shout at [email protected].
And weโd love to hear from readers who have hadโor who do haveโinteresting experiences, good, bad or ugly, with walk-on videos. Write to [email protected].
ย